Anatoly’s crisis never feels resolved, simply dissolving into the gauzy ether of the film’s Orthodox pageantry.
Aleksei Balabanov’s matter-of-fact depiction of his protagonist’s exploits conveys the blunt harshness of post-Cold War Russia.
From post-Soviet Russia, with viciousness.
The image and sound quality is pretty good, and a step above foreign releases from New Yorker Films and Facets.
Maybe in this case, the emperor really has no clothes.
The film is a stark and stylistic hybrid of the Dardennes’ formal austerity and Terrence Malick’s lyricism.