I wanted to like this film. Instead, I got less and less comfortable as it progressed. Unfortunately, the film revealed Mikhailkov's own prejudices too baldly, and made too little REAL use of the perspective of the child he was filming. I acknowledge that my perspective has probably been shaped by Russian intellectuals who view him as producing films that Westerners (particularly Americans) WANT to see and too little intellectual honesty -- but this film, his first and last documentary, as far as I know, reveals this all to clearly. So in fact the comment of one reviewer that Mikhailkov is doing something Hollywood rarely does is appropriate --only from the point of view that this is a film more worthy of Hollywood Post-Soviet-style than of an independent film vision.
Mikhailkov is a monarchist and a Russian Orthodox conservative. While he points to his aristocratic and artistic roots, he neglects any real admission that he belonged to the most privileged of Soviet elites. His father wrote the Soviet national anthem!
In fact, we get fewer and fewer of the child's answers as the film goes on, and more and more of her father's interpretations, until we understand why the 13-to-16 year old clamps up, and not purely from adolescent reticence!
