MOTHER AND SON
Alexandr Sokurov, 1997
The films of Alexandr Sokurov have been compared to those of his mentor, Andrei Tarkovsky, and while there are stylistic and thematic similarities there are also significant differences. Both employ understated acting, long takes, and complex sound designs that combine sounds from the natural world with carefully chosen music. They are also ‘spiritual’ filmmakers in the sense that both are concerned with existential questions and visual representations of the ‘inner’ life.
Where Tarkovsky’s characters seek Grace and connection with God (usually without knowing it), there are no overt religious aspirations or quests for Redemption in Sokurov’s world. Even at his most spiritually evocative, Sokurov’s worldview is more aligned with reverence for love, simplicity, endurance, and the liberating power of art. The latter is often celebrated (profoundly in Russian Ark, 2002) as the most affirming and noble embodiment of human aspiration.
The film that cinema-goers often site as Sokurov’s most “spiritually” expressive is Mother and Son. While the film stops short at theism, it is nevertheless an elegiac hymn to the fragility of human existence, evoking a kind of ‘non-religious sacredness’.
Mother and Son is the story of an attentive son caring for his dying mother. They live in a remote rural house near a meadow close to an isolated coastline, a landscape Sokurov captures with exquisite care. Detached from the rest of the world (apart from the occasional distant train or passing hiker), they talk, she rests, and he carries her around the nearby fields. The film concentrates on the minutiae of their intimacy, taking great care over the subtlest nuances. Occasional moments of conversation are punctuated with elegiac silences, unimportant chat for the most part, but bathed in the generosity of their familiarity. Their tender physicality is one of the most palpable elements in a film where even the most insignificant gesture speaks to the profound beauty of human touch.
Some people read the mother’s illness as a metaphor for the deterioration of Russia, and while this might be consistent with Sokurov’s preoccupations, it strikes me as a rather forced subtextual notion given the poetic tone of this film. There has also been debate about whether Sokurov’s visual style is the result of calculation or inspiration, which seems unnecessarily academic to me, but I would argue that in Sokurov’s case intuition drives technique. This is especially evident in Russian Ark, where Sokurov found an ideal form for his ideas. It’s one of his most playful and life-affirming films (despite the bleak warning that frames it), one of his most forthright expressions of the importance of art and culture.
At just over 70-minutes, Mother and Son may be relatively short but it’s long enough for Sokurov to achieve a wholly satisfying balance between the aesthetic, emotional, and existential elements that inform this subtle, penetrating elegy. For some, the film is too dour, while others (most famously Nick Cave) have been brought to tears by it. Few, however, would deny its languid beauty. The ‘painterly’ quality of the images (inspired by the German Romantic painter, Caspar David Friedrich) emphasise the existential tone of the film, but while they are indeed very beautiful, they are never merely picturesque. The pensive quality of the dim interiors and brooding landscapes are an inspired reflection of the inner being of the characters and their acceptance of the inevitability of death. The fleeting glimpse of a boat heading towards the horizon on a vast and endless sea is an enigmatic metaphor for all solitary final journeys. Despite the son’s devotion to his mother, her death is an isolating experience for both of them.
The meticulous sound design is an essential element in the film (as it is in all of Sokurov’s work). Natural sounds (thunder, wind, birds, insects, indistinct murmuring) and an ethereal piano-based score form an impressive synergy with Sokurov’s images. Together they convey a muted secular veneration of being, a poetic melancholy that proclaims the beauty of life in the face of death. Some critics have called the work spiritually hollow and oppressive due to its apparent repudiation of the divine, but one can hardly expect a non-religious filmmaker to express the same philosophical viewpoint as someone like Tarkovsky. Regardless of philosophical specificity, substantial works of art offer opportunities for reflection at all levels.
One may not agree with an artist’s viewpoint, but the potential for dialogue between artist and viewer in a film as sublime and masterful as Mother and Son shames the vacuous nonsense of most movies, let alone the earnest pleading of religious tracts. It’s interesting to note that one of the most revered ‘religious’ films of all time, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Gospel According to Matthew (1964), is the work of an iconoclastic atheist. As a defiant left-wing homosexual, Pasolini was in regular conflict with both Church and State, yet he arguably created the finest portrayal of The Passion in all cinema. If there is an interventionist Creator, He evidently has a wry sense of humour.
The earth pervades every frame of Mother and Son, reminding us of our eventual appointment with it. Tarkovsky’s work is also connected to the earth, but in order to reveal The Divine. Sokurov's films suggest that all we have for certain is each other, but that alone is precious if not sacred. As the son carries his mother through a landscape suffused with the subdued beauty of decay, the air around them seems to be filled with the faint refrain of a hymn to the silence.