Elegy of Life. Rostropovich. Vishnevskaya

In this "elegy," the Russian director Alexandr Sokurov, especially known such as feature films like (2002) and (2005), portrays the most famous couple in Russian classical music: 80-year-old opera singer Galina Pavlovna Vishnevskaya and 79-year-old cellist, pianist and conductor Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich. He interviews them in their beautiful, classically furnished house about their relationships with composer friends like Shostakovich and Prokofiev, and about their ideas on classical music and the changing times. With his mesmerising, melancholy voice, Sokurov's voice-over speaks about culture, memories and the Old Europe, while his camera observes the two old masters. Using pictures and archive footage that he has incorporated with split-screens, slow wipes and insets, Sokurov recapitulates their life and career. He recalls their expulsion from the Soviet Union after they had put up the dissident author Solzhenitsyn. A dominant recurring theme in the film is the Viennese concert Rostropovich gave in celebration of his and Vishnevskaya's 50 wedding anniversary. Royalty from all over Europe was in attendance, but to Sokurov, Vishnevskaya is the real "tsarina." Footage of Rostropovich's rehearsals is interspersed with images of Vishnevskaya teaching a student in her own opera school.