The first century of cinema was known for the masters it produced in different languages; these filmmakers were celebrated as auteurs par excellence known for their distinct personal styles and thematic continuities. But by the end of the last century, there was a pervasive feeling that the era of masters in world cinema had come to an end, and the new age was going to be all about ‘short term celebrities’ and diverse expressions. But Aleksandr Sokurov was an auteur who proved that it was still possible to capture the imagination and angst of cineastes everywhere and that too, by creating a cinematic world that is singularly personal.
Aleksandr Sokurov
Even while dealing with some of the most universal themes such as death, war, and power he also embodies the body and soul of Russia in more ways than one: one can feel the spirit of great writers like Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Platonov and Stugarsky speaking through his works, often elaborated through human figures, landscapes, monologues and narrative moments. One could also describe Sokurov as a European filmmaker, for his mise-en-scène, visual imageries and compositions draw their haunting charm and intense energy from masters of European painting.
A still from Father and Son
Born in 1951 in Podorvikha in Siberia, he entered the illustrious VGIK studios in the 1970s where he became close to legendary filmmaker Andre Tarkovsky. During the 1980s Sokurov was making significant documentaries, most of which invited the wrath of the establishment, and hence were stifled and remained in obscurity. It was followed by films like The Second Circle , The Lonely Voice of Man , Days of Eclipse , and The Stone that were noted for their intense visual idiom and thematic concerns.
But it was at the cusp of the new millennium – in the post-Glasnost era – that the momentous impact of his oeuvre began to be felt all around the world.
Thematic range
If his early career was eclipsed by its uneasy and tense relationship with the Soviet empire, the films of the new millennium, even when they pursued the themes and concerns of the early films, took them to new meditative intensities and palpable universality.
With a series of soul-wrenching films such as Mother and Son,Father and Son , and the one-shot visual spectacle Russian Ark , he exhibited a visual and thematic range that awed the audience.
A still from Faust
It was followed by a tetralogy on power – films on four figures of power in the form of 20th century’s most powerful leaders such as Hitler (Moloch), Lenin (Taurus), Hirohito (The Sun), and Faust . Never before has the dark innards of absolute power been shown with such grim intensity. These visual meditations that draw from history are both a reminder about the past and a warning to the future, about how blind and brutal the workings of power can be.
If one looks back at his rich and complex body of work, there are certain thematic strains that continue to persist and haunt it: one set of films ponder upon human relationships, often at the face of death (The Second Circle, Mother and Son, Father and Son...); films such as Spiritual Voices: From the Diaries of a War (five-and-a-half hours long rumination upon war and the spirit of the Russian army), Confession:From the Commander’s Diary, Soldier’s Dream and Alexandra revolve around military life in all its bleak monotony and humdrum reality, physical exertion and mental isolation.
What marks Sokurov’s cinematic vision is the ease with which it freely mixes genres, uses visual and sound effects, to create painterly and meditative compositions narrating the intense drama of filial relationships, political power and historical predicaments. In the process, he breaks all the narrative conventions and pre-given cinematic codes to etch an intense, palpable world that is always animated by elemental forces– of human passions and love for the other, of power conflicts between nations that seek human sacrifice, of vast, immutable landscapes under extreme weather conditions and along with them all, the various legacies of humanity that endure like art, literature, and philosophy.
Among his most aesthetically and politically powerful works are his four films that contemplate upon power. Sonata for Hitler (1979), a short documentary that was banned by USSR for 10 years, brings together a montage of archival footages from the end of the war in Germany and Russia, with the images numbered with the dates of Hitler’s and Stalin’s deaths indicating parallels between the two dictators, which infuriated the powers-that-be in his country and led to its ban.
Power play
Moloch (1999), first in the series, dwells upon the last days of Adolf Hitler before the Germans were defeated at Stalingrad. Set in the Fuhrer’s ominously broody mountain retreat, the film is more about the inner desolation and claustrophobic vacuity of a maniacal mindset. Taurus (2001) is about the last days of Lenin, again set in a country mansion that is looming with haunting memories, a sense of loss and a deep sense of regret.
The Sun (2005) is yet another portrayal of another eccentric ruler, the god-emperor Hirohito, spending his days in the bunker, busy with specimens in his lab. It seems as if he himself is the specimen of sorts in history. At one point in the film an American soldier asks him: “What’s it like to be a living god?”
In the last part of the series, Faust (2011), which won the top prize at Venice Film Festival, Sokurov takes the theme of power to an epic scale and intensity. The film, according to him, is an attempt to delve into ‘a pathological unhappiness in everyday life and everything that is dark in man’.
Visually striking are his landscape imageries: in film after film, Sokurov literally ‘dwells’ upon forbidding lands and climes, following their fury, expanse and also grace, through the spectrum of emotions they embody in different weathers that vibe with and magnify the inner and outer surroundings of the narratives.
Spectrum of imagery
The verdant green fields in Mother and Son that ripple in the wind, the blinding blizzard in The Second Circle that the son traverses on his journey to his father’s deathbed, the misty landscapes of the Japanese island in Oriental Elegy , the vast desolation and emptiness of the provincial town in Days of the Eclipse , the pastoral expanse in Maria – all pulsate with an intense energy that invoke a certain kind of patience and take us into bouts of deep reflection.
A still from Francofonia
One question that seems to haunt Sokurov is as to what we ultimately leave behind as human beings or as human civilisations; in films like Mother and Son , Father and Son and The Second Circle he explores its individual realm by dissecting human relationships and restlessly probing and feeling what bondings between mortals are all about.
His endless fascination for museums in films such as Russian Ark , Stone , and Elegy of a Voyage indicate his awe for the evidence of the intensities of imagination and heights of creativity that humans are capable of; museums in his films haunt the present, posing uneasy questions about the worth of life, possibilities of overcoming time through art, of one’s responsibility to the time one lives in, so that the legacies of truth, love and care are cherished now and passed on from one generation to the next.
