Confession From the Commander's Diary

Alexander Sokurov

• Burdine106, Sunday, September 21, 12:00-6:OOPM
• (there will be a brief intermission after part 3)

Confession From the Commander's Diary

"The Commander could not decide whether he should keep a diary and record the occurrences in his life. What if someone were to read it by chance?˛

"From early on he had understood the particular hardness of the military life. He assumed it with courage and with patience. But he was not to know that patience was itself an agonising task.˛

For Sokurov the military theme has long been interpreted as an existential one and so service on the frontiers, be they land or sea, becomes a metaphor for human behaviour. Compulsory military service, an institution that remains in the shattered civic life of Russia, is viewed by the filmmaker as an essential feature of reality, something that touches everyone -- males and females, those who have served in the army, those who have avoided it. It is a life of submission, a lack of freedom, a dependence on circumstances, of seclusion and the monotony of the daily routine. It's not just the people stuck in the frontier patrol ship, putting out to sea, who appreciate this -- everyone knows what it means. Sokurov's camera transforms the details it captures drawn from real people, the military seamen (including the principal protagonist, the Ship Commander) and the circumstance of their actual daily routine, into characters in a story. The young Commander's troubled meditations about his fate and profession are incorporated by Sokurov into the dialogue and he comes to be the filmmaker's alter­ego. As in Spiritual Voices, the chronicle rejects the expected (televisual) structure and becomes a form of traditional narrative -- a lyrical diary.