Aleksandr Sokurov - Krug vtoroy aka The second circle (1990)

In a remote Siberian village, an anonymous young man emerges from a blizzard to claim his late father's body. Navigating the detritus of an old man's final friendless decade and the dehumanizing maze of red tape that are his father's sole legacy, the boy inadvertently picks through the debris of unraveled family ties and confronts the yawning gap between alienated Soviet generations. Scorned and ignored, his labor of mourning becomes as transformative as the labor of birth. "I'll burn everything, but not my father," the young man warns a funeral director. As he finds himself in his father's lifeless eyes, the reluctant young pilgrim discovers that they have more in common in death than they did in life.

Algún día, todo hijo tiene que cumplir un triste deber: enterrar a su padre. Este es el principal y único evento que se produce en El Segundo Círculo y es representado con una sencillez épica en cada detalle. Se hacen visibles todas las conexiones rotas de nuestra vida, la inercia sin sentido de los rituales, ahora inconexos, pero que en otros tiempos poseían un contenido sagrado y un significado.




Aleksandr Sokurov creates a haunting, austere, and emotionally honest examination of death, bereavement, and loneliness in The Second Circle. The title of the film refers to the second circle of hell depicted in The Divine Comedy, Volume I: Inferno by Dante Alighieri, the realm of damnation where the souls of the lustful are punished by the eternal lashing of a raging, infernal storm (note the referential parallel imagery of the opening blizzard scene). Using high contrast, raw, monochromatic imagery, and spare, but deliberate use of close-up shots, Sokurov reflects the soul's innate longing for compassion, human decency, and spiritual communion in an increasingly amoral, apathetic, and materialistic society: the atypical rapid intercutting of medium and long shots as the son washes his father's body in the snow; the innocent reassurance of the doctor's young son, Seyozha, who attempts to comfort him by saying "everything's going to be all right"; the chaotic and near violent bus ride that results in theft; the extended shot of the son's long, melancholic gaze after opening his father's eyes for a final glimpse. In the end, the doctor's parting words, "the most terrible thing has been left behind" echoes the resigned sentiment of the epilogue verse "Lucky are the nearest and dearest of ours who died before us" - a prophetic observation of the painful and isolating process of grief, longing, and survival.




"A starkly beautiful, awesomely impressive and ferociously demanding exercise in pure visual cinema" (The Los Angeles Times), The Second Circle's austere color palette offers a visual feast of timeless iconography and nightmarishly precise detail. "Like his mentor Andrei Tarkovsky," said The New York Times, "Mr. Sokurov has an unshakable vision of what film art should be." Whether bleached by the winter sun, bathed in moonlight or caressed by shadows, the faces and frames of The Second Circle haunt a unique cinematic borderland where audacious expressionism meets documentary reality.




Kino Video DVDRip
I did the spanish subs.



Aleksandr Sokurov, uno de los directores más esquivos, iconoclastas e inimitables del mundo, se ha hecho famoso por sus escalofriantes meditaciones sobre los apremios humanos y el devenir de la cultura. En EL SEGUNDO CÍRCULO, un hombre marcha a través de la ventisca siberiana para llegar a un caserío remoto, a fin de realizar las exequias de su padre. Relatada en un lóbrego blanco y negro con ocasionales momentos de exquisito color, el film encara la trágica situación con una impasible y opresiva contención. Por momentos expresa un humor sombrío, como cuando el hijo y un vecino hacen rodar el cadáver sobre la nieve, o cuando casi se vuelca el ataúd, pero el efecto general es absolutamente devastador, mientras el hijo realiza los arduos, solitarios y aún absurdos trámites necesarios para poder enterrar al padre. Una vez más, Sokurov ha logrado una obra de arte brutal, hermosa e inolvidable.

Subtítulos en español traducidos por un servidor.

Script/Guión: Yuri Arabov
Music/Sonido: V.Persov
Cinematography/Fotografía: Aleksandr Burov
Cast/Reparto: Pyotr Aleksandrov, Nadezhda Rodnova, Tamara Timofeyeva, Aleksandr Bystryakov, R. Molokeyev, D. Samokhin, N. Sidash, O. Ignatov, F. Potapov