When I watched Sokurov’s previous film, The Lonely Voice of Man, I was unsure if his humour was intentional or if it was just my own idiosyncratic sense of comedy. But now I’m convinced Sokurov is having a laugh. I gave up tracking the jokes after a prolonged scene of policemen angling a dead body on a stretcher through a comically narrow stairway. All that was missing was the Benny Hill music. I am a total ignoramus when it comes to comedy and its theory, but I feel Sokurov is tapping into a shocking deadpan comedy like some distant Soviet cousin of Aki Kaurismäki.
Unlike the other two Sokurov films I’ve seen (one preceding and one following), I found the formal chromatic variations inexplicable.
When I watched Sokurov’s previous film, The Lonely Voice of Man, I was unsure if his humour was intentional or if it was just my own idiosyncratic sense of comedy. But now I’m convinced Sokurov is having a laugh. I gave up tracking the jokes after a prolonged scene of policemen angling a dead body on a stretcher through a comically narrow stairway. All that was missing was the Benny Hill music. I am a total ignoramus when it comes to comedy and its theory, but I feel Sokurov is tapping into a shocking deadpan comedy like some distant Soviet cousin of Aki Kaurismäki.
Unlike the other two Sokurov films I’ve seen (one preceding and one following), I found the formal chromatic variations inexplicable.
