The film , directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin, is a seminal work of Soviet cinema that explores the complex and often fraught relationship between a mother and her son during a time of revolution and social upheaval.

She taught him to distrust the water. "It sings a pretty song," she would say, brushing his dark hair from his forehead, "but it lies. You stay on land, my love. Land is truth."

Instead, she went down to the water. For the first time since the night of his birth, she let the tide touch her ankles. The cold was a shock—like memory, like love, like the terrible freedom of letting a son become a man.

When he finally looked back, the tower was a needle of light on a dark quilt. And the sea cradled him, silent and vast, saying nothing at all.