Душа моя, Мария (1995)

Глупый старик.Я ведь совсем не то, что ты думаешь. [stupid old man. "I am nothing like what you think I am," says an apparition - a beautiful woman, Death? - to old Mikola Khremchik, who has lost his mind, having found no more inhabitants in the offices or in the town mill, and assumes that She is his late wife because she answers to the same name as that Maruya. A catastrophe occurred and no one - and I am not referring to the fiction of the plot but in reality - within hundreds of miles around even knew that the plant existed. Chernobyl, whose reactor exploded in April 1986. This disturbing work shows old Mikola accompanied by his faithful mastiff Pirat, now in a boat, now wandering around surrounded by an atmosphere that, in a crescendo, will become like that of sleepwalkers on their nightly walks during the nigthmares; Early on he asked the neighbor Litrukha to take care of his dacha and he visited Mashenka's grave practically to talk about how expensive sugar is and about his son Andreiy who is already a captain. Only he can see the woman with long hair and an angelic expression. The old man's perplexity was legitimate at the beginning, but when he rescues a worker from an old egg or well, he urges him to leave the town like the others. But he remains involved with the woman whom the children cannot see either. In his ramblings, he believes that the apparition takes him to a section of the forest where the old man prays, but when his son Andreiy bursts into the dacha, as part of the military rescue maneuvers, the bucolic and mystical evocation of old Mikola disappears and he receives to his son who urges him first calmly and then violently to take his things to get out of there. Mikola escapes from her son and yells at the little animals she has in her garden but also at the filly Kotcha. He absolutely refuses to move from there even though his son guarantees him another 20 years of life if they leave now."Who allowed you to drink this milk? It's contaminated!!" his son shouts at him as he pushes him to leave. As she saw that the old man would not move from there, the beautiful woman Maruya stood up and told Mikola, if I touch them on the forehead, your son will never be able to get up and leave here either. No! The old man immediately relented and diligently accompanied Andreyi. They had time to say goodbye at the grave of their wife and mother. It is assumed that the old man escapes from his son's sight on the railway where they travel, an ellipsis is made. Mikola returns to her abandoned home and calls from the orchard "Maruya". The apparition or woman with long and beautiful hair lays him on a bed that in his mind is a boat in the mist of the lake. This is the ideal mystical, metaphysical and profound approach that I have found in cinema about Chernobyl, outside of documentaries.