ALEXANDRA/ALEKSANDRA

Directed by Alexander Sokurov. Starring Galina Vishnevskaya, Vasily Shevtsov, Raisa Gichaeva Club, IFI, Dublin, 95 min

WE ARE, in this corner of Europe, a little wary of discussing what it means to be Russian. A view persists that, having lost (or, at least, failed to win) the Cold War, the people of that nation should sit quietly and wait to become American. It happens to all of us, eventually.

Recent events in Georgia demonstrate that the current Russian administration has no intention of being so subservient. With that in mind, this seems a particularly appropriate time to consider this grave, resonant film from the great Alexander Sokurov. The director of Russian Arkand The Sunhas constructed a deceptively simple drama set among the Russian forces in the second Chechen War.

Calling to mind the less elusive films of Abbas Kiarostami, Alexandrasends the title character, an elderly lady of formidable resilience, off to the front to visit her grandson. While strolling about the camp and environs, she gets to handle a gun, examine the inside of a military vehicle and, in the film's most moving sequence, take tea with a Chechen women in her shattered apartment.

The incidents are presented with the director's characteristic taste and restraint. Featuring an unobtrusive but surprisingly romantic score, the film is coated in a bleached-out light that, at times, borders on the monochrome. Charming, quasi-erotic scenes, such as those in which the proud soldier carries his laughing grandmother across the camp or carefully plaits her hair, knit together to create an almost uncomfortable intimacy with viewer.

But what is it really about? You could describe Alexandraas an anti-war film. Scrunch up your eyes a little and it might look like a patriotic piece. The film is certainly addressing the rights and wrongs of patriotism in what we like to think of as a post-imperial age. Few contemporary films have dwelled so conspicuously on the meaning of the word "fatherland."

More than anything else, however, Alexandradallies with the ancient (probably prehistoric) notion that old ladies have a better grasp of the nonsensicality of war than do young men. The director has pointedly cast a Great Russian in the role of this less angry, less cynical Mother Courage: the mighty soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, who was married to Mstislav Rostropovich and was a friend of Dmitri Shostakovich. The weight of Vishnevskaya's experience gives the film added resonance.

The title character is prone to taking the odd politically incorrect swipe at the Chechans. But, if Alexandrahas a message, it is that her class of tolerant indomitableness will outlast all current conflicts.