Oriental Elegy
1996 · 45 MIN · IMDB 7.3 · 345 VOTES · DIR. Aleksandr Sokurov
Overview
A surreal journey of a displaced spirit as he wanders in the interminable darkness through the temporal landscape of a quaint and isolated feudal-era fishing village. Guided by a series of faintly illuminated rooms, the wandering spirit comes upon ancient souls who take on physical forms as they recount their personal stories of daily existence, loss, and tragedy in the peasant community. Intrigued by his initial visit to a curiously distracted elderly woman, the spirit returns to her home in order to ask a fundamental question - "What is happiness?" - an existential query that is innocently answered with innate humility and accepted unknowingness.
Dialogue Timeline — 163 lines
A SAMPLE ACROSS THE RUNTIME — EVERY LINE IS SEARCHABLE
00:00:59 ...All is like a dream...
00:02:19 ...No one is there...
00:03:51 ...Where am l?.. In paradise?..
00:05:47 There is a light in a window...
00:07:29 She is not yet entirely with me...
00:10:25 ...Sorry, who are you?
00:13:26 To whom belongs the soul, that returned home this time?
00:15:00 and I also began to see: here is an old woman, a neighbour
00:15:41 ...I was not always happy about having to rely upon someone else...
00:16:42 What should one ask for?
00:17:49 What a strange dream...
00:18:42 A warm little foot...
00:19:51 All is like a dream...
00:20:49 There lived a mad woman in our village...
00:21:26 She danced with a horrible grimace
00:21:57 They wore beautiful tunics with golden stripes on the sleeves...
00:22:31 Suddenly the dead sailor spoke to me: - It is all right
00:23:52 He was a very tidy man... but very stubborn...
00:24:32 was it indeed his wife whom he had called Mummy...
00:26:35 Return to us - We are so in need of people like you!
00:31:35 I want to ask you about one thing only:
00:34:10 No, I do not know anything about happiness...
00:34:50 But one must never thrust oneself upon others...
00:39:51 And this island is enough for all my dreams...