Ignore the reviewers

As someone else has already commented, this got an especially predictable & lazy set of reviews (in the UK - don't know about the US), even in usually OK places: Sight & Sound, Philip French, etc. These ran along the lines: it's Russian and has some long takes so it must be overly gloomy, slow secondhand Tarkovsky. There are some scriptural allusions** so it must be religiose and/or clumsily symbolic. A second film that expands on the director's first so clearly he's a one trick pony. Not all the plot is unfolded exactly how and when the viewer wants it, therefore must be 'enigmatic' or worse 'confused'. And so on.

Well I hope if you're considering watching the film to the extent of bothering to read these comments: ignore this. This is an excellent film. If you don't find it quite as good as The Return, well that might be because The Return is *amazing*. Doesn't alter the qualities of this or make it a 'second-film block' or all that other nonsense. There's nothing confused about it either: on a basic level it's a bold and simple domestic/pastoral tragedy about characters misunderstanding emotional communication (reminded me in a funny way of Thomas Hardy). And mistiming too: the end has to be in flashback because (spoiler perhaps) it pushes home the sense that figuring out what came before *comes all too late now* to save anything.

**One not mentioned already: the shot of running water beneath the house. Yes it looks quite a lot like Tarkovsky (I'd say in fact that it's the only bit bears than a superficial resemblance). But also: Matthew 7:26-7.