"Initially there was a tree, a tree in autumn ...
had lost their leaves, fruit
but still had to eat the birds "
Poem
night and dream, travel in first person, in time and space, which starts in a Russian village and ends at the Boijmans Museum in Rotterdam, the sponsor of the film, after passing storms, seas blackened faces, forests, roads illuminated by the headlights of vehicles. All floating images and lavishly chained (mounting fluid and poetic to Tarkovsky, Sokurov which has always been considered the spiritual heir), always in motion, but with a calm of another era carried to the limit of the opacity and allow you to address, with demand and stripping end matters close to the unspeakable.
A mesmerizing voiceover, the lone voice of a man who resembles the Russian Ark, over these nostalgic and surreal images (this really a big difference between the two films), providing a melancholy tone to their personal memories. A religious connection with the images of great evocative power, without falling into mannerism effects achieved in accordance with the undulating dreamlike and unreal atmosphere of the story.
The film begins with a tree that has lost all its leaves but maintains its fruits. In the last minutes and inside the museum, in a picture, filmed as natural landscapes that have been seen before, under the moon, we see a flowering tree in the snow. Sokurov protects the flowers with their hands in an attempt to preserve the collective memory, past and future. Only art provides testimony to what has been irretrievably buried.
"Along the drive leading from Russia to the edge of Western Europe, in all the people I meet, I look for something in his eyes that reveal the joy, happiness and comfort. But I could only find two old boxes ... "
A mesmerizing voiceover, the lone voice of a man who resembles the Russian Ark, over these nostalgic and surreal images (this really a big difference between the two films), providing a melancholy tone to their personal memories. A religious connection with the images of great evocative power, without falling into mannerism effects achieved in accordance with the undulating dreamlike and unreal atmosphere of the story.
The film begins with a tree that has lost all its leaves but maintains its fruits. In the last minutes and inside the museum, in a picture, filmed as natural landscapes that have been seen before, under the moon, we see a flowering tree in the snow. Sokurov protects the flowers with their hands in an attempt to preserve the collective memory, past and future. Only art provides testimony to what has been irretrievably buried.
"Along the drive leading from Russia to the edge of Western Europe, in all the people I meet, I look for something in his eyes that reveal the joy, happiness and comfort. But I could only find two old boxes ... "
Alexandre Sokurov
