American filmmaker Abel Ferrara began his career making films about the underbelly of New York City but while he drew critical praise and a cult following for such controversial films as Ms. 45 and Bad Lieutenant, he found little commercial success in the U.S.
For the past few decades, Ferrara has made his home in Italy and produced many of his films in Europe, where his mix of intellectual sophistication and visceral imagery are generally better received. Siberia (2019) is one of the director's more opaque movies, a magic-realist journey into the wilderness of dreams and memories of an American in remote Siberia.
Willem Dafoe (reuniting with Ferrara for their sixth collaboration) plays Clint, who runs a bar in the snowy forests of a foreign land where he doesn't speak the language. His quiet routine of reading and pouring drinks for the ruddy travelers who pass through the rustic tavern is interrupted by hallucinations of an often sexual or violent nature, including a shocking mauling by a bear.
He finally takes his dogsled to a lonely cave where he confronts his suppressed memories and anxieties in vivid (and at times explicit) dream-warped flashbacks to his father (also played by Dafoe), the wife and child he left behind, and images of helplessness and isolation.
The scenes are not so much revealing of his past life as symbolic of his inner turmoil and there is no real storyline holding the fragments together. It's more experimental than narrative, driven by the enigmatic odyssey through guilt and regret and held together by Dafoe's intense, naked performance as a man who has left everything behind, only to find he can't outrun himself. There's a savage beauty to the imagery but Ferrara offers no guidance to sort out memory from fantasy and no sense of closure or self-discovery at the end, leaving us to make sense of the experience.
This is for devoted fans of Ferrara and Dafoe and for adventurous viewers who like to grapple with enigmatic material. Rated R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, some disturbing violence, and bloody images. No supplements beyond a trailer. A strong option purchase.