In Mother and Son there is an excess of sweetness in both directions, thanks to which these two beings can neither dwell on earth nor leave this world. They make all the mistakes when, in addition, sacrifices are not needed there, they do not serve anyone. Scenarios are almost always constructed with the fundamentalism of love, because in Sokurov the body of things is always a metaphor for something else, the embodiment of something that does not belong to this world. In The Silent Trial, Virilio made a broad statement about the complicity of contemporary radical art and media with its “cold-blooded perception” that fascinates the narcissistic body that suffers with the automatic camera that tortures.

However, in Sokurov, the human body is never private, but is always a metaphor for the body of Christ, the embodiment of something that does not belong to this world. A bit like the tearful, trembling figures of El Greco that Sokurov so admired, always swaying like a flame, as if they were not quite there, about to rise or just descend. No, some kind of optimistic strength. Besides, if it were sentimentalism, we would see no reason to reject it, surrounded, as we are, by the ever-smiling euphoria of telecommunications.

If, soon after birth, a person is old enough to die, as the philosopher says, it is also true that after his birth a person is still a child before death. This is Ella's status for her son, who sees her mother die as a child who could be her daughter. Close-up the wrinkled hand of the mother and after his neck suddenly clenched with pain in front of the lying body, worthy of the learned spirit of nature, the muscular study of suffering, like Dürer or Leonardo. The life of their bodies is mixed with the dream of what surrounds them.

All this between the foreshadowing of mother and son, angles evoked by the painting that enhance the silhouette of creatures located between dream and vigil, between the unreal and the real. The dream, as well as those amazing areas in bloom, is presented as a metaphor for death. The early death we are already in comes sweetly because we are his children. There is an eroticism of the absent, almost of illness. For example, in those “absence of crisis” of the father in Father and Son, when, however, radiography chest doesn't show anything.

Death is not a terminal fact, but the impossibility of daily erosion. It is an impossibility, however, that in order to live and die as humans we must accept. That is why the son combs it like a child, makes her walk along her hands in radiant desert paths, wrapped in a blanket that keeps the memory of the Holy Shroud. He who was the Son must be the Father.

He who will be the Father will soon be the Son again in this wheel of ages. But nothing, nothing that is known, nothing that can be cured - to live, perhaps, as the main character of the Indian song Duras. The son even gives her liquid in a bottle as if she were a child, as if her illness was nothing. Our film, he says, unlike La Piedada, puts Mary in the arms of Christ. Almost no one now has a weapon, where they can rest, where they fall. Sokurov, Deleuze would say, thinks about perceptions, not concepts.

Please don't let anyone think that this is a less accurate form of thinking. Focus on accuracy of images, accuracy of soundtrack and script in Hubert Robert, happy life, in Mother and Son, in Father and Son. The Russian film director seems to be telling us that to restore piety in this irreconcilable world - "today almost no one has a weapon to fall" - it is necessary to renew the pact with the devil, with that which was burned by the witches, to maintain a relationship with the demon of change. As if we had to believe that the monstrous, especially the monstrous, also needed our prayers.

It is possible that there is a certain type of bestiality, without possible imputation, which is only pacified by the desire for it. In essence, Deleuze said, every thought opens a line of witchcraft. We are in this line of shadow. At the same time, as he hinted at Moloch, religion would restrain the terrible plans of man. Religion, which, of course, like Dostoevsky from The Hidden Pages, does not save us anything, because it only calms the inversion of evil, from the worst, from the boiling of pain. Religion, especially Christianity, with the essence of which Nietzsche has an ambiguous relationship, does not cease to generate a feverish atheism, which constantly collapses into the profile of the real, which seeks and explores the ghost of the earthly.

In the film "Sokurov" death is something that is on the other side, behind the mirror. This is what whispers here and opens there, like human space, screams, aroma, breeze, whisper, hanging branches. The poor who think that this experience of nature is simply “mystical”, lacking rigor and therefore must be overcome, integrated into a society whose cultural production is finally - this is the End of History - global. If Sokurov is to be “anti-modern,” he must get rid of all this mythology, this crust of the present that prevents us from entering the temple of the present.

We are not talking about the naturalistic character - mechanical, pure, without mafic - existing only as a dream of our metaphysics, but descending to what is sovereign and contactless, because it has the worst within. The nature of Sokurov cannot be surpassed and not preserved, because it completely goes under our domination.

She is a danger, even in her unreal beauty. Man is not permanent until death, he does not remain there. On the contrary, modern culture is a culture of replacement, a constant change that should protect us from the continuity of finitude, that demon of real evil. As we see, we are in front of the pessimist in an easy way, in this supposed strength of the historical and social. In turn, Sokurov looks at difficult times with optimism, as if he were living without protection. Just the opposite of our metaphysics.

In any case, Sokurov is not interested in death as a physiological phenomenon. His interest is in informing the meaning of things when we don't, which he says is tacitly forbidden. He is interested in the meaning of natural death, so he approaches it in slow motion, escaping from the spectacle, without this sensational image of the dead - always others - who cover us with death. Sokurov addresses the heroic efforts of man to remain before the limit that concerns him. With the simplicity that characterizes him, he says: “Cinema must stand for strength and hope, strength and hope.”

As we can see, we are light years away from any of the damned, cynical realism that has long been fashionable when it comes to humanity. A little from Duchamp, Cindy Sherman, Bruce Nauman. Apparently "anti-Nietzscheano" - although this is not the case if we think about Nietzsche's statement of the statement - perhaps it is more immediately assimilated to Schopenhauer, Houellebecq. At the same time, when he crosses scenography and objects of the real world, Sokurov is concerned about something that he does not have time to do. A few explicit references that make modernity a bit pejorative is the elimination of interference and middlemen from above.

While it is a very modern technique, language, in this rich image that makes Velázquez a model for Dali and the surrealists, it is not, because he depicts an immobilized humanity that remains the same as a thousand years ago, complete in his empty hands. Sokurov takes distance from the current culture so as not to get rid of anything, but in order to fall straight into a gift without cover, without protection, he must work only in mourning of tragedy and pain. Pain brings us back to nature, an accident for which there has never been “coverage” or an antivirus program.

The nature of the craziest naturalism, the nature of Sokurov, is nothing more than pain transformed into strength, into becoming. When he speaks, with a simplicity that would make us blush, of “strength and hope,” he refers to that which comes from working in the limb to give form to the mortal condition. Above the “nihilism” of our current culture, the author of Father and Son invites us to turn the impossible from real into an embrace, a connection. Embrace the impossible, otherwise using our limit, which will lead to the destruction of our illusions to the end.

By understanding death differently, there is hope. It seems that we are talking about Unamuno or Veniamina, but it is possible that Sokurov is a philosopher of this time. Always shadows of other things, sounds from other parts. In every moment, every moment; in every place, in every place. It was as if man lived in an extremely populated desert, an ancient piano that resonates with every step of time. Sound is the soul of images, says Sokurov, who is contemplating cinema where the image can be turned off to leave only the soundtrack, for example, a radio.

From the old radio days of the sixties - theatre, opera, Wagner - comes this density of soundtracks, a sound frame where the continuous intersection of wave frequencies hums. Hence the idea that the ear, in front of the image, “is not yet dressed in the atmosphere of the surrounding mediocrity.” But music and sound should not dominate the image. They - different worlds, which are in constant tension, coexist and that only from time to time they merge into a duet. It is for this reason that Sokurov supports an all-out war against optical realism, which is dominated by an "extremely simple and concise" approach and order of appearance.

Realism, dominated by Cartesian perspective and hierarchy, anthropomorphism, visual organization of effects and observation - right from optics to panoptic prison there is only one difference in degrees. To purify the tactile view, where the sixth sense, sound and even touch, look ahead, Sokurov began developing targets that disrupt the usual visual impression. Well, it's about the break with that subtitle that holds back insight. For this there is nothing better - this is also the case of Viola - than to return to the power of ancient Western painting, including icons.