Whispering Pages
– The pages that whisper through this brooding, beautiful tone poem are from nineteenth-century Russia..
The pages that whisper through this brooding, beautiful tone poem are from nineteenth-century Russian literature, primarily Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. An anonymous man wanders through decomposing, fog-enshrouded catacombs and encounters a series of “the degraded and the humiliated,” including a holy prostitute and a Kafkaesque bureaucrat. Shot partly in Sokurov’s dreamlike black and white with a dense sound track of eerie, echoing voices and bursts of mournful Mahler.
08 Oct 1994
Russian
Aleksandr Sokurov
Aleksandr Sokurov
Aleksandr Cherednik, Sergey Barkovskiy, Elizaveta Koroleva, Galina Nikulina
The existential protagonist is a hungry, homeless, socially isolated, and socially alienated young man living on the streets of an anonymous Russian big city in the 19th Century. He's looking for answers about himself and the things that he sees around him, but he's coming up short. Very innovative cinematography that alternates between B&W and full color through the course of the film in a way that accents the dramatic action. Sometimes, a B&W scene will even become full color in just one spot on the screen, a unique alternative to a close up shot.
1 win & 1 nomination.