Direction: Valentyn Vasyanovych
Country: Ukraine
Reflection, the third feature from Ukrainian director Valentyn Vasyanovych, is a slow ride on the ugliness of war and comes slightly punctuated with traces of omens and superstition. Being a little long and directed with formal beauty, the film is subtler than the filmmaker’s previous drama, Atlantis, which also deals with dead bodies and war crimes. It’s not superior, though. Certain moments put me off and I was disappointed with the finale, yet on occasion, it manages to immerse you in a quiet miasma of trauma and reconciliation.
The exhausted Ukrainian surgeon Serhiy (Roman Lutskyi) is ambushed, captured and tortured by the Russian military. His medical qualifications save him from death as he pronounces his agonized fellow prisoners dead or alive after hours of torture. He then takes their bodies to a mobile cremation machine. This involuntary cooperation makes him a free man again under a false confession. But is he completely free after what he saw? The permanent scar inflicted by a traumatic war experience provokes an awakening of conscience that makes him want to re-approach his 12-year-old daughter, Polina (Nika Myslytska), and his ex-wife, Olha (Nadiya Levchenko).
Vasyanovych reveals a strange appeal as a storyteller. Sometimes he doesn’t give us too much, preferring long shots with a purpose. Other times, he surprises us by fragmenting the narrative flow with offbeat occurrences that do not always work. It's a demanding sit, a film both conscientious and indulgent, hopeful and exasperating. There are no high points to be found since the film excludes any sentimentality to better bring out the complexity of feelings.
