Entertainment

Silent Souls

Why are we as we are, instead of some other way? That’s the existential question plaguing our loner Russian protagonist, Aist (Igor Sergeev), in this bleakly absurdist road movie. When a friend’s beloved wife dies, Aist is enlisted for help preparing the body and driving it to a scenic lakeside, her favorite spot, for the funeral pyre.

According to local tradition, the dead wife, Tanya, must be washed and adorned — in the most interesting places — with colored strings, and her husband, Miron, must tell eyebrow-raising intimate stories about her to whomever will listen. In this case, it’s Aist, looking a bit like a Slavic Kelsey Grammer, riding shotgun with his two pet songbirds and ruminating on his own unspoken feelings for the deceased. In flashbacks, we learn of Miron and Tanya’s secretly passionate love life, as well as the antics of Aist’s oddball poet father — emotional treasures hidden deep within the stoic landscape of West-Central Russia.

At a little over an hour, “Silent Souls” is hardly long, yet the camera’s repeated focus on the wintry, gray country road they’re traveling can feel somewhat ponderous — like life itself, as one of the guys in the film might wryly point out.