 A love story about
the deep feelings that exist in the mother/son
relationship. When the mother is ill, the son takes it
upon himself to care for her: he feeds her, sees she gets
some sunshine at the front of the house, and reads
postcards out loud. Together they live touching and
sensitive moments remembering the time in which he was
only a boy and she did not allow him far from her
attentive eye, so afraid was she of losing him.Forever concerned with protecting
him, she tries to hide her impending death from him. She
asks him to take her out even though she can not walk,
and he then carries her through the empty village, a
deserted place where they are the last inhabitants. Thus,
the two keep far from any sign of the external world
except for smoke from a distant locomotive. When the
mother dies, the son is left absolutely alone in a world
that can not offer him comfort.
To accentuate the strong
bonds between them and their intended isolation, the
director uses a landscape that is sadly beautiful,
inspired in the paintings of painter Caspar David
Friedrich. Long takes of fields of maize, tossed by the
wind and framed by clouds at the tops of the hills, dark
rooms full of shadows where the brightness of the light
exerts a magnificent effect, were the principal elements
that the director sought in the work of Friedrich, to
create this drama of infinite unconditional love.
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