…words.words.words

Oh, I must remember the name: “Andrei Zvyagintsev.” He’s the director of The Return, a great film—beautiful scenes, intense, thrilling story. I just saw his second film “The Banishment” in the goldenhorse film festival, and is totally blown away by its astonishingly beautiful scenes throughout the film. It reminds me of the reason we go movie theatres: it’s because we would never experience this beauty through DVDs, and only films can represent the color and the light so delicately, with so many layers.

The whole film is handled in a very artistic way. Just the folding road and chimneys in the very beginning are already impressive. Others like the scene of the train station. The screen is so wild that the whole station with its stretching pointing roof can be included in one shot.

Scenes in the country house are designed very well. Most of the time, we can see two things happen at the same time. I especially like one scene when the girl first entered her room and looked outside the window. First she saw her brother standing outside, and just about the time, a flock of sheep in the valley appeared from the right. Different layers of the space were presented in one moment and this kind of scene repeated time after time.

The most unforgettable scene is the extremely long take of the muddy grass in the torrential rain. The shot is from the woods to the grass, to the small pit of water, to the broken wooden cart, and finally to the house. The rain never stopped. It’s like every detail, every truth is washed and showed up. I just don’t know how to describe it. It’s one of the breath-holding moment in the film.

I also like all scenes shot at dusk. Many things happened after the sun went down, when there was still light, but it was also a little bit dark. Dark, but still with many different color, or we should said, different degrees of dark. so beautiful.

And don’t forget the winding road beside the church, the bright house in the dark, the fog around the house in the dawn, the woods, and the reflections in the mirrors, and the beautiful people. Everything is beautiful.

The story is a about a man returned home in the countryside with his family. Just as they were about to start a new life, his wife told him she was pregnant and the child wasn’t belong to him. The confession put the man into huge agony. He even told his brother that he was afraid that he could kill her. As time goes by, the mystery was slowly uncovered.