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“A film of startling originality and beauty.” – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“4 stars. One of the few roaring lions still producing genuine art-house cinema.” – Time Out New York

Destined to head many critics’ lists of the best films of the year, the latest feature by the great Russian director Alexander Sokurov (Russian Ark, Mother and Son) provides vast contrast with this season’s other Russian film about war. Concentrated, poetic, allusive where War and Peace is grandiose, spectacular, epic, Alexandra bravely queries the Russian nation’s warring impulse in a time of resurgent militarism. Octogenarian opera legend GalinaVishnevskaya plays Alexandra, a heavy old woman who has not seen her grandson Denis in seven years and travels by troop train to visit his army base in Chechnya. As she pads about the compound, where life, she avers, “is upside down,” inspecting a tank and uneasily wielding a Kalashnikov, being interrogated by suspicious sentries, quizzing officers and privates about the Chechen war, the babushka incarnates nothing less than Mother Russia amid these shaven-headed young men and their killing machines. “I’m sick of this military pride,” she tells Denis’s commander, “You can destroy. When will you learn to rebuild?” When Alexandra befriends an aged vendor in the Chechen village, the film becomes a moving, even optimistic allegory about common bonds found in the midst of barbarity. Sokurov remains a master of landscape and atmosphere, of charged imagery and poetic effect. In a film that emphasizes the act of looking – Alexandra is forever reproving soldiers for gawking at her – Sokurov gives us plenty to marvel at.  – James Quandt

Rated 14A.

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