As any Russian guy will tell you, men never, ever cry (it’s weak; it’s something women and little boys do). But let’s just say this Golden Lion-winning 2003 drama of an estranged father trying to reconnect with his teenage sons in the stunning northern-Russian wilderness had me pretty close to cracking.
Ivan and Andrey come home one day to find their nameless father has returned unannounced, after a 12-year absence. They only know it’s him because of one faded photograph they keep in the attic. And we nor they never learn where he has been – there are some hints he might have been in the military; others that it was a prison camp – it doesn’t really matter. What matters is he’s their dad, and he’s back. He’s also hard as nails, has machismo to burn, and clearly thinks his boys have been mollycoddled by their mum. So off they go on a character-forming fishing trip, which takes a predictably Russian tragic turn.
Our Russian friends, you’ve probably have noticed, have what you might call a complex relationship with authority. Those decades of grudging kowtowing to bureaucracy have left a peculiar scar on the national psyche. And dad’s old-school, Putin-style parenting approach is not to younger brother Ivan’s tastes and he rebels spectacularly, while older Andrey, desperate for approval, but completely unsure of who this man is or what makes him tick, is torn between fear and adoration.
And that conflict is the brutal heart of this visually stunning film. Amidst the blue skies and forests of the Russian outback, dad simply doesn’t know how to relate to his own sons, and wildly overcompensates by being totally intolerant of weakness (at one point he quietly watches from the shadows while the boys are mugged by a street gang). And we can empathise with both the confused boys and a dad, who for all his charisma, is quite hopelessly out of his depth.
Anyone who’s ever endured a dysfunctional family holiday will certainly cringe in sympathy with the trials of life on the road together. But this film is a lot more than that. It’s the purest film ever made about boys and dads – and the conflicts both face in their relationships – and that’s why I’d challenge any grown man to watch it without leaving a lump in their throat. We all still harbour a little boy inside us who doesn’t quite know how to relate to this both mythical and monstrous figure in our lives. And the moment here when the father, who would clearly have made a fantastic dad in other circumstances, realises what he’s lost – and might never get back – is absolutely gut-wrenching.
The film’s real film sucker-punch, though, comes out of the blue at the end; after endless achingly beautiful scenes of urban dilapidation, beaches, forests and blue skies it’s a moment of outrageously black humour which makes it utterly devastating. But then again, the Russians know a lot more about death and tragedy than the rest of us, and maybe they’ve learned to laugh at it, if not anything else.
I’ve decided it would be best every copy should come ready packaged with a big bottle of vodka – because as this film, with a wonderfully Russian sense of irony, teaches us, it is OK from real men to shed a tear occasionally. Although never when they’re stone cold sober.
