The film, set against the backdrop of fighting in the Donbas region in 2014, would be bracing and haunting even if it weren’t so timely.
“Reflection” is interested in the impact of casual violence on everyday life, right from its opening tableau: a lengthy shot in which the protagonist, a surgeon, Serhiy (Roman Lutskyi), chats with Andriy (Andrii Rymaruk), the man now living with Serhiy’s ex-wife (Nadiya Levchenko) and helping raise their daughter. The daughter (Nika Myslytska) prepares for a paintball battle in the background. Soon the sounds of that barrage drown out the men’s friendly conversation about artillery and medical supplies.
The situation seems all the more charged if you know that “Reflection,” written, directed, photographed and edited by Valentyn Vasyanovych, is a Ukrainian film. It would be a bracing, haunting work even if it weren’t so timely. The movie premiered last year, before Russia attacked Ukraine in February, and it begins in November 2014, against the backdrop of fighting by Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas region. (It is a follow-up of sorts to Vasyanovych’s “Atlantis,” set in 2025 in the ostensible aftermath of that conflict. That film now plays like a dispatch from an alternate timeline — grim, but not as grim as 2025 will look after a much wider war.)
“Reflection” follows Serhiy on a mission to the front, where his van gets lost and he is captured. The movie principally unfolds in fixed long shots, but when the camera moves, it is startling: What appears to be a single take follows Serhiy as he is interrogated, tortured, led to a basement, hosed down and, as he shivers, commanded to inspect a corpse for signs of life. This, and cremation, will be his job until the second half, when the horrors he has witnessed go provocatively, largely unmentioned. As the cryptic final moments suggest, “Reflection” is a film about how war requires people to comprehend the unspoken and unseen.
Reflection
Not rated. In Ukrainian and Russian, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes. In theaters and on virtual cinemas.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
