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Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Russian screenwriter and director Alexandr Sokurov's twenty-third documentary feature, a cinematographic narrative in five parts subtitled "From the commander's diary", was shot in the region of Murmansk in Northwest Russia in the White Sea and Barents Sea on a naval patrol ship, where the film crew lived with the seamen and participated in their daily routines. It was written as a poem, the plot and characters are creations of the author's imagination, by Alexandr Sokurov and is a Russian production, originally made as a mini-series for Russian television, which was distributed by Ideale Audience International and produced by producer and director of Nadezhda Studio Svetlana Voloshina.Finely and acutely directed by Russian filmmaker Alexandr Sokurov, this quietly paced, literary and existentialistic soul-search which is narrated mostly from naval officer Sergei Bakai's point of view, draws an intimate and empathic portrayal of a group of young seamen's camaraderie and experiences on a battleship and a captain's introspective thoughts concerning his history in the Russian military, duties as the ship commander and his relationship with his conscripted sailors during a cold winter in the northernmost part of the world ocean. While notable for it's lingering cinematography by cinematographer Alexey Fedorov, use of sound, use of music and use of colors which emphasizes it's poignant atmosphere, this internal journey towards a naval base in Kuvshinka, in the Murmansk Region where young men are faced with and affected by pivotal decisions, monotony and absence of freedom and a captain by his memories, loneliness and dreams, draws a profoundly humane examination of the human condition and about coming to terms with one's destiny. An at times humorous, contemplative and elegiac piece of poetic cinema which is driven by it's distinct voice-over narration.

At a first glance,the cinematic language of Sokurov might seem miles away,or more precisely the exact opposite of that required in a documentary.But,Sokurov is reinventing,is reconstructing the documentary movie language making him highly metaphoric,amazingly poetic,and hypnotic. I learned that it's hard to find a good translation for "Povinnost"-it's forced labor,something made not as a result of free will.Confession,the translation,it might be fit but doesn't really touch the very deep essence of the movie. This is a "road movie" in the largest meaning one might find:it's a journey,an inner journey beyond time and space into men's soul.It's about solitude,constraint,force,life and its meaning.Sokurov's language has its usual richness,its very slow pace,its metaphorical meanings;its a meta-cinema,an alternative cinema,not in an experimental way but more in a kind of melting together cinema,music,literature,painting,philosophy. Sokurov is extremely mystic;this appears not in its relation with G-D but more in the hope that might come after a long waiting. This movie reminds that cinema is first of all art and not box-office;this banal statement receives here a concrete expression,this movie being a kind of cinematic book more then a movie.I warmly recommend the movie,for enlightened audience.