A family with two pre-teen children go to spend some days in the isolated country house where the father was born and raised. The first hours are spent bringing the house back to a minimum of working order, with the children spending much of their time outside in the garden, as children do. And then, in the evening, after dinner, when the children have gone to bed and the adults sit on the terrace on their own, the wife tells her husband something very short and simple that will overhaul his life and set the mood for the rest of the film. Those looking for easy entertainment, better look elsewhere. The first simple and bleak images and the music already let you know that this is not going to be a relaxing experience. There is tension from the beginning, and it is there to stay until the end. This is beautiful, artful cinema making, of the kind that requires spectators to approach it with their emotions and an open mind. Perhaps demanding cinema. Though not overly intellectual (the story is, in some ways, quite a simple one), it contains powerful undercurrents that are not obvious until the very end. Like most good films, you will get more out of this watching it more than once. Astounding acting by the three main actors. The range of feelings displayed by actors Konstantin Lavronenko and Maria Bonnevie as the married couple and by Aleksandr Baluev (Konstantin's brother in the film and perhaps alter ego) is breathtaking. Bonnevie looks totally natural, even if dubbed, chapeau to her. Lavronenko deservedly got Canne's Best Actor prize in 2007 for his role in this film. Zvyagintsev's craft, as shown by his other films, is felt from beginning to end, with exquisite attention paid to detail, light, colour, shadows, filming locations. As with good art, everyone will get something different out of this film. Leaving aside some possible religious or spiritual connotations, I take it that this film contains a reflection on love and the absence of it, about sharing and its limits, that can speak to very wide audiences, irrespective of time and location.

What a great way of portraying a rarely spoken but well known sad fact of today's society: in the modern family usually the man is the one responsible for the crime of abortion and also all the consequences this brings with it. The woman is weak: she needs the love and protection of the man to survive. She can not live in a fake relationship, she can not perform acting in a "live" theater.And the lack of affection for the wife as well as the environment surrounded with love and protection that would encourage the wife to give birth and raise an other child, is what determines the woman to choose abortion.The death of Vera after the abortion is also a symbolical representation of a psychological and spiritual reality: even in the abortions that have no physical consequences, the women will not be the same afterwards, a part of her dies along with the baby.Embedded in a tender and short scene is the answer to all the problems. Before going to sleep, Frida reads from Paul's Epistle the definition of love while everybody listens. Unfortunately, Alexander is "sick" and his sickens spreads death all around him. This scene is far from him, both in physical and spiritual space.He remains sick although he admits the mistake of asking Vera to kill the baby, and although his regrets about not accepting and not loving her. After two deaths he is ready to commit an other one, by going to Robert with the gun, prepared to get revenge. This demonstrates the brute force of the darkness and how one can fall from bad to worse.

Andrei Zvyagintsev's gripping drama The Banishment plays out like Eastern Promises meets Carlos Reygadas' 2007 feature Silent Light; a combination of rather embittered Russian criminals operating and uncovering certain revelations around innocents whom later become caught up in the crossfire, with this weighty, steady visual aesthetic of rural land captured by way of long takes and eerie, heavenly music juxtaposing the on screen non-paradise we witness. Zvyagintsev's film is a minor-masterpiece, a film combining the essence of each of the above films with various cues from that of something like Coppola's Godfather films; the studious deconstruction of a family unit, not all of them necessarily criminally minded, slowly; painfully; deathfully falling apart at the seams as those of varying genders, ages and backgrounds fall away from one another because of a troupé of men's actions. It is a rigorously immersive film, a fine effort from a man firing on mostly all the cylinders he decides to shoot from; the end product formulating into a morbidly fascinating procession of drama and character.The film will begin with a car being driven by a wounded man through rural fields split by the tarmac road his car occupies, the trees and birdsong unpleasantly disturbed by the roar of the car as it hares by. After another instance of countryside peace being disturbed, an unperturbed cut will see the car enter a more urbanised locale full of bricked up walls and factory chimneys churning out reams of smoke. The driver is a certain Mark (Baluev), a criminally orientated brother to that of Alex (Lavronenko) who lives in the city; the charging of his car past the calm, peaceful rural world during the opening shots a precursor to the sorts of later shattering of the tranquillity he and the family with whom he shares ties to. The aforementioned jolting cut between peace and countryside to city life additionally highlights a sudden change in surroundings, an example of shifting surroundings for the worse which will additionally go on to encapsulate the framework of the film and the general well-being of a family congregation. Mark is injured, but trusty brother Alex patches him up in the dead of night - his dealing with a bloody, scuzzy; grotty situation highlighting skill of a physical nature in his ability to deal with such a scenario of such a delicate, precise nature; before the film places him into a similar predicament, only of immense psychological and spiritual sorts.With Alex lives his wife Vera (Bonnevie), whom puts up with people of Mark's ilk arriving at her home whilst she sleeps at ungodly hours; when Alex goes to lie next to her, the film providing us with the first of many eerie shots that peer straight down at the couple lying in bed facing upwards at us: very little in the way of contact nor communication and grossly varying positions as they lie situated there, as if not of a similar ilk. Following on from the opening, Alex; Vera and their son Kir with their daughter Eva journey by way of localised train network and by foot through the forests and fields to a farm house. The journey by train is, again, muted; the unit of four sharing varying poses and stances as they sit in the train's compartment avoiding eye contact; the insinuation is disenchantment or a unit not hooked up to one another.The house they arrive at is one Alex appears highly attuned to, later reveals are that he spent time there as a boy with brother Mark; the faces of elderly and long since deceased family members peering through the exterior glass window of their photographic frames as their image hang there, looming over proceedings as they watch on from the walls. The house, of which is seemingly only accessible from the front by way of a narrow wooden bridge over a kind of moat thus inflecting it being cut off from a distinct 'other side', is a peaceful haven set isolated from civilisation amidst the scorched fields and constant sun. The family are not infallible, uncomfortable scenes such as the one that sees Vera argue with her young daughter unravel, whilst the visiting to Alex's family by neighbouring relative Viktor (Sergeev) and his family demonstrate a seemingly perfect, working unit of this nature in full flow as the distinction between his and Alex's appear even greater.The bombshell which ruptures this existing arrives in the form of the announcement of Vera's pregnancy, a pregnancy which Alex is informed wasn't instigated by him. What follows is a slow burning sensation of dread and affliction, perpetrated out of human nature's ill-advised methods in dealing with such situations; a late night seeing off of Vikto and co. whom were visiting seeing Alex occupy a part of the porch to the left side of the screen as a distinct wooden foreground beam splits the frame down the middle, distinctly placing Vera on the other side; the film seeing it now necessary to place a physical object so as to highlight the 'split' from one another the two characters share. Zvyagintsev's film is a fine effort, instilled with an agonising and morbidly captivating air about it as we witness these people and their lives disintegrate out of a man too of-his-ilk to be making decisions whilst influencing another man whom ought to be strong enough to see sense. The contemporary cinematic antithesis to Bekmambetov's Americanised Night Watch, or indeed Bondarchuk's Hollywood war movie simulacrum 9th Company, The Banishment banishes most doubts over the Russian cinema industry's strengths and motifs.

Despite this movie's tremendous potential to be turned into an impeccable piece of work that would resound in people's minds for years, it fails to fully realize its potential with its overdose of religious images that clearly mirror that of Tarkovsky. Tarkovsky's films are always too slow and heavy to watch with its long lingering shots that at its best only make for mental masturbation. I was really worried that the director of "banishment" would follow Tarkovsky's steps after first seeing the self-indulgent lingering shots and he did more and more of those later in the film. I think "the return" is a perfect film without any unnecessary conversations or lingering shots but this movie failed to carry the flag of the first one. All in all, the excessive twists of the plot and the pretentious religious symbolism are drawbacks of this otherwise spectacular film despite the stunning cinematography, perfect editing and imposing style. That being said, it is still better than 99% of the films I have seen in my life. Hope the director's next one will be better.