First of all she was acting really weird the whole movie and I figured it is because she's pregnant with some other guy's child and that's why she is acting weird around her husband, because she is lost in her own thoughts all the time. Later in the movie though, she says that it is actually Alex's baby, so why did she say it's not his and really, why was she acting so weird.
shareI am not sure myself but I guess It's because it wasn't their child like the two others. For every parent the child they create is their, it belongs to them: that's a materialistic point of view. But when you believe in a god that creates all the things on universe well all that you do and yourself are not yours anymore. It's god's. She felt they didn't own the child because she started to believe in it. That's why thete is all that iconography of the announcement to Mary because Jesus wasn't her child, it's god's.
shareWell, it can be also an other interpretation not religious.
It can be a critic of anthropocentrism. Men always want to possess and control everything but Vera says that the new child is free from his parents, they don't own him.
When she tells her friend that her husband is selfish and tends to own his family because he is like all the other machomen and he behave like that with the two first sons. They are condamned to be his legacy because he raised them for it. It's too late for them to be free. But the new one can not be raised in that path.
And when she says it's not his son, she acts like Keoma, at the end of Castellari film of the same name when he abandon his son and says he won't name him because he have to be free of his history, he must not carry his father legacy.
In fact, Vera tries like a tsunami to destroy the Icarus myth that resume the history of technology of men. Men always tried to own and dominate the world like gods that would be outside the world that's why he invented all this technology for protection. And the first creation of man is his reproduction, his child. Well, that's Vera seemed to say when she criticized her husband.
Well your explanation does make sense, but I can't believe that any rational mother would put her child's life (and as we see in the movie, her own) in jeopardy by saying to her husband that its not his child, just because she feels that men should not dominate the family, even though men have done this since the dawn of humanity (yeah i know its a run-on sentence).
shareAny thoughts on why she was acting weird. Like when Alex is talking to her and she just keeps quiet or says some weird stuff like "I'm afraid to talk to you". When Alex smacked her in the face I actually felt a sense of relief, I know that's not a good thing to say but I honestly felt that.
shareI agree. I think, too, that Vera is in the process of realizing that her existing children are individuals whom she cannot control. This we see in the scene of Vera and the daughter in the kitchen, where the daughter refuses to eat what Vera is preparing for her, and refuses the nickname Vera has given her.
The members of the family, too, seem estranged from one another, and Vera seems particularly affected by this. The cinematography reflects this lack of communication - the shots through murky windows, or along dark corridors etc., as do the innocent-seeming secrets Alex keeps from Vera, and (we later learn) she from him. These two emotional factors, in addition to the philosophical problem of having children discussed above, help to explain Vera's behavior.
The film is rather like dialectic materialism.
Only Russians really understand it.
Well, I understood it but I think she should have lightened up a bit!
But those Russians. When depression is around take cover.
Hi.
I think you have missed out on a few very important aspects of this film. I don´t want to give you my interpretation, as you should reach it yourself, but in order to understand Vera, you should re-watch the last 15 minutes of the movie, where there´s a dialogue between Vera and Robert.
I´ll give a small excerpt of it here. Read it carefully and you will realize who´s child it is and why she is so hopelessly depressed with her situation.
"Vera: I am pregnant
Robert: Are you pregnant?
Robert: I´m sorry...but this isn´t Alex´s Baby?
Vera: It´s his baby...and it isn´t.
Robert: What do you mean?
Vera: It is his baby. Of course it is. Whose else?
Vera: But it is not his, in a way that...our children are not ours.
They´re actually not only ours.
Vera: The way we´re not only our parents´children. Not only theirs.
Vera: Do you understand?
[a little later]
Vera: He loves us just for his sake. Like objects. God! I´ve been living like this for years.
Why do I feel so lonely? Why isn´t he talking to me the way he used to? or In thought he was talking to me...
Vera: I wouldn´t be able to explain anything to him. I need to do something.
Vera: If he´s going on like this everything will die. I don´t want to give birth to death.
Vera: We could live without dying. There´s such a possibility.
Robert: What possibility Vera?
Vera: I don´t know, but it surely does exist. And it´s only possible together, obne for another, otherwise...it´s impossible by oneself.
Vera: There´s no point. It´s a vicious circle.
Vera: How can I explain that to him? And make him see and understand what he´s doing."
Hi, I'd love an explanation on Vera's relationship with Robert. Thoroughly enjoyed the film, but I got lost with some of the relationships. Can anyone explain the significance of Robert? Was he Vera's lover, or just a friend? Thank you.
sharei have no explanation for the bit of conversation where vera had with robert towards the end of the film where she goes on about some gibberish that her children is hers and yet not hers etc etc..
but my opinion of why she lied to her husband that her unborn child is not his is due to the fact that she feels lonely and neglected. so in every bit of effort to get some form of reaction from him, she desperately cooks up this whole facade. this is proof in the scene when her husband says they have to talk and sits both of them down at the table. he asks vera what she was going to do with the baby and she kept avoiding the question by saying stuff like "we have grown estranged..." etc etc until to the point he got sick and decided not to pursue an answer and just go up to sleep.
is this based on a book? if it is maybe those who have read it have better insight?
*SPOILERS AHEAD*
This is how I understood it:
The drama is irony. She never actually cheated on her husband.
Vera is actually mentally insane, probably because she doesn't stand her unhappy marriage with Alex. With the insanity comes a strong suicidal drive.
Her explanations towards Robert don't make sense (neither do her arguments during her conversations with Alex). She's delirious. She hates herself and her relationship, so she lives in an alternate reality full of religious elements (something apparently running in the family).
The whole thing is an insane game (in the psychiatric sense) she plays, with the "reward" of death for her and punishment for Alex, if Alex can't cope with the "revelation" she brings him ("this child is not yours"). When the plan finally fails (the abortion doesn't kill her), she takes the pills. Then leaves the letter showing that Alex is the father, so to make the punishment stronger.
In the scene between her and Robert, Robert realizes that she's crazy, but he has no clue as to what to do about it.
The whole thing is ironic and plot-twist-ish: the baby is legit, Robert and Vera never had sex, Vera planned both her death and Alex's punishment, just because she's mentally insane.
BTW beautiful and brillant movie in many aspects, too bad that the plot didn't do it for me, so it was more like reading a clever essay than reading a compelling novel. But I'm curious to see more movies from this guy.
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Movies may serve a more dignified purpose than just appealing to an audience as entertainment.
During her conversation with Robert,Vera tells him that Alex treats his family like objects he owns...also during their face to face conversation Vera tells Alex that she fears Kir will grow up to be like him and Mark...it seems to me she wanted to save her unborn child from the overbearing influence of her father and his ways that she clearly disapproves...so she tells Alex that the child is not his...
But then again,I have only seen the movie once nd could be entirely wrong for all I know....
This is the only possible correct explanation. There have been many open answers during the movie, until the flashback scene. But here we can see that Vera isn't just a neglected woman, or trapped in a life in wilderness that she can't handle.
She is simply clinically ill, she has a severe depression. Not the "depression" that makes millions of people take unnecessary pills hoping that they will magically make their life a rose garden, a "disease" invented either for growth of pharmaceutical industry's incomes, or to control people by addicting them to drugs; no, this is a real depression that really destroys lives of the patient as well as family and others related to him/her.
But, though the frequent final solution for depressive people appears to be suicide, Vera isn't able to commit it. Is it either because of fear, or religion (and her sick mind uses the religion to create her own philosophy and life standards), but she can't force herself to perform it to the end. So she makes a whole rather complicated plan - something not unusual for people who spend their days and nights (having a lot of time as often suffering from insomnia) to create and then add, fulfill, update their versions of reality - and simply uses her husband as a weapon, as an instrument of her suicide. She leads their life to the point where, whatever he might do, ends with her death.
And also, everything is settled that he will have his conscience burdened: it will be his crime and punishment, even if he once realizes that he was manipulated he will never be free from the feeling that he caused the death of his wife, mother of his children, even the death of his unborn child.
Finally, some people emphasize that she hasn't been satisfied with her marriage. We could sympathize with her till that last flashback. But then we see that she has lost touch with reality, she even manipulated Robert, and we can't be sure what was the truth about her marriage. After all, Robert helped her because Alex was away from home because of his job, and Robert found him a new job so he could be more with his family. Does it fit into the picture of a classic bad, tyrant husband like Vera describes Alex to Robert? Or is this also a self-created torture of a sick mind, a consequence of the disease that Alex didn't have a chance to recognize being away from the family for the long time (something very common in post-communist societies).
I don't want to say that Alex is perfect. I would never say that a man who just for a second thinks of killing his wife is a saint, and even more, he almost forces her to do an abortion. But (not to defend him) we must have in mind that this is still a very patriarchal society - just remember the scene when Kir, Vera's preteen son, realizes that Robert has been alone with his mother. This is something that his mother was not supposed to do, and he can't keep it a secret from his father. But it is not Alex that planted this ideas in Kir, it is the society, the tradition, the mentality. Something that Vera had no chance to cope with.
i believe this film creates a lot of common questions which are superfluous as long as you consider that this film is a tragic statement and a huge tribute to a universal simple thing called LOVE:"love the long suffered and kind,love that not vaunts itself,love that not behave itself unseemly,love that seeks not its own,is not easily provoked and thinks no evil,love that rejoices not in inequity but in the truth,love that bears believes hopes and endures all things,that kind of love that if you have not...you are nothing".i believe all the film turns around this beautiful biblical statement.After considering this,maybe its not too hard to find out what Vera's problem is in the film and probably our problem in our real lives.
shareVera was depressed, confused, ambivilent, guilty, and most of all, distinctly Russian.
shareThis one's very much like The Revolutionary Road. The same premise, set at around the same time. Which one was made first?
my vote history:
http://imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=27424531