The Morning Glory Dawn

"Kolya" played tonight on one of the three gajillion channels I enjoy when I stay at the Bogin Mansion.

I always struggle with Eastern European movies (and novels) at first--too grim, too sad, too oppressed. But a cute kid named Kolya and a dad-for-a-while cello-playing old man? It was too much. I was as helpless against the tenderness between the pair as the old man was against the fullness his own unexpected heart.

At the end (yes, a spoiler here), the absent mother returns for Kolya. He is shy with her, then hugs her, and says goodbye to the old man with the simple resiliency of a kid. The redemption for the old man, a scene or so later, is music and love and a child of his own, but it's all so sweet and plain and sad, finished with a shot of high clouds and Kolya's voice singing a psalm, I cried. I cried for the breaking of the old man's first pure heart.

I weep for the loss: this betrays me. I neither feel nor imagine the fresh galaxy of the broken heart, and so it remains unknown.