REFLECTION

Film Movement
Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net, linked from Rotten Tomatoes by Harvey Karten
Director: Valentyn Vasyanovych
Screenwriter: Valentyn Vasyanovych
Cast: Roman Lutskiy, Nika Myslytska, Nadia Levechenko, Andriy Rymaruk, Ihor Shulha
Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 4/22/22

“Reflection” is a follow-up to the director’s “Atlantis, which won top prize in Venice’s Horizons program. Valentyn Vasyanovych’s latest is a film that comes across almost as two studies centered on key months in the life of a surgeon. Serhiy (Roman Lutskyi), who has not yet volunteered to fight the Russians who had invaded Ukraine in 2014, has a talk with Andrii (Andriy Rymaruk), the latter giving up-to-the-moment revelations of mayhem when he was at the front. Serhiy has a twelve-year-old daughter Polina (Nika Myslytska—the director’s own child) and an ex-wife Olha (Nadia Levchenkio), Olha now taking the role of Andriy’s current girlfriend.

An opening scene finds Polina playing paintball, a present for her birthday—a game whose popularity at the time could be a reflection of the war going on miles away. Suddenly the screen blacks out and we see Serhiy taking care of battle-scarred Ukranians, concentrating on chest compressions to a soldier who is covered with blood and who cannot be saved.

Later, Serhiy and Andrii drive toward the front and are captured by the mercenaries who shoot up the car leaving Andrii seriously wounded and both taken captive. Serhiy is tortured under the command of a Russian officer who, if the adversaries were using common sense would employ Serhiy in saving their own men. The surgeon must watch his good friend hung up by his arms, punched, and having a power drill invade his thigh. This is enough to cause PTSD in both the victim and witness. The Russians use a mobile crematory not unlike what they are using today in their cowardly invasion of a country that had already been forced to secede Crimea years back (an area with a majority of Russian ethnics), now intent on annexing the Donbas region in the East and taking over the whole country.

Serhiy, freed via a prisoner exchange, reestablishes a relationship with his ex-wife, particularly bonding with his daughter, who had been injured by falling off a horse but suffers greater inner pain wondering about the fate of Andrii, with whom she has been close and who wants him to be her godfather. Serhiy holds back on the bad news until the time comes to identify a body.

If this were a simple story about inhabitants of a war zone, it might lack originality. Instead Vasyanovych, who wrote, directs, filmed and edited the whole shebang, feels free to manipulate the proceedings artistically. He has no use for close-ups, filming most of the scene in middle-long. He will try audience patience by static shots where they seem to have no relevant impact. Close-ups are avoided in the torture scenes, making the movie difficult enough to watch, where some distance between subject and camera is justified. However, why have static, contemplative scenes such as one where the daughter does exercises on the sofa; or where Serhiy simply sits at his desk? A simple enough plot appears to serve largely as an excuse for cinematic flourishes.

However the director, thanks to a fine performance from his daughter, does provide a look at how an girl approaching her teens is growing up too fast. The war has caused a personal hardship for her—she has lost her best adult friend—and has witnessed a tragedy that should never have occurred save for the greed of a country’s president eager to restore the empire that had been lost to the Russian Federation three decades ago.

In Russian and Ukrainian with English subtitles.

128 minutes. © 2022 by Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online

Story – B-
Acting – B+
Technical – C
Overall – B-