![]() ![]() ![]() Looking up the daughter's name, Anja, on Wikipedia sees you directed to 'Anya' which I read translates out of Russian and into English as 'bringing goodness', thus interestingly contradicting Saiva's supposed curse. The film is narrated to us by Saiva, whose opening speech tells us of how a village elder of some description once told her many years ago that she would bring death and wrong-doing to whomever she cared for, or just generally loved. Throughout, murder and savagery is the order of the day and desperate scenarios are used as the basis for the human mind to act as the subject of the study. This rather shocking sequence of raw predicament and must-do human survival consequently sets the overall tone of the film that raw look at how human beings act and react when push turns to shove and emotions, sensations and predicaments must be confronted. Saiva and Anja's basic, but brutal, way of life is thrust into our faces by way of some shock tactics of animalistic levels, in which an animal itself is on the wrong end of some harm. Unfolding in a large and ice cold location, which is wide enough to encompass Russian soldiers people whose names sound Nordic as well as characters whom might well be of either Kazakh or Tajik descent, although shot in Norway, the film covers the trials and experiences of a middle aged woman named Saiva (Yeoh) and her adopted younger daughter named Anja (Krusiec). ![]() Cracks are initially there, as if something is melting or falling apart and are apparent in the opening shot, while the condition of the glacier at the very end is representative of just how far things have come between the two people and the world around them as we witness those respective horrors and see the condition of the ice at the end. The manner in which Kapadia's film opens echoes the manner in which it closes, with a similar tracking shot over what appears to be the same spread of ice – both sequences are representative of both the society within the film, as well as the mother-daughter bond two people of that ilk share and experience throughout. Somewhat under-looked British director Asif Kapadia's 2007 film, Far North, opens with a rather exquisite tracking shot which sweeps across a very large, very open ice glacier that is shown to be split in several areas and thus, beginning to fall apart. ![]()
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