The Stone

In the old house by the Black Sea lives a boy. It is a winter and there is snow.
Suddenly a man appears. Is he from the past? Does he really exists or is he an image of the boy's subconscious memories? A nostalgic story where the borderlines between dreams and memories blur.

Comment:
The camera moves slowly, slowly. The images are impressionistic. The boy who lives in the old house, is perhaps the hero from Sokurov's latest film, The Second Circle. The one who, after the death of his father, moved to Krim to forget.
Karmen is grey, soft and very sweet. There is a lot of Chekov and the soul of St Petersburg in it, even though it was filmed in Jalta. A very Russian house, very nostalgic images, winter, a burning log-fire. As if the boy were trying to remember, but is not really able to.
In the memory of man there is always a space reserved for the forgotten and the past. Blurred images, wind, snow. It snows over the garden, it snows over the house, it snows over the very memory of man.
The boy has a dinner with a man. But not for real, but as if in a dream. The wine that the man cannot drink, their conversation and the words that do not meet. Old newspapers, an old piano, a song that is heard in the distance. It all comes from a dream. But at the same time the dream is real.
A bird eats from the boy's mouth (one of the most beautiful images in the films) Is it the soul of the man? Is it the soul of the boy? Is it our dreams, our forgotten, repressed childhood? Can the reality of everyday life and the reality of the soul meet?
The man from nowhere, with his weak, slightly ironic smile and his dreamy movements, changes the boy's life. The boy sees the bird. He hears the old bird. He also remembers things that cannot pertain to his own life. He remembers the past.
Kamen is like a bridge between reality and the subconscious, between present and past, between real life and nostalgia. The longing for a life that could have been, that was. That is?
Elena Samuelsson

Orig. titel
Kamen: Medverkande
L. Mozgovoy, P. Alexandrov: Manus
Yury Arabov: Foto
Alexander Bourov: Talat språk
Russian