A ROOM AND A HALF (POLTORY KOMNATY ILI SENTIMENTALNOE PUTESHESTVIE NA RODINU) .World Cinema

Andrey Khrzhanovsky’s bittersweet, endlessly imaginative film begins with the revered poet Joseph Brodsky (Grigory Dityatkovsky, bearing an uncanny resemblance to the Nobel Prize-winning poet) approaching his beloved St. Petersburg after a decades-long exile imposed by the Soviet state In a Proustian wave of memories, his past comes to life, centered around the tiny but welcoming flat he shared with his devoted parents. Long considered Russia’s finest animator, Khrzhanovsky spent seven years creating ROOM AND A HALF, his fourth feature and live-action debut. The film continues his penchant for honoring artists (Pushkin and Fellini among them) and contemplating the life of the imagination, as he punctuates his film with his typically bright, dreamlike animated images Khrzhanovsky’s artistic coup is to convey Brodsky’s adventure through the 20th century by framing each decade in that period s dominant cinematic style. More than mere formal device, this strategy becomes a declaration of freedom.