nd present, real and imagined characters, that have held for most of the film have begun to crumble, culminating in the final scene, which as in Ivans Childhood or Solaris, provides a vision of reconciliation of the conflicting forces in the heros life. We are back in the sunlit landscape and the dacha of the past, with the young mother and father lying in the grass. Would you rather have a boy or a girl? he asks her. She smiles, not answering, then sighs and looks away. Joyful choral music swells on the soundtrack as the camera cuts to the mother as an old woman, followed by the narrator as a little boy. The old woman leads the little girl by the hand as the boy follows, and the young mother is seen, choking back tears and then smiling, as if watching them. The old woman and the two children walk rapidly across a field in long shot; as the boy leaves the frame the young mother is seen standing in the middle of the field looking at her future self, perhaps in deliberate visualization of the Russian proverb: Living life is not like crossing a field. ...
