Odinokiy golos cheloveka (1987)

User Rating:

7.4/10   

Director:

Aleksandr Sokurov

Writers:

Yuri Arabov (writer)
Andrei Platonov (novel)

Release Date:

26 January 1990 (Netherlands)

Genre:

Drama

Plot Keywords:

Archive Footage | Loneliness | Cult Director | Human Relationship | Father Son Relationship

Awards:

1 win & 3 nominations

Cast

Vladimir Degtyarev
Vladimir Gladyshev
Tatyana Goryacheva
Andrei Gradov	...	Nikita
Nikolai Kochegarov
Ivan Neganov
Sergey Shukailo
Yevgeniya Volkova
Lyudmila Yakovleva
Viktoriya Yurizditskaya
Irina Zhuravleva

Also Known As:

The Lonely Human Voice
The Lonely Voice of Man (International: English title) (literal title)

Runtime:

87 min

Country:

Soviet Union

Language:

Russian

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Certification:

Italy:T (tv rating) | France:U

Company:

Lenfilm Studio

Trivia:

The movie is dedicated to Andrey Tarkovsky who supported Sokurov in the period of struggle for the film.

Movie Connections:

Version of Maria's Lovers (1984)

A Marvellous movie

Film criticism has collapsed. Objectivity is impossible, the critics are either Pauline Kaelesquely self-indulgent and boring or Rosenbaum 'progressive' nuts. It has become impossible to define what is needed for a good movie.

This is the reason why I welcome the marvelous chaos in this movie. Everything in it is beautiful. From (supposedly?) Bernard Shaw footage to dancing on stairs and dancing on balconies... from images of giraffes and Africa to drawings of guns reloading... one moment you're laughing, another you're watching black and white footage of Nazi (?) Germany...

A pleasure it was to see the shifts from colour to black and white, as if in homage to the moving image... hilarious the dressing up, with one woman in kimono... I loved the bulging eyes of one of the old men near the beginning, reminded me of Ivan the Terrible... But it is both beautiful and tragic, there is the asylum on one side, and B&W footage of soldiers being mowed down by machine gun fire... in the asylum, the war is heard, not seen, through artillery fire...

The plot line was sensational and, even better, too complicated to detail or discuss now. It was another cinematic pleasure to see Mengen come back to life. My favourite scene, though I have many, is probably the one where one of them is declaring 'I've heard of Voltaire, of Rousseau, but I am proud to announce I have never read them', and they all clap...

As Ian Christie said, Sokurov is pure cinema: a lot of the time we don't have to worry about narrative explanation and if we do we'll come out of the cinema whinging... my recommendation for you to is to relax and see the movie as if you were going to an art museum.

As usually happens, meagre intellectuals have tried to see him as a successor, but Sokurov is a zillion times better or at least has nothing to do with Tarkovsky. This is because he is not afraid, he is willing to use loads of different techniques for making cinema. Also, it seems, (this is only the third movie of his I've seen, after the Day of the Eclipse and Mother and Son) Sokurov knows the 'political' is something which cinema must leave behind, whereas Tarkovsky did not.

But Tarkovsky is still good, don't get me wrong. For all the talk of war and its consequences (let's not forget the tragic ending), a nice way of seeing it is by comparing it to Tarkovsky's The Mirror.

The end of this movie is melancholic and beautiful. As if in homage to silent cinema or exhausted film footage, a marvellous pleasure to watch. Easily the best film of all time.