DIRECTED BY: ANDREY ZVYAGINTSEV
STARRING: KONSTANTIN LAVRONENKO, MARIA BONNEVIE, ALEXANDER BALUEV
RUSSIAN director Andrey Zvyagintsev made a big impression on the international scene a few years ago when his deb
ut film The Retur won the Golden Lion at the 2003 Venice Film Festival and went on to become a considerable critical success around the world. His second feature, The Banishment, has fared rather less well, dividing critics at Cannes last year and taking more than a year to find a UK distributor. It's not hard to see why. Though it begins intriguingly enough in the guise of a thriller, what transpires is a willfully slow, painfully laboured exploration of the modern family full of religious metaphors, pompous symbolism and pseudo-intellectual attempts at profundity. Based on a 1953 William Saroyan novella entitled The Laughing Matter – now there's an ironic title – The Banishment revolves around a gun-shot wounded criminal called Alex (Konstantin Lavronenko) who returns to his seemingly idyllic life in the country only to be informed by his wife that she's pregnant with another man's child. Wounded, furious and humiliated, he forces her to get an abortion – a course of action that has tragic results. Regret, guilt and the nature of forgiveness are the dominant themes coursing through a beautifully composed, relentlessly morose picture, but to what purpose? There's no emotional pay-off, just obfuscation and pretension.
The full article contains 235 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
