The Lighthouse (Saakyan, 2006): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6.20pm
This film is part of the Restored strand at BFI Southbank.
Time Out review:
Impressive
allegory of war – notably in how it affects communities of the elderly,
infirm, children and women left bereft by the absence of their menfolk,
either through battle, exile or death – set in an undefined region of
the Caucasus, but making clear references to the genocidal Armenian
experience. Lena (the expressive Anna Kapaleva) journeys by train to her
mountain village, in the aftermath of an unspecified war hinted at by
government radio broadcasts, to encourage her grandparents’ departure
but finds herself stranded. Beautifully shot in muted colour tones
(replete with some extraordinary mordant, misty time-lapse shots of the
helicopter-gun-ship strewn landscape), this atemporal requiem,
assuredly directed by Mariya Saakyan, is played out with a Kusturica-style
heightened naturalism, stripped bare of his carnival-esque levity, and
deepened by affecting poetic musings on familial and cultural loss.
Wally Hammond
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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