The
life of the Buddha assembled from the original |
Nick Dussault
|
"Masterfully crafted...A must-see" |
"Wonderfully entertaining...Marvelous to experience." |
| Mark Epstein, M.D., author of |
Pick of the week |
| Open to Desire & |
| Thoughts Without a Thinker |
| The Boston Globe |
[Houston Press] There's got to be a good story-behind-the-story of how this Russian movie written and directed by Americans got made. But it can't be as good as the story that's up there on the screen. A plot synopsis makes Sasha's Riddle sound positively Dickensian: The mother of ten-year-old Sasha (Pasha Ivanov) has just died under circumstances no one will explain to him, and with the crumbling of the Soviet Union, his prison guard father has lost both his earning power and his sense of identity. The boy and his dad have an empty refrigerator and few hopes. Not improbably, Sasha turns to petty crime and bad companions. The only thing his father can think to do is put the kid in a prison cell at work and hope he'll be scared straight; it doesn't work. Russian film? Hunger? Prison? My expectations ranged from bleak to utter gulag. But was I wrong. This is one of the most heartfelt, charming and perceptive films about children since Francois Truffaut's masterful Small Change. Every time you think it's going in one direction, it takes another. Even the slammer scene, filmed in an actual prison in Perm in the remote eastern reaches of Russia, takes a whimsical turn. Locked in a cell the size of a small closet, Sasha converses through the whitewashed stone wall with a tough-looking female inmate who sings a prison song with lyrics worthy of Johnny Cash. “How old are you?” she asks. “Ten.” “Sound more like a mature man of 11 to me,” she smiles. Clearly prison isn't the answer, but - surprisingly - an orphanage might be. Genuinely concerned school officials offer Sasha a choice, and his father, desperate, drunk and reluctant, signs the papers. The Perm Children's Home, with its bright whimsical murals of cosmonauts and swarms of rambunctious kids, is a bit run-down, but it's clean and caring. And the real orphanage kids who play most of the orphanage kids are wonderfully natural. In some ways the children's home is a small boy's wish fulfillment. There are adventures to be had and other boys to play with; adult supervision is minimal but caring. Still, this is an orphanage, a place from which kids are adopted. And in one of the most touching scenes I've ever watched on film, we learn that one boy understands this all too well. The scene, which puts the rest of the film's playful adventures into perspective, will break your heart. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To receive notifications of future shows email TheBuddhaPlay@gmail.com PRESS radio Buddhist Pop & Subculture: |
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