Father and Son

"If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons." James Baldwin

Little can be said about the magic shared between a father and a son. Though they might not be of the same opinion or agree unanimously to a point of thought or belief every time, the unexplained understanding shred between the two bridges all the gaps, making it one of the best relationships prevalent on earth. There have been many films that have tried to portray the love and affection of father-son duo. However, one of the films which stands apart is the flick - 'Father and Son', directed by award-winning Russian filmmaker, Alexander Sokurov.

Released in 2003, the movie, 'Father and Son' is a complementary piece to his early movie named 'Mother and Son', released in 1996. Starring Andrej Shetinin, Alexei Nejmyshev and Alexander Rasbash, the movie deftly presents a story entwined with the ambiguous relationship shared by a father and his son. Along the pace of the movie, the bond between the two characters, i.e. father and the son, buds, grows matures and gets stronger. Though the movie doesn't provide any specific answers, it surely leaves viewers with a lot of questions.

After the death of his wife, a good-looking father (Andrey Schetinin), who is also a retired soldier, and his son Alexei (Aleksey Neymyshev) start living together in an apartment, in an unidentified seaside city. Following the footsteps of his father, the son goes and joins a local military school as a young cadet. The father and son relation in the movie is depicted with delicate details here. However, what make the relation ambiguous are the overtly strong emotional and physical affinities that these two men are shown to share with each other.

Even Alexei's girlfriends are green-eyed about the strange and unexplained relationship that he seems to share with his father. The obsession from the father's side is shown when he doesn't allow Alexei to spend more time with his male companions in school. The deep anguish of the father, who starts feeling that his son is slowly breaking away from the hermetic bond of their relation, and the fierce desire of the young son, to carve his own identity, is brilliantly portrayed. Unexplained tales in the movie that seems to subtly transgress conventional parenthood and evoke many a questions, make it worth a watch.

This Father's Day, sit alongside your father and watch the unexplained affinity that is shared by the two protagonists of the film. Who knows at the end of the tale the two of you would share the same chemistry as the characters inside the flick?