Alexandra

The opening minutes of Alexandra are unlike anything else in contemporary cinema. As if in a dream, an elderly lady is led towards an armoured train by soldiers and boards it. Is she being kidnapped, deported, sent to her death? No, this indomitable Russian matron is paying a sentimental visit to her grandson in the front line of Russia's Chechen war, and with her we too experience an eerie 'war without war,' as Sokurov probes the attitudes on both sides of this interminable struggle.

The fact that Sokurov himself was the son of a much-travelled Soviet family may explain the film's extraordinary assurance and tenderness towards these troops, reminiscent of Claire Denis' Beau Travail. But nothing prepares us for the coup of casting Russia's greatest singer, Galina Vishnevskaya, as the widowed babushka. As we follow her voyage of discovery into war-torn Grozny, the effect is as surreal and yet as powerful as anything Sokurov has ever attempted, linking the lyricism of Mother and Son with the boldness of his portraits of Hitler, Lenin and Hirohito. A truly haunting film, of extraordinary beauty and urgency.

Ian Christie