(Ed Note: Originally published at Film-Think.)
Since Sokurov’s Aleksandra is about Chechnya in the same way The Sun was about Hirohito, or Mother and Son was about a literal maternal relationship, one doesn’t need a degree in Russian politics to grasp his poetic intent. Channeling both Bahktin and Tarkovsky in the way its fluid imagery is more about world-building than story-telling, Sokurov’s Chechnya manages to work as both political fable and rumination on current events at the same time. As a Sokurov surrogate, an indefatigable babushka (played by opera great Galina Vishnevskaya) makes her way by train, random personnel vehicle, and pock-marked tank to visit her grandson officer in a Chechen outpost. Across this increasingly sepia landscape, its barrenness further stripped by Sokurov’s washed out cinematography, her maternal movement is marked by an evolving deference shown her along the way. She is a reminder of home to soldiers locked in endless war, a letter home in reverse. The loosely plotted film hits its stride in a journey off base to a local market, where Aleksandra bumps into a Chechen refugee of her own age selling trinkets to a market packed with military castoffs, damaged weapons, and the flotsam of tragedy. From this other side of the looking glass, the camp’s sterile poise at the brink of madness looks like an absurd exercise in posturing. On her return to the camp, further breakdowns in the initial orderliness of the film happen in arguments between Aleksandra and her grandson – I guess generational conflict in Russia has greater political implications than it does other places. Aleksandra’s initial dismay at the camp and rigors of military discipline gives way to more particular questions about the Motherland, peace, and the politics of occupation.
But even divorced from its context, that can be fairly inscrutable to people not familiar with the history of the Chechnya (like me), Aleksandra is a moving reflection on war, territory, and the frightening decay of people on either end of oppression. This image of a plodding babushka in a backwater camp becomes a Hulot-like criticism of the machinery of combat. As a figure akin to Tati’s bumbling protagonists, she exists to exploit the otherwise unnoticeable cracks in a military façade, soliciting responses that would not emerge if she weren’t there among its details. Her revelatory presence is made even more significant because of her grandmotherly status. Motherhood, motherland, there is a lot of skin-deep symbolism floating around in the film. As a surreal reflection on war, and a long sepia gaze across a landscape ravaged by endless skirmishes, Aleksandra bears quiet witness to the horror of dead-end military actions skipping like a broken record across devastated local histories. Sokurov’s dreamstate approach to trauma has the odd effect of holding history at arm’s length while enshrining its awful implications in imagery crafted to overcome the quick pace at which corresponding news footage evaporates.