Added to: Alexander Sokurov Ranked & 2015 Ranked

An absolutely gorgeous essay on art during wartime. The playful nature Sokurov infuses in this otherwise highly didactic piece of cinema is an absolute delight. Different time periods flow into each other like ones mind does while walking through a museum, drifting from one piece of art to the next. Time is both of the utmost importance in Sokurov's work and the last thing he seems to care about. What he wants is to show and tell about an absolute passion of his and he does so with the delicate touch of a master painter himself, dissecting the smallest little tidbits to recount this aptly named elegy for Europe. It's one, big, overarching story, almost as grand and epic as Sokurov's masterpiece Russian Ark, layered on top of itself, a book of short stories weaved together into a beautiful whole. This is cinema. This is just cinema to its fullest potential. Sokurov's filmography is something else, something completely out of this world and at the same time deeply ingrained in its very core.

And the very best part may be that it is almost impossible to explain and thus spoil, so everyone who reads this will have to find out for their damn selves how mightily beautiful this is.