Unclenching the Fists

SPOILERS Born from the Chechen Belsan school hostage incident, this award-winning film is a personal voice that we so often don't hear in the world. You can spend more than the first half of this film wondering why you're watching it. At first I thought, "oh, this is about an abusive father." And then, I thought, "oh, another film about a dysfunctional family." There is only the very slightest hint of the true monster hiding under the bed. Only as the curtain drew painstakingly and slowly open, did I realize that we are looking at meteoric destruction resulting from a singular, most horrible PTSD causing event. Underneath all the dysfunction, there is true love, concern, and caring. This is the genre of horror film that brings me to tears. Kira Kovalenko has made an amazing, complex, realistic splash on the international screen. At one level, we're looking at the labyrinth of real love. At another level, we're perhaps looking at a reflection of Chechnya's love-hate relationship with mother Russia. I only did not give this a 5/5 because I felt that with just a little more work on the screenplay and direction, we could have arrived at the denouement with more empathy for the brother and father. I say that, but personally, I lack any imagination of how that might have happened.

Ada's fists were clenched throughout resembling a state of infancy, and her body wound up tight, such a somatic symbolism of helplessness. It's so affecting that we surely feel the discomfort crawl around in our own bodies when seeing personal space being invaded and the ways of life stifled by different masculine forces in Ada's life. There's also a lack of motherly affection and a feminine exemplar within the family, which just made Ada's emotions obscure to the men who let their manliness go unchecked and astray. Walking on, carrying the body and mind of a woman, Ada traverses into a dark tunnel in search of a light.