The Search

The running time listed here is wrong, because after the disastrous reaction at Cannes and the commercial debacle after it was released in France, The Search was cut to 135 minutes and Hazanavicius reportedly even said that he couldn’t give a shit about the filmmaking anymore. Well, we thank the professor for his commitment, however, as a parting shot, I would like to ask him why he is once again, like everyone else, making a film about a humanitarian disaster in a way that makes it seem as if there aren’t already other films of this type. It’s possible that he’s counting on these themes appealing to a very specific audience, who primarily go to see films like this to lament the plight of the situation somewhere beyond the mountains, rather than the usual filmgoers who see this medium as more than just observational melodrama. It's really irritating to see the twentieth film about the conflicts of the last three decades coming at the viewer through children, the suffering of poor civilians, and the averted faces of world leaders. I'm not saying that one should automatically hide in a shell of comfortable cynicism, but demonstrating the horrors of war on one nation through the downcast silent faces of dirty ragamuffins silently groaning under the assault rifles of an evil soldier also does the whole tragedy a disservice. If abandoned children become regular triggers of viewer emotions, any attempt at a message will soon be diluted into jaded viewer apathy. We’ll ultimately end up watching anti-war films and paradoxically looking forward to each new outburst that wakes us from our mundane lethargy. PS: just to be blunt, I would recommend Mikhalkov's 12 as the ideal approach to the Chechen-Russian conflict. PPS: by the way, for what is otherwise an unremarkable film, The Search has surprisingly decent production values (masks, effects, art direction) and the storyline about the deformation of the young man into a military figurine is pretty successful in itself. So many pros. (05/07/2016)