Structured like a modernist novel, this World War II drama (a Russian-German coproduction) interweaves the perspectives of three different narrators: a police officer in Paris (Philippe Duquesne) who collaborates with the Gestapo, a well-to-do Russian emigre to France (Yuliya Vysotskaya) who briefly joins the resistance, and an ambitious German aristocrat (Christian Clauss) who rises through the ranks of the Nazi Party. Andrei Konchalovsky (Runaway Train), directing a script he wrote with Elena Kiseleva, frequently interrupts the story of this 2016 feature so characters can address the camera, confronting their innermost feelings and defending their actions, in passages that recall some of the 1960s films of Ingmar Bergman. Black-and-white cinematography and minimalist sound design contribute to the bleak, austere tone, which befits the theme of survival in a morally bankrupt world. In subtitled French, German, Russian, and Yiddish.
Paradise
2 hours 12 min • 2016
