In a remote house in the Russian countryside, Mother is on her deathbed and her adult son is taking care of her. When she asks to go for a walk, he carries her to a bench where she takes a nap, then he carries her to a few places out in nature before bringing her home. Then he goes by a walk himself, returning to his mother who is lying quietly in her bed. Doesn't sound like much, does it? Against this skeletal story, critically acclaimed director Alexander Sokurov manages to push the boundaries of cinema, all the while evoking the deep and sometimes troubled love between a mother and her son. He does this not through quick cuts and hyperkinetic camera moves but by doing just the opposite. More often than not, between lines of dialog the camera is locked down and film is allowed to run through it, while the soundtrack is filled with wind and distant thunder. Consequently, whenever the camera does move, whenever someone does speak, it's electrifying. Sokurov further abstracts his often stunningly beautiful images with odd filters and lenses. Once you get into the pace of the film, it's hard not to get swept away by it, and it's even better on a second viewing. --Andy Spletzer

Customer Rating:
Summary: The bliss of the filial love!
Comment: "Mother and son" is a very slow-paced film where the aesthetic contemplation plays a transcendental role into the cinematographic lexicon, frozen images like pictures at exhibition support a painful script around a dying mother and her beloved son who takes good care about her in the last days of her existence.

If you are accustomed to this slow paced style, whose tradition begins with the unforgettable Andrei Tarkovski (Andrei Rubliov, Solaris, The mirror and Stalker), then you should not be shocked with this sheer and tender vision of filial love.

A remarkable film that justifies by far your invaluable time; a true masterwork that carves in relief the previous comment of "The village voice" when stated this film was one of the ten best films of 1999.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: We will meet where we agreed.
Comment: The first impression one has upon viewing Sokurov's film is of formal aesthetic parallels with Tarkovsky's cinematography. This is not surprising, since Sokurov was Tarkovsky's best student at the Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK). Tarkovsky can be detected as a major source of Sokurov's inspiration, for example, in Sokurov's long takes (sometime longer than Tarkovsky's), his free use of natural sounds, and the unaffectedness of his actors. Both directors concern themselves with philosophical questions of the human existence and strive to express the inner reality of their beings. However, Sokurov's world is not Tarkovsky's. Whereas Tarkovsky' main characters are spiritually oppressed, they struggle to overcome and escape their fates, the characters in Sokurov's films are resigned to and accepting of their oppression. We might say that Tarkovsky's cinema is one of striving toward spiritual liberation, whereas Sukorov's cinema is one of enduring spiritual submission.

In Mother and Son, one is struck above all by the rather unusual cinematography, starting with the very first images following the credits. A young man and a sick old woman are reclining together, their bodies elongated and distorted through the director's use of an anamorphic lens. They lay motionless for almost a minute, until the son moves his lips, and we realize that we were not looking at a still picture, but at the beginning of a long take, which will last more than five minutes. The scene has the flatness of a painting instead of the usual three-dimensionality of films.

Indeed, Mother and Son is a "picture-film," where the images, the perspectives are routinely distorted and flattened to two dimensions. Sokurov's intentions are clear so far has he is striving to give his film the appearance of an icon or of a religious painting of the Quattrocento. Sokurov acknowledges that his filming of Nature has been influenced by the great romantic German painter, Casper David Friedrich. I would also add that some of the indoor scenes, in particular the opening one, reminds one of the founder of the German expressionist school, Edvard Munch. The distortion of the characters' physiques and the claustrophobic atmosphere of the room reeking of death also contribute to this identification with Munch's most famous paintings and engravings.

All through this production, Sokurov distorts his images in various ways, using panes of glass placed in front or to the side of the lens, mirrors, and even paint on the camera lens itself. Through these effects, the characters, objects, and nature appear "compressed" and distorted, which then serves as a metaphor for the turmoil of the soul. This turmoil is exacerbated further by the sense of a timelessness which permeates the film. Time seems suspended by the stillness of the characters. The long takes (there are fifty-eight shots in a film which runs for seventy-three minutes) also give a sense of stillness, which make us lose all sense of time. Do the events take place over hours, days, or months? The whole story could have almost taken place in real time, but we cannot say for certain.

Mother and Son is almost a silent film. The silence which prevails for most of the film is deepened by discrete, natural sounds emanating from beyond the screen, accentuating the sense of isolation from the rest of the world: running water, thunder, wind, bird calls, etc. In this respect, Nature is an important character, visually as well as aurally. The appearance of a steaming train or of a sailboat far in the distance only serves to remind us of the isolation of these two characters. These natural sounds are mixed together with some very subtle original music by Mikhail Ivanovich, together with a few musical segments from Mikhail Glinka and Otmar Nussio. The dialogue is spare, consisting of occasional short exchanges, often whispered, between mother and son. These exchanges can hardly be considered conversation. The characters have gone beyond talking to express their thoughts and inner feelings to each other: as indicated in the beginning of the film, they even have the same dreams. No philosophical discussions on the meaning of love or death ever arrive to reinforce what is evident through the imagery.

Mother and Son's themes are about one of the deepest relationships which can exist on the Earth, the love between a mother and her son, and the solitude of the death experience. The film explores the remaining moments between the son and his mother on her unavoidable ultimate journey. Nothing else exists for these two characters, about whom we know nothing. Sokurov does not reveal anything about their past, nor about their future. The present moment on their road together toward the doors of death is the only subject of importance. They are as one being in a strange, lonely, but beautiful world. But this intimate relationship will soon be rent asunder by Death, and Sokurov shows us that in spite of their close love relationship, in the end death is still a personal, private, isolating experience for both of them. As the mother drifts in and out of consciousness, the son's attitude as he faces the inescapable end goes from somewhat cheery and reassuring in front of his conscious mother, to total anguish and desperation when he is alone in the woods.

If the journey of these characters is a mystical experience, it is not a religious one. God is never mentioned nor alluded to. In one scene, where the mother is having an attack, rumbling thunder is heard in the background. She cries in anguish, "Who is that up there in the sky?" Her son answers, "Nobody." So, Sokurov denies a deity, but not some indeterminate afterlife: in the film's ultimate scene, the son whispers softly to his unconscious mother, "We will meet where we agreed. [...] Be patient, dear Mother, wait for me."

But the film's ending is still ambiguous, as Sokurov leaves open the possibility that the mother is still alive when the son returns from his walk. In the scene just before the son leaves the house, his mother lies in her bed-coffin, a white butterfly rests on her fingers. In many cultures, from the Christian Irish to the Baluba from central Zaire, the soul of a person emerges from the cocoon (the grave) and flies away in the form of a butterfly. Sokurov leaves us guessing at the end of the film: on the mother's gray, emaciated hand, the butterfly is alive but it has not yet flown away.

Mother and Son is an experience much more than it is a film. We are confronted with a continuum of painted scenes, as we would in any museum. We are drawn into each scene as we would be drawn into each painting, reflecting on content which raises in us a myriad of emotions -- some from long ago, forgotten -- or provokes new reflection. All of these emotions appear and disappear in dream-like fashion and in so doing, we partake in the mystery and complexity of the love between a mother and her son.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Silences and Merging with Nature Create This Luminous Elegy
Comment: Aleksandr Sokurov in MAT I SYN (MOTHER AND SON) has succeeded in capturing those brief, breathing moments that surround death, freezing them in an timeless mold like a shell in amber, something that goes beyond the passage of time and captures the essence of extended farewells. This brief film is one of the most probing and tender embraces of the meeting/meaning of life and death, of the continuity of a mother's soul in the form of her son, and most important, it is an elegy about the quiet power and beauty of nature.

A son (Aleksei Ananishnov) comforts his terminally ill mother (Gudrun Geyer) with gentle caresses, combing her hair, sharing dreams that are identical, and providing solace in every way imaginable. The mother asks for a walk and the son carries her in his arms to a vantage of the sea and through the gnarled trunks of the woods, a path marked by poplars. He carries her back to the little house, and as she sleeps he walks by himself, observing a little train (a departure) in the distance, a sole ship (a departure) gliding on the ocean, and amidst all this natural beauty he clings to an old tree in a tearful embrace. He returns and his mother has died: the cycle of life is complete.

Throughout this seemingly simple film Sokorov concentrates on silence, the little dialogue that is spoken is from the gentle script by Yuri Arabov. The 'actors' are appropriately not actors (Ananishnov is a Professor of Mathematics!). The sounds are of nature - rumbling thunder, wind in the trees - and the minimal music is appropriately by Mikhail Glinka and Otmar Nussio with original music by Mikhail Ivanovich. The cinematography by Aleksei Fyodorov is likely greatly influenced by Sokurov's vision: each frame is a still life of nature both with and without the two characters, and with the use of filters, mirrors and broken glass the images are indescribably beautiful. Filmed on the island of Rügen close to the coast of Germany the atmosphere is pure and unhindered by peripheral marks of civilization. Sokurov's 1997 film and his subsequent films OTETS I SYN ('FATHER AND SON') and RUSSKIY KOVCHEG ('RUSSIAN ARK') have established him as one of the most creative filmmakers of today. Highly recommended, especially for those who appreciate art, nature, and the humbling magnificence of the cycle of life. Grady Harp, August 05

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Original and moving
Comment: To say this is an art film is an understatement. There really is no plot; it's all about love, death, and understanding between a mother and son, and how the son deals with her arriving departure. Sokurov employs different techniques in conveying the solemnity of the situation, and does it with such rare, unhurried intensity that the viewer is capable of absorbing all that is intended.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film for the depiction of such a close bond between mother and son, a relationship unlike any I've ever seen on film, or real life for that matter. We (Americans) for the most part don't ever realize this kind of familial love. And, God, that's sad.

Although at first I wanted more dialogue, I soon realized the lack of which actually added to the depth of the love captured on film, and not the other way around. Words, words . . . how we've become so accustomed to words, that when in reality they are mostly obstacles to experiences more powerful. We've become so uncomfortable in the spaces of silence, that to not experience this uneasiness, we fill them up with meaningless chatter. If you allow the initial uneasiness, you allow the opportunity for something else, something perhaps of more substance.

Allow this wonderful film (it's only about 80 minutes long) to challenge you, and you may indeed experience the beauty it has to offer.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: in the end; the truth expressed
Comment: This film is a perfect rendering of what, in the final moments of a relationship, must be done to put aside small facts and celebrate the emotional meaning of one of life's most influential and enduring relationships. That of Mother and Son. It beautifully evokes the celebration and adjustment that we all must make to ensure that we establish meaning and thanks before it is too late. A perfect movie of our shared sensibilities.

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