Very Cool!!!

Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

just watch it!

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Mamonov's performance is wonderful as are the others in this great film. The film making is fine, tasteful even in keeping with the story and understated.It is a really good story, simple but with a golden message at it's core, at least it moved me in a good direction to forget about pride, greed and lust for a moment.It is strange that this exists side by side with film's by Nolan etc and shows the misuse of the medium and the sickness of society that a film like this is ignored whilst entertainment that relies on playing on greed and ignorance is king.

The 2006 film OSTROV (The Island) is a story of religious faith in the bleak Russian north. As the film opens, it is 1942 and the young Russian sailor Anatoly is forced by the Germans to shoot his captain Tikhon. Left for dead, Anatoly washes up on the shore of an island where a monastery is located. He spends the next three decades among the monks trying to atone for the killing of his friend and shipmate. Eventually, though he considers himself the lowest of the low, Anatoly is granted clairvoyance and the ability to work miracles. A steady stream of visitors comes to the island to seek his help.But Anatoly is a certain kind of saint specific to the Russian tradition, the holy fool. He does things that make no sense to his fellow monks, to the point they think he's insane, but eventually everything he does is revealed to communicate some key spiritual point. Between ministering to the outsiders who visit him and dealing with his exasperated brethren, Anatoly gets no rest.The film is beautiful in a way. The plot is engaging enough, and for audiences outside Russia (as well as many Russians who grew up under Communism) this is an informative presentation of the realities of Orthodox monastic life. The makeup effects are excellent -- Pyotr Mamonov doesn't look this decrepit in real-life, but on the screen he really is convincing as a starets who has spent decades in an unforgiving environment.Nonetheless, I found OSTROV rather too heavy-handed, seeming at best sappy and at worst outright propaganda for a certain kind of contemporary Russian Orthodoxy that doesn't represent the faith entirely well. When one thinks of Russian Orthodoxy in cinema, one is tempted to draw comparisons with Andrei Tarkovsky, but even when Tarkovsky wasn't directly using Orthodox themes, he still communicated Christian truths more powerfully than anything in this film (think of the climax of Tarkovsky's STALKER or the ending of OFFRET).All in all, OSTROV is entertaining but not terribly deep.

Great film. It gives me a sense of hope, that God's plan is perfect and in the end, if we seek Him diligently, it will all work out and all the pieces will fall into place. I was wondering why doesn't the protagonist just accept God's forgiveness and lay his burden down. Father Job mentions that too. Just believe that your sin is forgiven and move on. But then I began to see, that Father Anatoly has found favor with God and he is a lot more sensitive to His will than an average person. It was God's perfect will to bring it to this kind of completion. We never hear back from the people who were helped by Father Anatoly. That calls for our faith that things for them worked out the way he said that they will. I can't help but wonder if the widow made it to France, if the boy's leg healed, if the young girl's baby turned out to be a 'golden boy'. What is going to happen to Father Job? He wanted 'to serve people', but complains that it was not given to him. Is he going to step up after Father Anatoly's death? This movie is a kind that stays with you for life. It brings light to the simple truths in deep powerful way.

A man is driven insane with guilt after he kills a fellow sailor in 1942.He ends up in a monastery where his eccentric behavior makes him sought after by people seeking divine advice and cures.Years later the man he thought he killed shows up with his insane daughter (who the eccentric cures) and he finds out he felt guilt for no reason all those years.Like the necklace by Maupassant he spent his life agonizing and trying to atone for something he actually didn't do.It is different and definitely worth watching.It also reminds me of a character out of Dostoevsky--a semi insane monk who people think is holy. I think it is in the Brothers Karamazov.