juan_palmero2010 A family with two pre-teen children go to spend some days in the isolated country house where the father was born and raised. The first hours are spent bringing the house back to a minimum of working order, with the children spending much of their time outside in the garden, as children do. And then, in the evening, after dinner, when the children have gone to bed and the adults sit on the terrace on their own, the wife tells her husband something very short and simple that will overhaul his life and set the mood for the rest of the film. Those looking for easy entertainment, better look elsewhere. The first simple and bleak images and the music already let you know that this is not going to be a relaxing experience. There is tension from the beginning, and it is there to stay until the end. This is beautiful, artful cinema making, of the kind that requires spectators to approach it with their emotions and an open mind. Perhaps demanding cinema. Though not overly intellectual (the story is, in some ways, quite a simple one), it contains powerful undercurrents that are not obvious until the very end. Like most good films, you will get more out of this watching it more than once. Astounding acting by the three main actors. The range of feelings displayed by actors Konstantin Lavronenko and Maria Bonnevie as the married couple and by Aleksandr Baluev (Konstantin's brother in the film and perhaps alter ego) is breathtaking. Bonnevie looks totally natural, even if dubbed, chapeau to her. Lavronenko deservedly got Canne's Best Actor prize in 2007 for his role in this film. Zvyagintsev's craft, as shown by his other films, is felt from beginning to end, with exquisite attention paid to detail, light, colour, shadows, filming locations. As with good art, everyone will get something different out of this film. Leaving aside some possible religious or spiritual connotations, I take it that this film contains a reflection on love and the absence of it, about sharing and its limits, that can speak to very wide audiences, irrespective of time and location.

robert-642 I watched this film on the basis of having enjoyed The Return. How wrong can one be. It would be generous to say that it makes the films of Bruno Dumont seem like action films! You can tell when a film is a deceit by the opening shots. Long takes of roads and trees are nothing but a waste of film and the viewers time. A walnut tree does not a film make. Creating atmosphere is one thing but suffocating the viewer is another. And so the rest of the film goes on in the same way: ennui seems more debilitating than euthanasia and that is what this film engenders.Tell me: how many children have you seen who, going to a new home, albeit dilapidated, show no excitement? Are we saying that Russian children don't run around exploring every nook and cranny with yelps of delight? And so having flicked through chapter after chapter to see if their was any movement - a rabbit skipping across the grass would have been fine - I decided to call it a day and put on a DVD of Tom & Jerry.Good films I enjoy. Pretension I detest.Zero

crey014 A respectable family drama with its style and lethargic editing its main drawback, "Izgnanie" will also definitely test the patient, even Andrei Zvyagintsev's most loyal of fans. Insecurity over the plot is palpable as film overextends its welcome with pondering and introspective filming that doesn't quite translate well on screen. Plot and cinematography, especially in the countryside, offer some solace to art house fans, however audience will wonder why it took too long to make the point.Film follows a middle class family as they go to the pastoral countryside, presumably where the paternal character, Alex (Konstantin Lavronenko) grew up. Plot only advances approximately an hour in the picture as a reveal is introduced. Character and story development is sporadic, definitely welcome, as it reminds audience that they aren't watching paint dry. The final act in the film, a flashback, carries the meatier part of the movie as it emphasizes the tragedy that happens earlier. Adultery, abortion and family secrets are aplenty, however seen and are better executed before.Best actor nod for Konstantin Lavronenko at Cannes 2007 is somewhat deserving. It is indeed a subtle performance, however doesn't hold a candle to other actors vying for the same gong.With an abundance of establishing shots and transport moving in and out of frame, the film could have easily eliminated 30 minutes of its 2 and a half-hour running time. Anna Mass, the editor, has puzzled together a film that wallows in atmosphere and creates images that are borderline pseudo-cathartic. Such scenes include a 3-minute trailing shot of water flowing from a water source that stopped delivering hydration before. May have functioned as time change and indication of liminal moment, but overly indulgent nonetheless, as it feels that it's delivered as art for art's sake.Adapted from a novel by William Saroyan, it is clear that translation is also a problem. With the production of the film being abject to the characters, audience is clearly not allowed into these personalities, only as observers. This abjectivity produces lack of engagement that a plot like this could easily flourish on. From the outside, characters are clearly sophisticated enough and it is curious why connection never gets there.English title is marketed as "The Banishment" as it may signify a plethora of themes and undertones in the movie. It straight up refers to the family's eviction from their 'idealised' Eden in a midtown neighborhood (although clearly far from it as it is depicted as violent and drab), but also refers to the individual isolation of the characters from one another. They are all devoid of communication or any sort of outward emotional connection, except for hate, contempt and the chains of nuclear family. Film becomes a burning effigy to families that are only bonded because they have to.What could have been a beautifully insightful movie on the danger of disregard of family bonds, film overachieves in being meditative to a fault: dragging its run time to way beyond its limits, diluting its intended purpose. The patient will find satisfaction but will still notice the film's over the top brooding by overstuffing it with non-consequential establishing shots, pretending to be worth more than it is.

Chris Knipp Not as strong as Zvyagintsev's haunting 2003 debut 'The Return'/'Vozvrashcheniye' (grand prize at Venice--I reviewed it when it was shown theatrically in the US the following year), this adaptation of William Saroyan's 1953 novella, "The Laughing Matter," is recognizable for its intense, slow-paced style and beautiful cinematography (by Mikhail Krichman). 'Izgnanie' (the Russian title) takes us out to a remote country house where there are thin roads, grassy fields over gentle hills, herds of sheep -- and old friends, because this is the childhood home of the protagonist Alex (Konstantin Lavronenko), who's brought his family out there for summer vacation. But before that (and a signal of a certain disjointedness of the whole film) we observe Mark (Alexander Baluev), Alex's obviously gangsterish brother, getting him to remove a bullet from his arm. this is also the first of a series of failures to seek adequate medical treatment. Now we move to Alex with his wife Vera (Maria Bonnevie) taking their young son Kir (Maxim Shibaev) and younger daughter Eva (Katya Kulkina) out to the country by car.Zvagintsev certainly takes his time with every action of the film. It's as if he thought he was writing a 500-page novel rather than making a movie. The effect is not so much a sense of completeness as a kind of hypnotic trance. Everything is marked by the fine clear light, the frequent use of long shots, and the pale blue filters that give everything a distinctive look. Some of the long landscape shots are absolutely stunning, and the interior light and the way shadows gently caress the faces are almost too good to be true.When another family comes into the picture and they all spend a day outdoors, the sense of familiarity, summer listlessness, and vague unease made me think of a play by William Inge or Tennessee Williams. That may seem odd for a Russian movie, but the names are only partly Russian, the location is deliberately indeterminate, and Saroyan's source story is set in a long-ago California, not in Russia. Zvyagintsev doesn't seem to work in the real world but in some kind of super-real nether-land. Whether it is unforgettable or simply off-putting seems to vary. In 'The Return' it as the former; here it is more the latter.Vera drops a bombshell, when she announces she's pregnant and that the child isn't his. The tragedy that slowly but inexorably follows arises from a derangement in the wife and a misunderstanding by the husband. To deal with the problem Alex wants the children out of the way and he is happy to have them stay at the friends' house, where they're putting together a large jigsaw puzzle of Leonardo da Vinci's painting, 'The Annunciation'. I'm indebted to Jay Weissberg's review in 'Variety' for this identification; Weissberg adds, "That... isn't the only piece of heavy-handed religious imagery on offer. There's Alex washing his brother's blood off his hands, Eva/Eve offered an apple, and a Bible recitation from 1 Corinthians about love ("It does not insist on its own way"), handily set apart by a bookmark depicting Masaccio's 'The Expulsion From the Garden of Eden.' OK, we get it, but that doesn't mean the parallels offer a doorway into personalities who offer little emotional residue on their own." And he is right: Zvyagintsev's fascination with Italian painting, and here also with the Bible, doesn't change the fact that the characters nonetheless remain, this time, troublingly opaque. Mark is an adviser and stimulus to action for Alex. Robert (Dmitry Ulianov) is a third brother who enters the picture later. I will not go into the details because the chief interest of the film is its slow revelations.And yet the revelations don't quite convince, because for one thing they do not fully explain. The wife's behavior remains unaccountable. And a long flashback in the latter part of the film seems to come too late, and to explain too much, yet without explaining enough. None of this is the fault of the actors, who are fine, including the children.Zvyagintsev's second film, then, is a disappointment and a puzzlement. I began to think after a while that the whole thing would be much more effective if it were done in a very simple style, with simply workmanlike photography, in a film trimmed of all externals, down to the bone, something noirish like Robert Siodmak's 'The Killers' or Kubrick's 'The Killing.' We are left to figure things out anyway, so why all the flourishes? Yet Zvyagintsev's style is nonetheless beautiful, and one only hopes he finds material that works better for him next time. I was thrilled with 'The Return' and wrote of it in my IMDb Comment: "This stunning debut features exceptional performances by the talented young actors, brilliant storytelling in a fable-like tale that's as resonant as it is specific, and exquisite cinematography not quite like any one's ever seen before." The excitement I felt about the first film is why the new one feels like such a let-down.Seen as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series Film Comment Selects 2008 (February 25) at the Walter Reade Theater, NYC.__________________