The
Russians are Coming! THE FATHER at Upstate Films
by Jay Blotcher
When the subject is Russian war films, what
cinematic memories warm your Siberia-cold heart? Do you flash
back on the still-wrenching imagery of Sergei M. Eisenstein’s
classic 1925 film Bronenosets Potyomkin (that’s Battleship
Potemkin, American comrade). Or do you swoon at the sweeping
vistas of David Lean’s 1965 epic Doctor Zhivago, a high-end
soaper that still lays claim to cineaste respectability, thanks
to a knockout cast? Or do you belong to the generation that
found filmic brilliance and Marxist reality in Warren Beatty’s
grand anti-epic Reds, a 1978 masterpiece that tears down the
romance of the Soviet era while still ennobling the idealistic
John Reed and Louise Bryant?
There is only so much room to be made for Russian films,
much less the tortured mechanics of Russian political history.
One could forgive you for wanting to shut the doors on any
late pretenders to the throne. But The Father, a new film
by Muscovite Ivan Solovov is at once shrewd and arty enough
to wheedle its way into your list of favorite Russian films.
On first screening, it behaves like a fully-formed classic,
arriving with grandiose cinematography, larger-than-life drama
and a piano concerto soundtrack that eats away at your steely
resolve not to fall prey to the miserable but loving people
that inhabit its world.
The Father will be screened on Tuesday, February 19 at a
one-time event at Upstate Films in Rhinebeck. This is part
of a national tour for the film, spearheaded by Cinema Arts
Centre and Sundial Productions and produced by Alan Hofmanis.
Director Solovov and lead actor Alexei Guskov will be in attendance
to welcome the waves of newly anointed fanatics bound to emerge
after the show... CONTINUE...
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