Review of “Alexandra”

by Gaetana Caldwell-Smith / June 2008

With "Alexandra," writer/director Alexsandr Sokurov has crafted a humanistic, antiwar film that doesn‘t beat you over the head with its message. It is a somber film, shot in sepia tones with slight hints of color, that not only illustrates the stupidity of war but shows that men make war while women make peace.

The film is a vignette in the life of a widowed, feisty, Russian grandmother who visits her grandson at his army base. There is little dialogue, mostly silences and lingering shots of the characters’ faces, which say more than words.

The opening scenes show Alexandra (Galina Vishnevskaya) emerging from a truck at the side of a road bordering the train station, in a desolate countryside. The musical score is as somber as the setting. Wearing a light jacket over a dress, earrings, with her grey hair in a braided knot at the back of her head, Alexandra, overweight and elderly, boards a train along with weary soldiers carrying automatic weapons.

At times, she seems confused. A soldier helps her to a bench seat in what looks to be a made-over boxcar. The soldiers are playful with each other. As Alexandra watches their every move (and the camera lingers on her face), you feel she’s thinking that any one of them could be her grandson, whom she hasn’t seen in seven years. In turn, they watch her warily. Soon the train, rocking past dry, dusty, uninhabited country, lulls them to sleep.

The camp consists of rows and rows of identical yurts, separated by boards serving as walkways. She has arrived at night and is shown to her "hotel." In the morning she finds her grandson, Denis (Vasily Shevtsov), asleep in the next cot. His bare feet are filthy and scabby.

The troops are constantly hungry, subsisting on meager rations. They gobble a meat pie she offers them from her bag. This is definitely not the American army camp inside Baghdad’s Green Zone.

Alexandra and Denis’s time together, snatched between his duties at the camp—overseeing the oiling and cleaning of Kalashnikovs, and repairing vehicles, and short sorties out side—is tentative at first, becoming familiar, poignant, and sad the longer she is there.

Curious about everything, she wants to see how a Kalashnikov works. He lets her hold an unloaded one. Pulling the trigger, she says, "It’s so easy." In your mind, you add: "to kill." Inside a tank, she complains of the smell. Denis tells her that as many as ten men will occupy the small space.

She is waylaid by the young, handsome commanding officer, who is stern yet kind, and says she doesn’t belong there. She stands up to him with snide humor. While his stubble-faced soldiers’ uniforms are limp and worn, his is crisp and smart. Except for the language spoken on the base, this could be any army base in any desolate outpost anywhere in the world, prepared to kill "the enemy."

Alexandra insists on walking to the nearby village market to buy cigarettes and cookies for Denis and his buddies. Once there, no one speaks to her. Young boys stare daggers at her. The Muslim market women wear sweaters, skirts and blouses, with scarves covering their heads. Alexandra is ignored as she touches some of the merchandise.

One woman, Zoirya, takes pity when Alexandra complains of not feeling well. Zoirya invites her to her shabby apartment in a bombed-out apartment building, and gives her tea. She has filled the old woman’s bag with cartons of cigarettes and boxes of cookies. She recruits an agreeable but sullen teenage boy to escort her back to camp. He knows the war is not her fault, he tells her, but isn’t there something she can do? She, Denis, and the Russian soldiers are their enemy.

The soldiers welcome her return with a dinner of beef and barley stew set on a special table with flowers in a vase. Having delayed their own meal until she has eaten, they watch her rapaciously. She reminds them of their own grandmothers.

Denis tells his grandmother she must go; his unit is leaving for five days. Grandmother and grandson say their goodbyes. The armored vehicles and tanks load up, and armed soldiers climb aboard troop transports. All roar off to fight the war.

At the same time, the market women of the village gather around Alexandra as she boards the train. They exchange addresses, kissing and hugging. Zoiyra promises to visit her in St. Petersburg.

There’s no shooting, no gruesome deaths, or groaning, bloody, wounded, no explosions, no soldiers’ rallying cries, gearing up for battle. Sokurov has crafted a simple, yet powerful film containing a heavy message.