One of the great advantages of living in Brussels is the plethora of cinemas, from art house to multiplex (they even convert a national monument into a drive-in theatre in summer). But the best thing is that Brussels cinema is International, and films are shown in their original language with (French and Dutch) subtitles. For us, this is perfect, and we get a chance to dabble in everything from Argentine to Mongolian films.
I see that the New York and London Film Festivals last month featured Alexander Sokurov's film "Alexandra," which means that it should be reaching other British and American cities soon. This is a film about Russia's war in Chechnya. Or, as the director says, "In this film about war, there is no war." Apart from a scraped knuckle or shin, no blood either. But the tension of war is ever present. With far-off hills on fire, and once, an echo of small arms fire, the audience remembers that it is still a shooting war.
Mostly, you just marvel at the notion of the storyline: an elderly granny (the marvelous Galina Vishnevskaya, widow of Mstislav Rostropovich, and an opera diva in her own right) makes her way by bus, train, and armored personnel carrier to a Russian army outpost in Chechnya to see her grandson. That's about it. But it's as rich a story as has been made, and a more subtle film about war, and its effect on people, I have rarely seen.
Hollywood screenwriters set to strike might ponder "Alexandra" as they walk the picket line. I can only imagine what many of them would have done with material from the wars in Chechnya: let's see, there's the levelling of a capital city, Grozny; militant Muslims with scary beards; young men "disappeared" and women of all ages raped; most recently, a Russian woman journalist assassinated over her war reporting.
None of this -- except for graphic images of a wrecked cityscape -- is in "Alexandra." There's the grandma, her officer grandson and a number of realistic looking young Russian conscripts, and several Chechens who look scared but not too scary. The most well-adjusted, Russian and Chechen, are the women, who come to "bond" in a very credible way. This is not a saccharine feel-good picture of a "good" war. Far from it. Each time "Alexandra," the film's title character, wanders off the Grozny Green Zone of her grandson's camp, the viewer fears the worst, because anyone who has heard anything of Chechnya only expects the worst.
Thankfully, this is not a Hollywood war film, and you just get to use your imagination about the backstory of characters in this film. Just like the best films don't always have an ending tied up in a nice bow.
I don't know how Russians have reacted to "Alexandra," but it was at Cannes, and now at the London and New York festivals. And if an eighty one year old actress can clamber over tanks and pull off an understated but stately performance like this, then maybe there should be an Oscar in store.