The Banishment
Short description
The Banishment is a Russian drama about Alex, who leaves the industrial city with his wife Vera and their two children to settle in his father's old house in the countryside where he grew up. The move, meant as a fresh start, slowly turns into something else. Mark, Alex's brother, arrives after walking out on his own wife and children, and his presence strains the household. When Vera tells Alex she is pregnant, she also tells him the child is not his. What follows is a story of isolation and failing communication, set against a harsh rural landscape.
Andrey Zvyagintsev directed the film, his second feature following The Return (2003); he later made Leviathan (2014) and Loveless (2017). Oleg Negin and Artyom Melkumyan wrote the screenplay, and Dmitriy Lesnevskiy produced. Konstantin Lavronenko plays Alex, with Aleksandr Baluev as Mark, Maria Bonnevie as Vera, and Dmitri Ulyanov, Vitaly Kishchenko and Maksim Shibayev in supporting roles. The film runs 158 minutes.
What's left behind the scenes
- Elena Lyadova dubbed the voice of Vera (played by Maria Bonnevi). The search for a voice actress lasted several months, running parallel to the film's editing process. Over seventy candidates were auditioned. To remain impartial, the director decided that all of them would dub two key scenes incognito. He then listened to the recordings and selected a few voices for the final stage of auditions. Ultimately, Elena was chosen: her voice, according to the director, perfectly matched the image created by Maria Bonnevi in the role of Vera.
- The film was shot in several countries – in France and Belgium for urban exteriors, in Russia, in Moscow – for studio and interior shots, and also in Moldova, where a house, a bridge over a ravine, a church, and a cemetery next to the church were specially built for the filming. It proved particularly difficult to design the church and cemetery – they shouldn't contain obvious signs of belonging to any specific denomination. The church, like the house on the hill, had to look very old in the frame, which required meticulous work from the set decorators with textures. For this task, German specialists were invited to the art department, who, using modern technologies, were able to create “high-quality mossy stone” and “age” the wood.
- One-third of the film stock used to shoot 'The Banishment,' specifically 20,000 meters of Kodak, was presented to Luigi De Laurentiis in Venice in 2003 as a prize for Best Directorial Debut ('Return'). Another third was also an award for 'Return.' A certificate for 17,000 meters of Kodak negative film was presented by the Nika Academy for Best Russian Film of 2004.
- When it was decided to invite Maria Bonnevie, an actress from the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Sweden, for an audition, a complication arose: according to her contract with the theater, Maria was required to perform in a new play for the coming year, the premiere of which had already been announced. 'When we started looking for a way to allow Maria to participate in the filming, I was told: you'll have to settle this matter with the Prime Minister,' recalls producer Dmitry Lesnevsky. Under Swedish law, a performance cannot be canceled if even a single ticket has been sold. Lesnevsky suggested that the theater director buy back all the tickets for the performances featuring Maria Bonnevie. Unfortunately, although there were still several months until the premiere, five tickets had already been sold. Nevertheless, a solution was found: to wait for Maria, the filming of the movie had to be postponed by nearly a year.
- The film contains no obvious clues that would allow one to pinpoint the exact time and place of the events. Initially, the creators were not even sure which language they would use to film the movie. In the end, the original text is in Russian, and even the Swedish actress Maria Bonnevie had to learn her role in Russian.
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