The Long Farewell
With its daring formalist freedom, Kira Muratova’s pointillist family portrait so perplexed and unnerved Soviet censors that it effectively halted her career for years afterward. A kind of psychological breakup movie, The Long Farewell traces the growing rift that develops between an emotionally impulsive single mother (stage legend Zinaida Sharko, transcendent in one of her first film roles) and her increasingly resentful teenage son (Oleg Vladimirsky), who upends her world when he announces that he wishes to live with his faraway father. The seemingly simple premise is rendered anything but by Muratova’s dreamy, drifting style, with off-kilter framing, editing, and dialogue continually pushing cinema’s aesthetic and expressive boundaries outward.
Available In
Collector's Set
Collector's Set
Cast
- Zinaida Sharko
- Yevgeniya Vasilyevna
- Oleg Vladimirsky
- Sasha Ustinov
- Yuriy Kayurov
- Nikolay Sergeyevich
- Svetlana Kabanova
- Tatyana Kartseva
- Tatyana Mychko
- Masha
- Lidiya Bazilskaya
- Tonechka
- Lidiya Dranovskaya
- Yelizaveta Andreyevna Vykhodtseva
- Sofya Belskaya
- Gostya
- Oleg Emstev
- Mim
- Viktor Ilchenko
- Pavel Konstantinovich
Credits
- Director
- Kira Muratova
- Written by
- Natalya Ryazantseva
- Cinematography
- Gennady Karyuk
- Production design
- Enrique Rodríguez
- Costumes
- Natalya Akimova
- Sound
- Igor Skinder
- Editor
- Valentina Oleynik
- Music
- Oleg Karavaychuk
A scene from The Long Farewell
