INTERPERSONAL CONFLICT
Reviewed by Paul Abelsky

Russia Profile, Russia
June 26 2007

Lighthouse (Mayak)
Directed by Maria Saakyan
Featuring Anna Kapaleva, Sofiko Chiaureli, Olga Yakovleva, Mikhail
Bagdasarov, Anastasiya Grebennikova, Sergei Danielyan
Russia, Holland (2007)

The eruption of conflicts across the Caucasus throughout the past
decade have gradually filtered onto the silver screen, but they
have not yet received the generous treatment accorded, for example,
the hostilities that accompanied the breakup of Yugoslavia. The
imprecision, elusiveness and universal themes of Lighthouse, set
during a war in some unspecified part of the region, create an abstract
cinematic outline, a summation of the great calamity that befell the
Caucasus. For all the variations between the conflicts that ignited
in the area’s different corners, they largely represented a people’s
war, as geopolitical guesswork gave way to untold personal anguish.

The blazing fault lines that reopened between towns and families are
in the foreground of this movie. Directed by Maria Saakyan, a native
of Armenia who has lived in Russia since the early 1990s, the film
shows Lena (Anna Kapaleva) returning to her village in the Caucasus
in an effort to convince her grandparents to flee the fighting that
is enveloping the area. In the film’s rendition of the setting, the
director shows a poetic composite of various locations, visually and
emotionally reminiscent of Nagorno Karabakh and Abkhazia.

Straddling cinematic influences from Sergei Paradzhanov to Emir
Kusturica, the movie presents a rambling and intense personal
experience which seems tragically preordained. The heroine’s
meanderings are haunted by childhood memories and vain attempts to
catch a long-delayed train to Moscow. Becoming immersed and trapped
in the surroundings, Lena will find her resting place there. Her
rescue mission gradually loses all urgency amidst an understated,
relentless and almost fatalistic descent into despair. With the
masterly cinematography that props a fragmented and uneven screenplay,
the film’s economy of means works to a powerful effect, condensing
the experience in the way more epic war dramas often fail to do.

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