Popular reviews

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  Review by Hutch ★★★★½

  Mariya Saakyan’s The Lighthouse is a fine example of poetic cinema descended from the influence of Tarkovsky. There are similarities, particularly in its muted colours, opaque narrative and fascinating sound design. It also reminds me a little of Zvygantsev’s films with their formal elegance, although The Lighthouse’s sensibilities are warmer, and its effect less severe.
   
  The film tells the story of Lena, who has returned from Moscow to visit her childhood home in Armenia, and to try to rescue her grandparents from their remote village in a region of the Caucaus mountains, where conflicts are escalating following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Lena arrives with good intentions, but she soon realises she’s trapped.

  Her village, which is nestled…

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  Review by Two Cineasts ★★★★½

  Film reviews in 22 sentences (or less)
  Today: The Lighthouse

  „The birds took wing, but couldn't alight, just circling in the sky.“

  Hi everybody, again we stumbled over a small miracle just because we found an entry here on Letterboxd - thank you very much - what a beautiful film that was, can hardly be put into words and what makes us really sad is the fact that the director of this little treasure passed away much too soon, like Larissa Shepitko who unfortunately died in a traffic accident after her international breakthrough with "The Ascent", so this time we will wait in vain for Mariya Saakyan to give us another miracle. Unfortunately, this highly talented woman died too early…

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  Review by Henri ★★★★

  Something very special. Raw, meditative and really compelling with its focus on memory. It opened a poetic window into a harrowing and difficult subject, but with a semi-optimistic and boldly humane lens.

  It's astonishing how many singular emotions and little tales in the midst of the communal experience it embodies; from the sense of displacement to even some tragicomic moments. And it's a shame how easily this kind of work goes unnoticed.

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  Review by brintharaj ★★★★

  “Strange birds in the new found sky, strange faces on the new city’s body, grey pearl ashes and dust, sad is the funeral repast, the birds took wing, but couldn’t alight, just circling the sky.”

  The metaphoric references of the bird from the poem describes the entrapment of the central character, Lena as she travels back to her childhood home to persuade her grandparents to leave a war-torn village in Armenia. There is plenty to admire with the look and feel of the film, of which the visuals and sound are very prominent motifs in exploring the dynamics of isolation and camaraderie of the villagers in the midst of conflict.

  First of all, I can’t believe this was filmed in…

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  Review by AshCrow ★★★½ 2

  Engulfed by Fog

  Ich wette mit euch, irgendwo in den Nebelschwaden die die zerklüftete Berglandschaft rund um das vom Krieg gebeutelte Dorf in Armenien durchziehen das in Mayak/The Lighthouse zum dreh und Angelpunkt der Geschichte wird, irgendwo dort steckt der Geist von Andrei Tarkowski und lächelt zufrieden.

  Regisseurin Mariya Saakyan inszeniert in knackigen 78 Minuten eine poetische Geschichte über Krieg und Terror, Familie und Verlust. In ruhigen und zurückhaltenden Bildern von träumerischer Qualität die wie ein Echo des großen Meisters wirken. Ein verträumtes Spiel aus Licht und Schatten, aus Sonne und Nebel, aus Gesichtern und Landschaften, eine kleine in Vergessenheit geratene Russische Perle mit kleinen Macken.

  Trailer:
  www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwB6MLM3IsA

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  Review by SkaneNoise ★★★★

  Music (or lack of music) is so important to a film. I stand by the fact that ‘Star Wars: A New Hope‘ is just an okay sci-fi movie with some pretty inventive parts if you don’t have that John Williams score to shoot it into the stratosphere of cinema classic.

  I think this film’s music takes a very good film that balances abstractive emotional moments with a good story about a woman trying to get her relatives to move away from a war (it’s never too heavy, but never too light) and turns it into something special. Maybe really special, I need to let it settle a bit.

  Mariya Saakyan (the director) totally understands this. She opens the film so perfectly showing that the music will be the light.

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  Review by 𝔸ℕℕ𝔸 ★★½

  Sofiko Chiaureli had a dream she was a tree. This worried her. She couldn't move. Then she realised that she shouldn't move because she had all of life inside her roots and branches.

  That analogy works for The Lighthouse where a young woman returns to a war-stricken Armenian village to plead with her grandparents to leave with her to Moscow.

  The visuals and mood take over so much that this becomes a non-story. It's hard to describe how disappointing this was. Apart from a few scenes, mostly involving real footage from conflict at the end to remind me of what actual tension looks like, I felt nothing for this Nostalgia-lite banal fare.

  Only gets 2.5 stars for its cinematography, because I'm a sucker for fog.

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  Review by Shea ★★★★

  The birds took wing,
  But couldn’t alight,
  Just circling in the sky

  Saakyan pulls us into a place outside of time with an effortless formal mastery; the incredible soundscapes of wind, train whistles, the sounds of war and the gentle non-diegetic music (I'm completely in love with the score) feel as though they are emerging from somewhere distant, conjured up by memory. The same goes for the omnipresent mist that drifts along every frame, still never obscuring the sensations of the mountainside's chill or the last streaks of sun over the valley. While watching it's easy to be reminded of Tarkovsky but there's a more fragmented, imprecise mode of editing employed here - quicker, disjointed cuts appear among the calm,…

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  Review by inscenejums ★★★★½ 3

  In awe – the dream-like visuals, the music, the fluid sense of time; it feels very personal, something coming from deep inside, but at the same time it's not just an expression of personal sorrow, it's remembrance, it's a monument, and I think it's also a protest. It's shared by everyone, who has experienced the historical situation the film refers to (and similar situations, that is, times of war), and so is very real, but it's also made abstract, translated into metaphors, images, moments that we see played out in the film. It's mostly feelings and memory-like bits, but it's also a message, where the personal is that on the basis of which something can be said. And is said.

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  Review by laila ★★★½ 2

  mariya saakyan reaches moments of true greatness with her 2006 sole feature film, the lighthouse. technically well executed, it’s also poetic, moving and sincere. it cleverly uses a very personal situation of captivity to tackle broader themes, with an underlying optimism that’s hard to figure out.

  what struck me the most about it though was the relation between war and technology. life in the village the main character lives feels timeless, like flyora from come and see could show up at any moment, looking for shelter or just passing through, even if with the decades separating the two stories. 

  of course this impression is heavily influenced by the grittiness and fog of its looks, but the only solid indicators of a specific time period were the guns and war vehicles. it’s odd how technologies developed with military intents find their way to be useful in regular life, like a bad joke of sorts. makes you wonder what’s really essential.

  7/10

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  Review by Ewan ★★★★

  This poetic, beautiful film that touches on war and family in rural Armenia is very much my kind of thing, where the narrative almost takes a back seat to imagery that suggests its themes via metaphor and allusion to inner states, as Lena tries to get her family out of a war-strewn area. It feels very much like some works by Angelopoulos (but without the overweening self-importance) or the more elegiac films of Sokurov, and to be sure there's a lot of beautiful and potent imagery that can feel almost abstract. And yet, focusing on the women of this village grounds it in customs and lived experienced in a successful way I think. It's really very sad that the filmmaker didn't live to make many more films, because as a debut feature this is extraordinary.

  March Around the World 2019 #8/30 (Armenia)

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  Review by Amer

  مأساة أمّة باكملها بعيون فتاة تلقي بروحها برًا لكي تنقذ أرواحًا مترهلة ، ثم تعلق في متاهة الماضي وتنهض لتتدحرج نحو وِصال الهروب الاخير ، حلمٌ ضبابيٌ معتمٌ تحلق في ارجاءِهِ طيورٌ تُكركِرُ على هواءِ الحرب. 

  ‏ترجمتي العربية: https://subscene.com/subtitles/mayak-the-lighthouse/arabic/2744286
  ‏رابط التحميل مرفق مع الترجمة.