Closeness

Just a heads up for anyone who is thinking to watch this movie. There is a really gruesome documentary scene of killing prisoners of war. If you don't want to see agonising death of real people, which does not add much to a plot of the movie, just move on. To the director, here is an idea to you: next time add funky town videotape in your film (please don't)

Boring from the beginning to the end.

Although it was supposed to be about the kidnapping of a couple, the kidnapping itself takes back seat to all kinds of mostly unrelated stuff.

The movie is painful to watch due to the extremely slow pace.

Scenes of extreme violence shown unexpectedly - before I even had time to wind it fast forward.

Most of the characters are more than abnormal, I would say deviants.

The soundtrack is horrible, my wife who is native russian speaker was not able to understand more than 20-30% of what was being said, so she had to rely on the English subtitles.

Conclusion: cinematography at its worst.

"Closeness" is a chamber drama by Kantemir Balagov, a new generation Russian director and student Aleksandr Sokurov. One must have great courage to show age-old problems from the life of the mountain peoples of Kabardino-Balkaria at the end of the last century. What does it mean to be a beautiful proud Jewish girl in a city where Caucasian traditions and customs have developed over centuries? And somewhere nearby, maybe the Chechen war is already going on ...

This movie is amazing and thought provoking, though difficult to watch at times. But no more difficult to watch than real life, real life of people trapped in wars they didn't create, women trapped in family roles decided for them, real life of small communities divided by identity wars where there is disregard and cruelty for the other just because they are part of another "tribe". There is a real footage of gruesome violence by Chechen militants that brought a lot of critique and controversy. The fact that people complain about this only shows their privilege: they have the power to complain about seeing that in the safety of their environment, on a tv screen. Real people who grew up witnessing and living through that don't have any power to complain about it.

A warning of extreme violence content in this film should be shown. Besides, it is a very ugly film.