Award-winning Russian filmmaker, Alexander Sokurov,
directed 'Father and Son' (2003) as a complementary piece to his early
movie named 'Mother and Son' released in 1996. Starring Andrej Shetinin,
Alexei Nejmyshev and Alexander Rasbash, the movie deftly presents a
story entwined with the ambiguous relationship shared by a father and
his son. Though the movie doesn't provide any specific answers, it
surely leaves viewers with a lot of questions. Read the complete summary
of Father and Son here.
After the death of his wife, a good-looking father (Andrey Schetinin),
who is also a retired soldier, and his son Alexei (Aleksey Neymyshev)
start living together in an apartment, in an unidentified seaside city.
Following the footsteps of his father, the son goes and joins a local
military school as a young cadet. The father and son relation in the
movie is depicted with delicate details here. However, what make the
relation ambiguous are the overtly strong emotional and physical
affinities that these two men are shown to share with each other.
Even Alexei's girlfriends are green-eyed about the strange and
unexplained relationship that he seems to share with his father. The
obsession from the father's side is shown when he doesn't allow Alexei
to spend more time with his male companions in school. The deep anguish
of the father, who starts feeling that his son is slowly breaking away
from the hermetic bond of their relation, and the fierce desire of the
young son, to carve his own identity, is brilliantly portrayed.
Unexplained tales in the movie that seems to subtly transgress
conventional parenthood and evoke many a questions, make it worth a
watch.
