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100Like most of Sokurov's movies, this oblique parable is mysterious, elliptical, irresistible.
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80Less a story than a situation, the film contends with a difficult transitional period in the lives of its title characters, who face the growing necessity of getting some distance from each other.
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80Like a dream within a dream. Its images and emotions are vivid, disquieting and also hermetic, and while it may frustrate your desire for clear storytelling and psychological transparency, it has an intensity that surpasses understanding.
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80If the setting is claustrophobic, it's also bracingly beautiful, a contradiction that is every bit in keeping with Sokurov's preference for ambiguity over clarity.
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75By the time the final shot arrives -- a rooftop panorama in the falling snow -- we don't know much about any of the people we've just encountered. But we have been treated to a feast for the eyes.
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75Passes by like a dream.
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75Where a lesser movie from a lesser director might sink into its own ponderousness, Sokurov uses the ambiguity of the father and son's relationship to craft a sort of erotic puzzle.
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70Hypnotic film.
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70For Sokurov, the relationship between a father and a son surpasses physical, even human intimacy -- it’s something approaching the sacred.
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70Borders on the risible but, because Sokurov is Sokurov, this exalted, wacky scenario--which uses Lisbon as an imaginary Russian seaport--is amazingly staged, inventively edited, and rich in audio layering, with camera placements that sometimes verge on the Brakhagian.
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70Nothing much happens by way of plot in the course of Father and Son, but it offers a fresh and often startling vision of one of the most fundamental relationships between human beings.
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70The result can be--sometimes is--tedium; but, whether or not the work succeeds as Sokurov intended, it is an adventurous director's probe of cinema possibilities.
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60Sokurov's use of space, religious symbolism and raw emotion compensate for any sense of exclusion.
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50The film should please his (Sokurov's) fans even while proving a frustrating, tedious experience for most art house audiences.
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42Sokurov's new companion piece (to "Mother and Son"), has the tedium without the trance.
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30Irritatingly devoid of irony, the film has an unintentional but unmistakable homoerotic subtext.
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30Here was my question for most of this movie: Wha-? I was clueless. Did not understand. Count me among the stupid.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 5 out of 5
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Mixed: 0 out of 5
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Negative: 0 out of 5
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JimR.10
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KryshaA.10