Wednesday 31 October 2007 at 11.42am — Caroline says:
A terrible, bleached out, grainy, sparkly print but perhaps that was the intention as it gives the film a documentary feel. An imaginative take on war comment, which could be subtitled, 'Granny goes to War', and it works largely due to Vishnevskaya's wonderful, 'natural' performance as the precariously mobile, always muttering, totally indomitable old lady who is both dotty and wise. Alexandra is motivated by a deep love for her grandson, and a deep need to connect with him, and by association to every grandson, away from home and caught up in a war they don't really understand. The soldiers, for the most part painfully young and on the cusp of being brutalised by their experience, respond initially with bewilderment or leery laughter and then with something akin to love and certainly admiration. Her visit sends out ripples of benign influence.
A terrible, bleached out, grainy, sparkly print but perhaps that was the intention as it gives the film a documentary feel. An imaginative take on war comment, which could be subtitled, 'Granny goes to War', and it works largely due to Vishnevskaya's wonderful, 'natural' performance as the precariously mobile, always muttering, totally indomitable old lady who is both dotty and wise. Alexandra is motivated by a deep love for her grandson, and a deep need to connect with him, and by association to every grandson, away from home and caught up in a war they don't really understand. The soldiers, for the most part painfully young and on the cusp of being brutalised by their experience, respond initially with bewilderment or leery laughter and then with something akin to love and certainly admiration. Her visit sends out ripples of benign influence.