Elegiya dorogi (2001)

Director:

Aleksandr Sokurov

Writers:

Aleksandr Sokurov (writer)
Alexandra Tuchinskaya (collaborating writer)

Genre:

Drama | Fantasy

Plot:

From a misty night into the dark exposition rooms of a museum to ponder philosophically at paintings by 'Pieter Jansz Saenredam' ...

Plot Keywords:

Dark | Sea | Ship | Russia | Picture

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

  (Complete credited cast)

Aleksandr Sokurov

...

Narrator (voice)

Also Known As:

Elégie de la traversée (France)
Elegy of a Voyage (International: English title)

Runtime:

48 min

Country:

France | Russia | Netherlands

Language:

Russian | Dutch

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Filming Locations:

Bojimans Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands

Company:

arte France Cinéma

Ghost Town

I chose to see this while at a spooky conference in a strange, Cyrillic, Slavik land. At this conference was a musician who temporized music based on impressions of buildings he encountered. The idea was that some harmonies and symmetries in the building itself could be mapped onto similar elements in his honking around. It wasn't that the building elicited some deep emotional response that then motivated the music. No, it was a mapping of one artifact into another. This was in the context of a land that will be cursed for generations with this Soviet romantic notion of an inner order and the morose allied quest it assumes we are all on.

So I turned to this. Its something of the same.

One thing I look for in film is that it move me. I don't think you can have a film with power unless it is motivated from some inner urges that become whole and fight to emerge cinematically. It cannot be something else first and then spliced onto a movie.

This is a poem. I cannot judge its merits because I do not know the language, but the English translation reads like a long Hallmark card filtered through this Soviet romantic cosmology. I can see how people would like it, and even I would by it for an hour. As a poem. Then it was illustrated with film images. Its not a movie, its an illustrated poem. Worse, its a literally illustrated poem that takes all the ambiguities out of the poetry. Its just too vapid for you to spend time with.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.