REFLECTION

Ukraine, 2021, 127 minutes, Colour.

Directed by Valentyn Vasyanovych

This is a very serious and sombre film from Ukraine. It presupposes audience knowledge of Ukraine, the tense relationship with Russia in the past, famines, part of the Soviet Union, freedom, and the clash in 2014 and Russia’s appropriation of the Crimea. This episode is the context for this film.

However, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the continued war, it has even more relevance and poignancy.

This is an episodic film with a distinctive style of camera work. Most of the sequences are long, filling the frame, the action within the frame, the camera generally not moving except from distance to foreground. In between there are a few action sequences like going from the torture room down to the basement and the hurried moving down the steps.

The scene is set with two men talking about their work as doctors, one at the headquarters, the other coming from the front, and some personal touches of relationships, along with a demonstration of firing bullets and avoiding them. The film then moves to a scene of surgery at some length, especially with the bloodied bodies. A transition then to a drive in the rain, and a young woman asking her boyfriend about patriotism and why he hadn’t enlisted.

A scene at home, looking at an LP, noise from the player, the transition to a further drive, the rain, an action sequence, and the capture of the doctor.

There are some gruelling sequences following, interrogations, some graphic moments of torture, the intensity of the interrogator, the soldiers watching, the effect on the doctor, his being hurried down the steps to the basement, stripping him, vigorous hosing him. She is one interrogation, and his being placed in the cold cell.

There is a sequence of a huge vehicle, allegedly for humanitarian aid but, with its assistants, inside a machine for the disposal of bodies. Further torture, further disposal of the bodies and the offhand conversation between the two men.

There follows a quieter interrogation and the doctor confessing to being a spy. There is an emotional sequence of a long drive along a long dark road leading to an exchange of prisoners.

Then a transition to a conversation with a high-rise buildings background, some more intimate sequences, the man on a couch, a woman doing exercise, bins of LPs.

The final part of the film seems to be a medley of sequences, a meal, branches, book, a running track and dogs, dressage, the rain, city lights, a rider rescuing dogs.

The title of the film is Reflection and, with its range of images, the war background, humanity and inhumanity, and poetic images and symbols, there is much to reflect on.