...Givhaeva. Color, 92 mins. A Cinema Guild release.

Alexandra follows a deceptively simple storyline: Alexandra Nikolevna (Galina Vishnevskaya) arrives in the Chechen Republic to visit her grandson (Vasili Shevstov), the captain of a Russian base near Grozny. She stays for a few days, talks to the soldiers, goes to a local market and departs when her grandson leaves to go on maneuvers. As writer/director Alexander Sokurov told an interviewer, "In this film about war there is no war ... there is no poetry in war, no beauty and it should never be filmed poetically: it is a horror that cannot be expressed, human degradation that cannot be expressed." To make this warless war film, Sokurov topsy-turvies all the conventions, as if trumping audience expectations, denying the voyeuristically comforting payoffs of action, killing, and gore. Rather than the photogenic, odor-free world of idealized destruction, he presents an outpost of tedium and quiet despair. The real locations and documentary aspect of Alexandra are specific to Chechnya, but the lethal absurdities that fuel perpetual war apply anywhere.

At the film's center and in nearly every frame is Galina Vishnevskaya, Alexandra her debut feature. A well-known Bolshoi Theater soprano, Vishnevskaya is solid and monumental, a diva, no question, though she plays the Everywoman Alexandra unaffectedly and straight. Strolling amidst the men and ordnance in her matronly shift, anklets, and sandals, she leaves an impression simultaneously indomitable and ridiculous. But when she literally lets her hair down with...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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