Reviews

So nine people have seen this film?

Seeing as the film was essentially a temporary piece of installation art, a loop of film projected onto a sculpture as part of an exhibition back in 1966, I have a very genuine interest in talking to those people - they must have some interesting stories to tell.

Mother & Son is a stunningly perfectionist yet tremendously moving piece of art. The plot as it is revolves around a son tending to his dying mother in a rural Russian setting.

Whilst this situation is itself moving, the primary impact of the film is sensual. Sokurov goes to immense trouble to turn every extended take into a mesmerising image worthy in-itself, using intricate filters and in-camera techniques to create a stunningly original visual landscape. The dolby soundtrack is just as complex, mixing natural ambient recordings, sparse but precise dialog and occasional snippets of classical music mixed in at a nearly inaudible level. The soundtrack itself could stand alone.

More importantly, perhaps, the style fits the subject matter. What Sokurov essentially does is kills the audience - the film has an immense hypnotic power that places the audience directly inside the gaze of the dying woman. Both times I saw this film, the entire audience was left sitting dazed and motionless for a number of minutes after the house lights had come up.

The final triumph is the films short running time of 1 hr 15 minutes. The audience is given no time to lose concentration, and the film achieves all its goals in this time.

Mother & Son must rank as one of the few recent films to qualify as a truly cinematic experience.

Lost Highway is a film that can be perceived on many levels. There is some truth to the claims that it is film that musy be FELT. This is Lynches most painterly film to date, working heavily with textures and experimental camera techniques. It is a film that can indeed be appreciated on a purely aesthetic level. However, this is not to say that the film is without meaning or that it cannot be understood. There are many theories to the true meaning of Lost Highway, some of which are easier to back up than others. Certainly this the first time that Lynch has truly entered into the mind of an entity, and the film deals with different levels of consciousness and perception. It is also concerned with voyeurism and the medium of film itself.

But hey, go see it for yourself, see it more than once, work out your own theories. Certainly, the film must be seen in a cinema and requires more than one viewing. It is a film that requires concentration, time, deep thought. Given those things, it will soon become clear that this is the most complex and fully realised motion picture of the decade.

Lost Highway IS Life.

Quite simply the best film ever made. Every shot, every moment, every line, every damn second.

It may be amazing that the best film ever made contains little characterization, last for nearly three hours and revolves around a fairly convoluted plot. Yep, it's amazing, but it's TRUE. When bearing witness to the ultimate purity of aesthetic cinematic vision, you need nothing else.

You haven't seen cinema till you've seen this film.