The Banishment (2007)
(Izgnanie)
Country: RUS
Technical: col/2.35:1 157m
Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev
Cast: Konstantin Lavronenko, Maria Bonnevie, Aleksandr Baluev
Synopsis:
When his brother helps him recover from an ill-gotten bullet wound, a badman returns the favour by procuring an abortion for the former's unfaithful wife.
Review:
Formally beautiful but slight and obscure in its narrative (the outlaw brother's malaise and the content of the wife's note remain undisclosed), Zvyagintsev's follow-up to The Return has a similarly ambiguous father figure, played by the same actor. The locations include a meticulously constructed house and church in Moldova, and town and city streets in France and Belgium, a deliberately wrong-footing device to lend the film's setting a certain anonymity. The director follows his conflicted husband and apprehensive wife around the rooms of the house and the adjacent walnut grove with carefully modulated tracking shots and compositions. It all makes for gripping cinema on the theme of 'absent love', but for some its longwinded inconclusiveness will seem self-defeating.
(Izgnanie)
Country: RUS
Technical: col/2.35:1 157m
Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev
Cast: Konstantin Lavronenko, Maria Bonnevie, Aleksandr Baluev
Synopsis:
When his brother helps him recover from an ill-gotten bullet wound, a badman returns the favour by procuring an abortion for the former's unfaithful wife.
Review:
Formally beautiful but slight and obscure in its narrative (the outlaw brother's malaise and the content of the wife's note remain undisclosed), Zvyagintsev's follow-up to The Return has a similarly ambiguous father figure, played by the same actor. The locations include a meticulously constructed house and church in Moldova, and town and city streets in France and Belgium, a deliberately wrong-footing device to lend the film's setting a certain anonymity. The director follows his conflicted husband and apprehensive wife around the rooms of the house and the adjacent walnut grove with carefully modulated tracking shots and compositions. It all makes for gripping cinema on the theme of 'absent love', but for some its longwinded inconclusiveness will seem self-defeating.
(Izgnanie)
Country: RUS
Technical: col/2.35:1 157m
Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev
Cast: Konstantin Lavronenko, Maria Bonnevie, Aleksandr Baluev
Synopsis:
When his brother helps him recover from an ill-gotten bullet wound, a badman returns the favour by procuring an abortion for the former's unfaithful wife.
Review:
Formally beautiful but slight and obscure in its narrative (the outlaw brother's malaise and the content of the wife's note remain undisclosed), Zvyagintsev's follow-up to The Return has a similarly ambiguous father figure, played by the same actor. The locations include a meticulously constructed house and church in Moldova, and town and city streets in France and Belgium, a deliberately wrong-footing device to lend the film's setting a certain anonymity. The director follows his conflicted husband and apprehensive wife around the rooms of the house and the adjacent walnut grove with carefully modulated tracking shots and compositions. It all makes for gripping cinema on the theme of 'absent love', but for some its longwinded inconclusiveness will seem self-defeating.