FILMS/
ALEXANDRA
Aleksandra
World Cinema
Russia, 2007, 90 minutes
SHOWTIMES
Fri, Apr 25 / 7:00 / Kabuki / ALEX25K
Sun, Apr 27 / 12:00 / Kabuki / ALEX27K
Sun, May 4 / 4:15 / PFA / ALEX04P
CREDITS
- prod
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Andrei Sigle
- scr
-
Alexander Sokurov
- cam
-
Alexander Burov
- editor
-
Sergei Ivanov
- mus
-
Andrei Sigle
- cast
-
Galina Vishnevskaya, Vasily Shevtsov, Raisa Gichaeva, Andrei Bogdanov
- source
-
Cinema Guild, 115 W. 30th Street, Suite 800, 10001 New York NY. FAX: 212-685-4717. EMAIL: ldedo@cinemaguild.com
Considered “one of the least compromising directors in the world” by this year’s Persistence of Vision awardee J. Hoberman, singularly gifted auteur Alexander Sokurov returns with this stunningly beautiful meditation on the banality of warfare and the familial ties that bind, personified by the unforgettable titular character. Alexandra (played to perfection by veteran Bolshoi Theater soprano Galina Vishnevskaya) is a no-nonsense Russian matriarch in her seventies who travels by train to visit her beloved grandson, the captain of a military base in the Chechen Republic. The lone woman in this middle-of-nowhere landscape populated entirely by young, bare-chested soldiers waiting in limbo for orders to attack an unseen enemy, Alexandra is a most unlikely yet welcome apparition, embodying long-lost comforts of home for boys who lose their innocence in the (off-screen) horrors of battle. Unfazed by constant threats of danger, Alexandra wanders off the base to the local market and befriends an elderly Chechen with whom she shares a cup of tea and family histories against a surreal backdrop of bombed-out buildings—women and architecture similarly devastated by wartime destruction. Later, she lets her hair down during a murmured conversation with her grandson. Sokurov depicts these intimate scenes in a camouflage color scheme, matched in mood by Andrei Sigle’s gorgeous classical score. The great director once again confronts his country’s past and present, locating universal truths in his poetic vision of life as both dream and nightmare. Guided by his camera, Alexandra is a survivor of history and of cinema itself.
—Steven Jenkins
Sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
