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United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: LANGUAGES: Russian ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), English ( Subtitles ), ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN (1.85:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Cast/Crew Interview(s), Interactive Menu, Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: The Russian writing/directing team of Boris Khlebnikov and Alexei Popogrebsky makes their feature debut with the road movie Koktebel. Starting in Moscow, a widowed alcoholic father (Igor Chernevich) and his 11-year-old son (Gleb Puskepalis) set out on foot headed for the Crimean town of Koktebel. Along the way, they meet up with grumpy recluse Mikhael (Vladimir Kucherenko), who ends up shooting the father during a drunken brawl. Luckily, local doctor Xenia (Agrippina Steklova) fixes him up, leading to a romance. The father stays with her, while the son finishes the journey by himself. Koktebel was shown at the 2003 Karlovy Vary Film Festival. SCREENED/AWARDED AT: Berlin International Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, Moscow International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, ...Koktebel ( Roads to Koktebel )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
26 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
I found this film incredibly calming to watch. The pace is slow, perhaps even mournful, but this is so every inch of the beautiful Russian landscape is captured by the camera. The camera work is truly wonderful on this film, lingering on wide scale shots of the bleak Russian steppe in order to let that unique landscape and its splendour fully impact on the audience.
However, such slow pacing means that the story itself has substantially less impact than its backdrop. Substantial events are simply too far apart from each other for the story to have any real cohesive structure. The character based story is still quite strong, especially in the case of the father whose weaknesses and failings are revealed slowly as the story progresses. I found the character of the son rather flat, however, and based too heavily on childhood petulance. He acts as a tool of the film maker rather than as an independent character, for it is through the child that the weaknesses of the parent are revealed.
In conclusion, well worth watching. Despite some weaknesses in its story, the film is still highly memorable for the love and care that has clearly gone into crafting it.
However, such slow pacing means that the story itself has substantially less impact than its backdrop. Substantial events are simply too far apart from each other for the story to have any real cohesive structure. The character based story is still quite strong, especially in the case of the father whose weaknesses and failings are revealed slowly as the story progresses. I found the character of the son rather flat, however, and based too heavily on childhood petulance. He acts as a tool of the film maker rather than as an independent character, for it is through the child that the weaknesses of the parent are revealed.
In conclusion, well worth watching. Despite some weaknesses in its story, the film is still highly memorable for the love and care that has clearly gone into crafting it.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
A pleasant enough road movie, about a divorced (or widowed, I don't remember) man going with his young son from Moscow to the Crimea. He's an aeronautical engineer who has been fired and has hit the bad times (maybe with the recovery of Russia's economy under Putin, the argument is slightly out of date). We see them traveling through the countryside in a dilapidated train, and then through the bad roads of Western Russia and Eastern Ukraine. Nothing much happens, but before reaching the Black Sea they stop at small towns, where they offer to repair the roof to a house where a mean old man lives, meet a pretty young doctor, etc. Some reviews I read wrote about the pair traveling through the desolate steppes of the former Soviet Union, yet this is some of the most fertile and densely populated part of that country. The pace of the film is slow, though not terribly so, compared with traditional Russian cinema, and the characters seem real even if the plot is slightly far-fetched. Recommended.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
This is a beautifully simple film. I bought it on the recommendation of the other reviews on this page and was not disappointed. It is a subtle story of a father and son setting off for Crimea to find a new life. The story picks up after the wife/mother's death, and charts their journey across the countryside which is stunningly rich and bleak in contrast. The relationship between the boy and his father gathers weight when the father becomes interested in a woman, and what makes the boy tick suddenly comes to the fore. No review can do it justice, it really takes your heart and soul somewhere else - it'll stay with you for a long time after.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Hope
We all have these places, don't we, that mean nothing much to everyone else but one returns there because it's a chance to revive, or find something important to us. Read more
Published 6 days ago by Trionon
needs a better dvd release
This dvd is a bit of a dud. Terrible conversion with horrible audio compression (the many scenes with heavy rainfall become a tinny, warbling affair), and over-sharpened badly... Read more
Published 7 months ago by M. Eastgate
Interesting Film
I watched this at the cinema when it first came out, due mostly to the fact that it reminded me of The Return. Read more
Published on 10 Jan 2007 by Pumpkin Wood
Russian Road Trip
"Koktebel" is a minimalist Russian film filmed in the style of Andrei Tarkovsky. It follows the road trip of a father and son across the Russian countryside from Moscow to the... Read more
Published on 7 Mar 2006 by L. Davidson
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