Aleksandra

I wasn't in great shape for this film from the director of Russian Ark (day one of volunteering, second film of the day, less than five hours of sleep), but I still feel secure in my assessment of it as thoroughly dull.

Alexandra Nilolaevna is an elderly Russian woman visiting her grandson at a Chechen army base. She's played by a Russian opera star about whom the director has previousy made a documentary, but this doesn't prevent her from being extremely uninteresting. This is a problem in a film named for her, and in which we spend the majority of the running time watching her partake of profoundly slow, uneventful exchanges with bored soldiers around the base. She makes many plain observations along the lines of, 'There's movement over there,' when there's movement over there, and it takes her ten minutes to be helped into a tank. Her weary sighs fill the long ninety minutes.

Certainly there's a broad sense conveyed that old people are tired and might have regrets, and that warmaking is pointless, but that's not much of an outcome for this great expanse of dusty, repetitive slowness. The film gains nothing from its geographical/political setting, either – though it seems pretty plain it had no interest in doing so in the first place. Also, brief discussion with folks after the film confirmed I wasn't the only one who found the plaiting-her-hair, 'You're beautiful grandma,' and kisses scene to be a bit odd, really.

So, Aleksandra. I wasn't a fan.