Loveless Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Loveless Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman June 6, 2018

What a dank, depressing movie. In all the best ways. Loveless is an emotionally and tonally dour movie that challenges viewers to experience, with intimacy and hate-filled passion, the destructive force of divorce on top of an increasingly dire missing person's mystery. The film, from Director Andrey Zvyagintsev (Leviathan), is at once both unforgivingly dark yet undeniably beautiful. Its unrelenting sense of dreary hopelessness is countered by Zvyagintsev's sure-handed, steady, and precise craftsmanship; his actors' uncanny realism; and thematically complimentary slow-burn and fully involved pacing. This is a challenging watch. It's highly rewarding yet highly unsettling. The film's intimate story subtly weaves in much larger-scope commentary on the state of the world and the humanity that is ever evolving it, but the film works best at its most fundamental, personal level as the story of lives torn apart by the increasing burdens of time and despair.

Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) and Boris (Aleksey Rozin) are a married couple finalizing a divorce. The animosity between them has long since reached its breaking point, and while both are eager to start a new life -- which they already have -- the separation has left their twelve-year-old son Alexey (Matvey Novikov) in a state of absolute despair. Neither parent has much concern for his physical or emotional well-being. They are both absorbed in their new loves -- she with an older, wealthier man and he with a young, beautiful girl whom is already carrying his child -- that they all but forget about little Alexey. One day, he disappears. A search ensues as both Boris and Zhenya continue to build their lives and pursue their own interests apart from one another.

It's worth repeating: what a depressing movie. The rawness of the emotions, whether those of the divorcing parents or the distraught child, present with so much tangible, hurtful, authenticity that the simple act of settling into the movie’s foundational opening minutes is a challenge of human will. But the power of cinema, the organic, tightly gripped structure and absorbing performances produce too strong a gravitational field, drawing the audience in even as many would likely rather escape. The movie maneuvers along that difficult tightrope for the duration, growing increasingly more unforgiving, tonally and thematically alike, as the search for the child intensifies and his parents’ true characters are revealed. Whether any rays of hope ever lighten the story’s, or the audience’s, burden is a secret best left for the movie to reveal (or not), but suffice it to say that Loveless is a masterpiece of the borderline macabre, its grotesqueness found and reflected in the darkest, most selfish corners of the human condition, and of the world.

Selfishness drives the story. Zhenya, the most vile character in the movie, was "repulsed" by her own child, more than irritated with the lengthy birthing process and clearly seeing her son as a burden, particularly as he's grown up and she's grown out of love with her husband. She laments that he is beginning to smell like Boris. She half jokingly, but obviously reflective of her own sense of self-value, calls herself a "monster" at one point in the film. Her only concern is for her herself. Her new mate, older and wealthier than the father of her child, has a daughter living abroad and her only care in the relationship seems to be one of taking, to absorb his "love" for her but seemingly offer little in return. Boris seems a little more even-keeled, understandably repulsed by his wife's behavior. He has chosen a younger, calmer, more agreeably tempered mate, whom he has already impregnated. The film's strength, particularly in its first half, is its laser-like, unflinchingly intensive focus on both parents: their disintegrated relationship and their unwavering commitment to escape in the arms of another. It is so focused that they, and the audience, almost literally forget that Alexey exists. For both of them, he's a hindrance. Their inability to see the larger picture only turns a difficult situation into a tragedy that only deepens the wounds. it's a wonder that either parent even cares that the child is missing. Beyond the legal ramifications and in a world made of their own rules, little Alexey's disappearance would probably be shrugged off, at best.

The film is so well crafted and acted that subtitles are a luxury, not a necessity. Each scene's sour structure and the emotional weight the actors bring to the film alone tell the story. Few films are so powerfully constructed that emotion can propel the entire narrative. In fact, the movie is worth watching a second time through (or a first time for the bold) without subtitles. Let the film seep into the skin and drive into the conscience. Its story needs few, if any, of the verbally communicated details. Tone is a very powerful thing, and both Maryana Spivak and Aleksey Rozi, as well as Director Andrey Zvyagintsev, master the art of tonal storytelling from the first to the final frame.

Loveless Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Loveless' 1080p image can push a little soft around the edges, but essential details are fine. It's not a powerhouse of a presentation, largely by the limitations of its digital source. Details are fairly crisp, with good general textural qualities on clothes, faces, the grimy walls in the apartment complex's stairwells, or crisply defined cold and barren exteriors. Colors lack the sort of deep, accurate saturation found on many other images, favoring a cold, bleak, toned-down contrast. Nighttime and low-light black levels are acceptable. A modest bit of noise interferes throughout, spiking a bit more in low light and dark conditions, which is to be expected. While the image is not striking, it's fundamentally sound and complimentary of the movie's bleak tone.

Loveless Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Loveless features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack that peaks with impressive stage command but generally settles into a simple front-dominant flow. The film opens with very distinct, widely spaced, and exceptionally clear piano strokes which are quick to rise in intensity. Modest environmental ambience follows, including light chatter and footfalls as students are dismissed from school. As the film progresses, additional atmospherics filter through to good effect, including din at a workplace cafeteria in chapter three. The track offers some bursts of quality immersion, such as a rumbly train car in chapter three which works the surrounds and the subwoofer a fair bit. The track never really engages again until chapter nine when passing traffic and intense Rock music pour into the stage with aggressive positioning and detail. Chapter 11 offers some wide, dispersed search party screams for the missing child. Dialogue is clear and front-center focused across a range from angry, sharp shouts to hushed whispers.

Loveless Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Loveless contains a making-of documentary and a trailer. No DVD or digital copies are included.

• The Making of Loveless (1080p, 1:01:02): An hour-long raw glimpse into the making of the movie with no real interviews or voiceovers. Audiences will hear authentic chatter and candid conversations from the set and view a number of fascinating behind-the-scenes moments, which include images from the camera itself, with technical data filling the top and bottom of the screen. And it's not always roses, either. Viewers will be privy to some of the troubles along the way and, occasionally, a disheartened director. This is a vastly superior, and much more satisfying, supplement compared to much of the vacuous, rehearsed, and talking-point-filled bonuses that populate home video releases these days.
• Loveless Theatrical Trailer (1080p, 2:03).
• Previews (1080p): Additional Sony titles.

Loveless Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Loveless is not an easy film to watch. It's raw, challenging, dark, dank, depressing...but it's also a fruitful example of the cinema form at its height. It's astonishingly well done, pulling focus with striking attention to detail and taking its time to allow the emotions, much more so than the narrative ebbs and flows -- which are relatively basic -- to shape the film. For such a gray, lifeless movie populated by disagreeable characters, it's truly a thing of beauty. Sony's Blu-ray delivers solid video and audio along with an absorbing hour-long behind-the-scenes piece. Highly recommended.