Translated material
Ice under the feet of a major
Leviathan went to Russian rental. As the Video Speech of the audience of the premiere, made by journalists Radio Liberty in the lobby immediately after the session, the popular opinion does not at all coincide with the opinion of neoconservative elites from among officials and film critics. The film is impressive, it turned out to be spectator, not elitist. I like it or do not like it, but that nothing needs to be prohibited-the recipients of the mini-survey speak out unanimously. They came to the cinema in peak prohibitions, for the sake of their interest and freedom of choice.
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0:00 0:02:37What is still curious in our survey: people compare Leviathan with “Little Faith”, as well as modern Russian films, “Long Happy Life” by Boris Khlebnikov and “Fool” by Yuri Bykov. To admit when I read the disputes in the networks, it seemed that the people did not know and did not like modern domestic cinema at all. About the film, which no one saw, was discussed as if the Zvyagintsev had fallen from the sky, and the main film product consumed by the population boils down to a meager diet in the form of domestic and foreign blockbusters and fantasy with their very conditional artistic world. Those who watched the film critics against the backdrop of the international success of Zvyagintsev talked about the shortcomings of “Leviathan” from the point of view of the history of world cinema of the last decades, reproaching the director of excessive traction to pathos and symbolism, imitating Tarkovsky and other great ones. The theories of the conspiracy of the producers (moreover of Russian and American) for the promotion of the picture were also popular.
Zvyagintsev was reproached for reading the book of Job well. In my opinion, he inhabited her with new heroes
It is interesting that the Zvyagintsev from the high -button manner of his first two ribbons, “return” and “exile”, turned to minimalism of the picture and intelligence of the characters in his next work, “Elena”. And even more interesting how he tried to combine symbolism and social specifics, earthly and heavenly Russia in Leviathan, the country of great northern landscapes and completely unfortunate people who want truth, but plunge into the abyss of everyday troubles and inevitable death. It seems that the ugly power, according to Zvyagintsev, and it is in all hypostles absolutely caricatured, from the mayor to the judge, is the same sacrifice of non -existence, unconscious of people, like Nikolai, whom this power makes a martyr. Both sides discuss a lot, but these reasoning do not help in the main thing: to bring a person out of the circle of animal, almost biological interests. These rationalization do not lead to the clarity of their own life, to understand its unique pattern and value. On the contrary, they all confuse. In this regard, priests are no better than laity. One behaves like a plowman, the second - as a traitor to the flock, not helping a person who was desperate after the death of his wife, but succumbing to his sophistry. Zvyagintsev was reproached for reading the book of Job well. In my opinion, he inhabited her with new heroes. We do not really know the details of the life of Job after the decision of God to test it. Suppose this is a Russian version.
For the first time in his quite successful and aesthetic career, Zvyagintsev speaks of power as a problem. In the Russian context, this is both a metaphysical problem and everyday, familiar to anyone who has done a matter with it at least once. This is a portrait of Putin in her institutions, this is her impunity and self -confidence, her gangstone style on the runaway among the security forces, her unsurpassed cynicism. To the question of the style and cynicism, the so -called “denigration of Russian reality”: there are observations that in this film Zvyagintsev is not under the influence of Tarkovsky, but refers to the film avenue of Alexei Balabanov. Actually, Alexei Serebryakov, the main role performer, is one of the iconic actors of Balabanov, his hero in the “cargo-200” is actually a prototype of Nikolai. He holds on his home, dreams of building a utopian sun city on his land, but is in a constant alcohol ecstatic, irrational state, and he is arrested on false prosecution and killed in prison without trial. Yes, we are ice under the feet of a major. But the summer is further there: “The major slides, the major will fall, because we are the ice under the Major’s feet. While we exist, there will be evil ice.” The existence of “us” as the “evil ice” of the Zvyagintsy-Leviathan, who trampled all the conditionally positive heroes, speaks unexpected for him, almost chopped by the history of Pussy Riot. At the time of writing the script of the girl from the punk group, the "insults of the feelings of believers", were in prison. But there is a folk version that they insulted not the church. They insulted people in uniform. The Russian Job will die, but the major will fall.
Elena Fanailova - poet, laureate of several literary awards, author and host of the Radio Liberty program "Freedom in clubs"
Opinions expressed under the heading "Law" may not reflect the point of view of the editorial office