The House (Šarūnas Bartas, 1997)

To begin with I was captivated - some extraordinary faces and some beautiful passages, including the one with the two puppets illustrated above. Influences were clear, but I felt that it wasn't weighed down by them. But by the end excessive conjunctions of Tarkovskian images (water and fire inside; an enigmatic dog; Bach...) and explicit symbolism (Christ; the army) tested my patience. Ends up feeling rathing like a portentous allegory to which we are denied the key. But still, there are indeed some extraordinary faces and some beautiful passages.