The old lady and the soldier

The old lady and the soldier

It’s that straightforward. An old woman is helped onto an armored train in the middle of the night, and travels through Russia to a remote army base. The soldiers seem to know her and about her visit, and after a pair of local boys appear to try and “lead” her away from her suitcase, two uniformed soldiers show up and escort her to the compound.

We have learned a lot about this woman already, who is opinionated, proud, obstinate and not afraid of sharing what she thinks. She marches through the heat and dust into the base, is led to her “hotel,” which is a room with two cots in a tent barracks. More information comes out slowly. Her name is Alexandra (Galina Vishnevskaya).

She has come here to see Denis he’s her grandson who’s a captain in the army. The base is in Chechnya. It’s a Muslim republic occupied by Russian forces, who are sullenly hated. Around this compound seems informal; these soldiers seem lax. When Denis (Vasily Shevtsov) appears on the scene, his mother is appalled at his uniform-shape, tells him he needs to wash up.

She also sniffs disapprovingly at other enlisted men; says things like “Don’t pull my arm” and “Don’t push me!”; declares that she can take care of herself.

The next day she wanders around so early there doesn’t appear to be anyone awake yet reminding me of that scene in Bergman’s “Wild Strawberries” where an old man dreams he has wandered into a deserted town only something different happens here: Everyone wakes up as Alexandra walks past their bunks. There are other parallels between those two films but Bergman’s was about an old man discovering himself while “Alexandra” it’s an old woman being discovered she exerts transformative power.

The movie was written and directed by Alexander Sokurov, who gave us the amazing “Russian Ark” remember that one, where he followed a character through the Hermitage Museum in one uninterrupted shot? Here he follows this woman as she talks her way past a guarded gate and into town to find the market. She’s tired and hot. It must be 100 degrees.

She meets Malika (Raisa Gichaeva), a woman about her age, who gives her a seat in her booth, is friendly, gives her cigarettes and cookies knowing they’ll go to Russian soldiers. Then she invites Alexandra home to her flat in a building missing a big chunk because of bombs or shells. The two old women bond; their conversation is the movie’s core.

If the locals don’t like the Russians, it appears that some of them also don’t much care for their duty here: They can’t see any point to it; they’re not wanted and never will be so why are they forced to stay? Those conclusions aren’t articulated but they’re there all the same. And notice how some of these locals look at her with pointed disdain and some of these soldiers just stare at her maybe because she’s the only woman on base; reminds them of grandmothers/mothers/sisters/girlfriends/all other sides life outside their compound.

Alexandra is not a nice old lady. If Vishnevskaya were not played by her, who once ruled the Russian opera, it might have given us a clue where she gets the confidence to do so and such an imperious manner. But when she hugs her grandson, when he braids her hair, when she tells him that he “smells like a man” and that she loves the smell of it then we see into her youth and her memories. So little does Sokurov say while saying so much.

The color scheme of the movie contributes to its effect. It is dreary, browned out, desaturated. Pale reds and greens sometimes don’t even appear; everything is covered in dust. Brighter colors would have injected life into the base, but that would have been incorrect; this is for these soldiers a dead zone. Life on hold; cheerless existence. And this plain spoken old woman reminds them of a lifetime they’re missing out on.

Watch The old lady and the soldier For Free On Gomovies.