An unseen narrator (Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy) reminisces about his childhood, his divorce, and the history of Russia as he lays dying.
I literally got the synopsis off the Criterion description. Is that what happens? Kinda. The film switches between black and white and color, historical footage and scripted, memory and present with no real rhyme or reason. There's one scene with a doctor saying that the main character is dying but no actual cause? Like he's a Victorian woman someone said no to too loudly. The character's mom and ex-wife are played by the same actress (Margarita Terekhova) which is some Freudian shit. People berate one another for no reason, then cry. Is that a Russian thing?
It reminds me of some of the films I watched in my German cinema class in college. This was a generation removed from WWII, so they grew up surrounded by horror but with no direct experience of war. It definitely feels like a trauma response, like when you walk into a room that's been destroyed and you try to make sense of what happened there. It also reminds me of Terrence Malick films where it's less about plot and more about feelings. I hate feelings.
This is considered one of the all-time classics of arthouse cinema, of Russian cinema, and director Andrei Tarkovsky is hailed as a visionary. It was not for me. It was too far removed from my own experiences and I felt like I was flipping through a photo album I found at a garage sale. It's currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.
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