In many ways, the movie Leviathan is Russia’s greatest cinematic accomplishment in years, maybe decades. The Golden Globe winner this month for best foreign film, it provides an unrelenting, vodka-soaked portrait of small-town corruption that has been praised by critics and filmmakers throughout the world — everywhere, it seems, but Russia.
Well before its long-delayed general release here on Feb. 5 it has polarized the country, acclaimed by many as an accurate rendering of life in the Putin era and condemned by others as enemy-of-the-state propaganda that should be banned.
The fact that few Russians have actually seen the film has done nothing to dampen the arguments. The national fracas is being compared to the denigration of previous significant artists who won fame abroad for their unsparing depictions of Russian life, like Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Boris Pasternak.
“One of the reasons for this almost universal condemnation of Leviathan has to do with the general situation today in Russia,” said Vladimir Posner, a veteran Russian journalist. “A great many people feel that they are being unfairly criticized, ostracized, dissed by the Western world and that they have to protect themselves.”
The Ukraine crisis only added to a sentiment brewing for years, he and others noted.
“Anything seen as being critical of Russia in any way is automatically seen as either another Western attempt to denigrate Russia and the Orthodox Church,” Posner said, “or it’s the work of some kind of fifth column of Russia-phobes who are paid by the West to do their anti-Russian work or are simply themselves profoundly anti-Russian.”
CONTROVERSY
The movie follows the travails of Nikolai, a small-town auto mechanic whose life unravels as he tries to block a venal local political boss from seizing his home. Andrey Zvyagintsev, the director, has repeatedly defended his work as a universal parable, his inspirations ranging from the biblical book of Job to the violent resolution of a Colorado zoning dispute in 2004.
The movie’s creators delayed its release in Russia, hoping that it could be seen as a work of art rather than a political statement. Leviathan was shown quietly in just one St. Petersburg theater last year to qualify for the Oscars.
The controversy began last summer, after Leviathan won the Cannes Film Festival award for best original screenplay, the first in a string of international trophies.
Russia’s culture minister, Vladimir Medinsky, a conservative historian, led the attacks even though his ministry provided a significant portion of the movie’s budget. He acknowledged that “Leviathan” showed talented moviemaking, but said that he did not like it.
After the film won the Golden Globe on Jan. 11 — the first for Russia since War and Peace in 1969 — Medinsky sharply criticized its portrayal of ordinary Russians.
“However much the authors made them swear and swig liters of vodka, that doesn’t make them real Russians. I did not recognize myself, my colleagues, acquaintances or even acquaintances of acquaintances in Leviathan’s characters,” Medinsky told the newspaper Izvestia. “Strange, but among the movie’s characters there is not a single positive one.”
He implied that the director did not like Russians but instead loved “fame, red carpets and statuettes.”
His ministry then proposed guidelines that would ban movies that “defiled” the national culture.
The basic response from members of Russia’s intelligentsia was that Medinsky sought to resurrect the fantasies of the Soviet era, when artistic endeavors that did not promote the Communist system as utopia were banned. They noted that Russia had a long tradition of artists who created gloomy masterpieces — Dostoyevsky, Chekhov and even Tolstoy.
‘FILTHY LIBEL’
The movie ignited an unusual disagreement among adherents of the Russian Orthodox Church as well, because a corrupt bishop features prominently. Some called for it to be banned.
“Leviathan is a filthy libel against the Russian church and the Russian state,” Kirill Frolov, an Orthodox activist, wrote on his Facebook page, later dismissing accusations of restricting freedom as immaterial. “Leviathan is evil, and there is no place for evil in the cinema.”
Some church leaders endorsed the movie, however. Metropolitan Simon of Murmansk and Monchegorsk, the diocese where the movie was filmed, issued a statement calling it “honest.”
Leviathan, he said, raised important questions about the state of the country.
The uproar extended far beyond the cultural and political elite cloistered in Moscow and St. Petersburg. A few commentators suggested that the off-screen turmoil said more about the culture wars in modern Russia than about the movie itself.
The village chief in Teriberka, population 957, where the movie was shot, panned it as not worth watching. “We are all shown as drunkards living in our own dump here,” the official, Tatiana Trubilina, was quoted as saying. But after the producers arranged a special screening in the village hall and she actually saw it, she and many residents endorsed it.
Alexander Rodnyansky, one of the film’s two producers, countered that the movie highlighted the stunning natural beauty along the Barents Sea, in sharp contrast to the polluted human behavior.
CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED
Critical reaction has been favorable overall, with many reviews calling it both a universal parable about the crushing power of authority and an accurate reflection of today’s Russia.
Daniel Dondurei, the dean of Russian film critics, said he could not remember such a ruckus over a movie since the 1988 release of Little Vera, the first Soviet film to show explicit sex.
“I don’t think it is a masterpiece, but it is a very important movie for Russia,” he said of Leviathan in an interview. “If you thought life in Russia was horrible before you saw it, it is three times worse than you imagined.”
Those in authority or close to it commented in droves.
Yevgeny Roizman, the mayor of Yekaterinburg and a rare independent politician — a status that has made him the target of endless government investigations — wrote on his Facebook page that the movie reflected both a knowledge of ordinary Russia and a love and anguish for the motherland.
Many, but not all, government supporters had exactly the opposite reaction.
Sergei Markov, a frequent Kremlin defender, accused the director of acting under Western orders to create an “anti-Putin” manifesto, a reference to President Vladimir Putin.
“This is a movie of a new Cold War of the West against Russia,” he wrote on Facebook. “It is not a Russian movie that gets prizes at festivals, but an anti-Russian one.”
Illegal downloads off the Web swelled on the day of the Golden Globes — 30,000 in the first 24 hours, the producer said, and have been growing ever since.
Since most swear words will be muted in theaters under a new Russian law, the number of downloads will probably escalate. Slava Smirnov, an information technology specialist who loved the movie, decided that the outpouring might support a new model for funding. So he set up a website suggesting that viewers donate the roughly $3 price of a movie ticket. The site has attracted about 100,000 rubles daily (more than US$1,500) and is about to hit the 1 million-ruble mark. Rodnyansky said the money would go to charity.
OSCAR CONTENDER
The clamor means many Russians are eagerly anticipating the Academy Awards ceremony on Feb. 22. Russia has not won the award for best foreign-language film since 1994, with “Burnt by the Sun,” a Nikita Mikhalkov drama set in the Stalinist era.
So far, not a single official has so much as offered congratulations on Twitter to Zvyagintsev, the director, for the movie’s many awards, an unprecedented snub in recent years.
Leviathan would be a tough film for the government to later rally behind, given its unforgiving focus on the centralization of power and the role of Orthodoxy, twin pillars of Putin’s rule.
However, many in cultural circles expect that if the movie does win an Oscar, the Kremlin will find a way to embrace it as a collective achievement.
“They didn’t want a national discussion because in the end it will turn out that the most famous movie outside Russia is oppositional,” said Dondurei, the film critic. “If it wins the Oscar, that will change because it will be for the glory of Russia.”
— Additional reporting by Alexandra Odynova and Sophia Kishkovsky
The number of scandals and setbacks hitting the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in such quick and daily succession in the last few weeks is unprecedented, at least in the countries whose politics I am familiar with. The local media is covering this train wreck on an almost hourly basis, which in the latest news saw party chair Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) detained by prosecutors on Friday and released without bail yesterday. The number of links collected to produce these detailed columns may reach 400 by the time this hits the streets. To get up to speed, two columns have been written: “Donovan’s
President William Lai’s (賴清德) vision for Taiwan to become an “AI island” has three conditions: constructing advanced data centers, ensuring a stable and green energy supply, and cultivating AI talent. However, the energy issue supply is the greatest challenge. To clarify, let’s reframe the problem in terms of the Olympics. Given Taiwan’s OEM (original equipment manufacturer) roles in the technology sector, Taiwan is not an athlete in the AI Olympics, or even a trainer, but rather a training ground for global AI athletes (AI companies). In other words, Taiwan’s semiconductor ecosystem provides world-class training facilities and equipment that have already attracted
Nothing like the spectacular, dramatic unraveling of a political party in Taiwan has unfolded before as has hit the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) over recent weeks. The meltdown of the New Power Party (NPP) and the self-implosion of the New Party (NP) were nothing compared to the drama playing out now involving the TPP. This ongoing saga is so interesting, this is the fifth straight column on the subject. To catch up on this train wreck of a story up to Aug. 20, search for “Donovan’s Deep Dives Ko Wen-je” in a search engine. ANN KAO SENTENCED TO PRISON YET AGAIN,
Despite her well-paying tech job, Li Daijing didn’t hesitate when her cousin asked for help running a restaurant in Mexico City. She packed up and left China for the Mexican capital last year, with dreams of a new adventure. The 30-year-old woman from Chengdu, the Sichuan provincial capital, hopes one day to start an online business importing furniture from her home country. “I want more,” Li said. “I want to be a strong woman. I want independence.” Li is among a new wave of Chinese migrants who are leaving their country in search of opportunities, more freedom or better financial prospects at a
RSS