What does it say about a society when an evil man can bend down towards his young son in the midst of an inspiring sermon and whisper to him that God is always watching?
The film is set in a devastated landscape with the signs of a ruined economy dominating the environment. The skies are grey and the land harsh. Great broken ship hulls litter the harbour, along with the great bleached bones of a whale, signs of an earlier time.
The signs of beauty and hope are few and far--a beautiful wife, good friends, a view of harmony from the kitchen window.
Things are going badly: a corrupt mayor wants your house, your land and your business and has the local council and courts under his control. The cops are almost all corrupt and manifest potential violence. The church is almost openly complicit with the forces of corruption, preaching the patience of Job.
What can you do? There are some hopes.. You have a lawyer who has some dirt on the mayor and hopes of gaining true compensation. So, things could get better.
Still, they can also get worse and they do. But there's always vodka and more vodka.
The constant question and hope sustained by the film is of the decent, insignificant person finally receiving justice. That hope is sustained to the very last scene, a scene at which you finally realize how much you care about flawed, but essentially innocent, characters.
A film very much in the tradition of Russian pessimistic cynicism and the struggle to transcend them that had run through its arts for centuries, this one make Dostoevsky seem like a cheery uncle. If you are open for that kind of exploration, this is very much worth watching for its final comment on those themes. If you are after a cheery family film, look elsewhere.
The film is set in a devastated landscape with the signs of a ruined economy dominating the environment. The skies are grey and the land harsh. Great broken ship hulls litter the harbour, along with the great bleached bones of a whale, signs of an earlier time.
The signs of beauty and hope are few and far--a beautiful wife, good friends, a view of harmony from the kitchen window.
Things are going badly: a corrupt mayor wants your house, your land and your business and has the local council and courts under his control. The cops are almost all corrupt and manifest potential violence. The church is almost openly complicit with the forces of corruption, preaching the patience of Job.
What can you do? There are some hopes.. You have a lawyer who has some dirt on the mayor and hopes of gaining true compensation. So, things could get better.
Still, they can also get worse and they do. But there's always vodka and more vodka.
The constant question and hope sustained by the film is of the decent, insignificant person finally receiving justice. That hope is sustained to the very last scene, a scene at which you finally realize how much you care about flawed, but essentially innocent, characters.
A film very much in the tradition of Russian pessimistic cynicism and the struggle to transcend them that had run through its arts for centuries, this one make Dostoevsky seem like a cheery uncle. If you are open for that kind of exploration, this is very much worth watching for its final comment on those themes. If you are after a cheery family film, look elsewhere.