Farewell

Farewell (Christian Carion, 2009) is an excellent film and although it's been compared to The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006) ~ one of my favourite films, it doesn't carry the intensity created by Stasi Captain, Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) in his surveillance of Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and his lover Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck) and the unique understanding that he develops through discreet knowing of an other's personal life. But having said that there are moments in Farewell in which there is a heightened sense of drama and great depth between the two main protagonists ~ Sergei Grigoriev (Emir Kusturica) who passes state secrets and Pierre (Guillaume Canet) a French engineer based in Moscow who reluctantly takes those secrets to the French government. From the opening sequence in which we are privy to a snow covered landscape and haunting close up of a wolves face, we feel not only the isolation and extreme temperatures in Russia, but the feeling that we are indeed entering a Cold War. Throughout the film reference is made to a poem about a male wolf, the mother and her cubs, the way the male wolf is hunted and eventually killed. We feel intuitively with this knowledge that one of these men, who both love their wives, who both have children will be sacrificed by someone with a gun. Pierre gives Grigoriev a book of French poetry, previously owned by his wife Jessica (Alexandra Maria Lara) and Grigoriev discovers that the wolf poem is Jessica's favourite. Somehow this poem becomes poignant for Grigoriev and he memorises and quotes from it when he is eventually captured and interrogated. It was moments like these ~ the pale white moon over the snow when Pierre, his wife and children try and escape from Russia to America, a reference no doubt to the wolf with nose uplifted, who howls at the eerie orb in the sky and Grigoriev, like a lone wolf in the vast white snow covered country at the end of the film, that brought the whole thing together for me. These scenes somehow encapsulated the unique loneliness for both characters who had to lie to their wives and betray the trust of others. There were light moments in this film, such as when Pierre brings Grigoriev a Sony Walkman and tapes of the rock group Queen for Grigoriev's son, who sarcastically declares that he wants to listen to decadent western music . The sequence that follows is cut between live footage of Freddie Mercury singing We Will Rock You and Grigoriev's son, head phones on in a field, moving in sync to Mercury's on stage actions. The film is basically a political thriller. It suffers I think from trying to fit in too much background, it may have been stronger if it had concentrated more on the complexities of the relationship, and this is why I believe that although Farewell is excellent it is not as good as The Lives of Others.