The same title, Siberia, has been applied to two films which are markedly different from each other, and released two years apart. The former is a crime-romance thriller starring Keanu Reeves released in 2018, while the latter is a 2020 psychological art film with Willem Dafoe as a lead. While both films share some common elements like title, remote snowy landscapes and glaring differences in tone, purpose, and execution, they remain fundamentally different. One narrates a story about a tragic diamond deal and an illicit romance, while the other dives into the surreal interior of a man trapped in guilt, identity, and isolation threads.
Siberia (2018) – A Thriller with Cold Edges
Overview
Siberia (2017) – A Keanu Reeves starring movie was directed by Matthew Ross and follows the story of Lucas Hill, a diamond trader who sets off on a journey to finalize a deal only to be mixed in with a love story, betrayal and danger in Russia. Losing control of both his business and personal life, Reeves portrayed Lucas, a man pulled deeper and deeper into a dark underworld.
Plot Summary
Lucas heads to St. Petersburg to locate his business partner, Pyotr, who has disappeared with a shipment of rare blue diamonds intended for the Russian gangster, Boris Volkov. Loosely guided, he sets off into the Siberian wilderness where, to his fortune, he encounters the magnetic Katya who runs a small café. Their connection is both deep and swift.
As Katya draws Lucas into the web of her life, his world of crime spirals further out of control. All of these events only raise suspicion with Boris as he starts to demand the diamonds more aggressively, forcing Lucas into morally complex business arrangements. Further complications arise when the diamonds start showing up under disputed ownership.
The culmination of the plot is set within a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, where a fierce and heartbreaking climax battle transpires. Severely outnumbered, wounded, and seeking his last shot at freedom, Lucas meets his end in the snowy wilderness, his escape forever buried beneath the white landscape.
Themes and Style
Siberia fuses a noir-inspired storyline with parts of erotic drama. The film’s icy landscapes reflect emotional and moral chilliness. Critics pointed out that thematical exploration of duplicity, loyalty, or existential weariness felt shallow and underdeveloped.
Cinematography Siberia emphasizes the winter beauty of the region alongside the cold exterior warmth between Lucas and Katya. However, the film’s languid pacing combined with sparse dialogue and thin secondary character writing contributed to viewer doldrums.
Performance
Reeves’ performance is restrained and somber where he gradually depicts Lucas as a man coming apart and out of his depth. As Katya, Ana Ularu adds depth and sensuality to a character that risks being flat and unengaging. Even with the palpable chemistry between the two, their enhancement is often stifled by the script.
Siberia (2020) – A Surreal Psychological Journey
Overview
Ferrara’s Siberia is an abstract, introspective film, deeply contrasting the 2018 thriller of the same name. The film deals with a man’s internal journey in search for purpose, tranquility, and reconciliation with history. Willem Dafoe takes on the role of Clint, an American residing in voluntary exile in the Siberian wilderness.
Summary of the Plot and Overview
Clint tends to a remote bar in the snowbound mountains of Siberia, where he serves vodka and simple meals to locals who speak a language he does not understand. Increasingly isolated and weary, he begins to experience surreal visions and dreams that draw him into a symbolic odyssey across deserts, caves, forests, and psychological landscapes, while unfolding the mythology of his life.
The ghosts of his past begin to haunt him: an ex-wife, his father, familial memories, and even his son. While some of these visions are painful, others can be categorized on the spectrum of absurd or frightening.
Clint’s reality begins to dissolve into metaphor as he encounters a talking fish, faceless soldiers, ritualistic violence, and more. These moments capture the essence of emotional trauma, guilt, and existential longing that profoundly resonate with intertwining narratives of grief.
The film refrains from a definitive linear narrative. Rather, it is a collection of disjointed, dreamlike vignettes that encourage interpretation. Clint’s journey can be perceived as an allegory of spiritual self-exploration or introspective collapse.
Analysis of Themes and Interpretation
The 2020 Siberia Film highlights the themes of solitude, mortality, and the heaviness that accompanies memory. It delves deeper into Jungian concepts of the unconscious, portraying Clint as someone who descends into a symbolic underworld. Every scene, no matter how surreal, offers fragments of meaning.
The frigid expanse transforms into a state of mind within Siberia—a landscape which is lifeless, stagnant—and crawling with perilous secrets. Ferrara avoids putting forth solutions or explanations. He instead engages viewers to contemplate it as a meditation on loss, identity, and transformation.
Clint’s journey encompasses both the corporeal and the metaphysical. Traversing Further into the realm of wilderness and increasingly more into the realms of a dream, differentiating between reality and illusion becomes an exercise in futility gaining competitive advantage over sanity.
Performance
Clint is the spine of the film, and thus, Willem Dafoe’s performance shines through. He completely occupies Clint’s character with a soft intensity such that he bears the gravity of every second, even when the story is purposefully vague. His partnership with Ferrara, developed over multiple projects, shows in the trust the film has to him to portray narrative through silence and emotion, and through movement and stillness.
Comparative Analysis
Both versions seem to feature the same title and setting in Siberia, however, the two are more different than one might think.
Genre and Tone: Siberia 2018 is a romantic thriller cemented in themes of betrayal and crime. The 2020 iteration is an avant-garde examination on the disintegration and healing of psychological self.
Narrative Style: Dafoe’s version opts for an abstract/non-linear approach while Reeves’ film sticks to genre conventions and uses a straightforward approach.
Themes: The first one analyzes greed, lust, and deception, the second one investigates identity, trauma, and existential crisis.
Visuals: Both of them portray the cold, isolated landscape effectively, yet one uses it as a setting for noir tension while the other uses it as a metaphor for internal exile.
Conclusion
The films titled “Siberia” showcase the artistic range cinema can offer under the same name. The 2018 version is a cold blooded thriller about a man caught between love and death, while the 2020 version is a meditative, dreamlike descent into the soul.
Whether a viewer seeks tense romantic intrigue or a poetic exploration of the subconscious, “Siberia” offers two disparate yet thematically resonant journeys. Both films examine what happens when individuals are pushed to the brink—of society, morality, and the self.
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