Quotations Flashcards
Leviathan:
Awards received:
Best Screenplay at last year’s Cannes Film Festival,
Best Film at the London Film Festival,
aGolden Globe for Best Foreign-Language Film
Leviathan:
Hobbes theory
Thomas Hobbes (1651) argues for a social contract and rule by an absolutesovereign.
Primary inspiration for Leviathan:
Story of Marvin John Heemeyer, a Colorado welder who, after losing a zoning dispute, in 2004, demolished a few buildings in his town with a bulldozer and then killed himself.
Zviagintsev later said that his film bears “no relation to the American story”:
Definition of ‘universality’
The quality of being true in or appropriate for all situations
Leviathan funding:
(Nancy Condee):
The Ministry of Culture provided 35 percent of its funding.
While the 2015 production allocation for the Russian Cinema Fund remains stable at $487 million, the production budget through the Ministry of Culture (the most common source of support for more vulnerable art-house and documentary films) has been reduced by $97.4 million... declared emphasis (even more than previous years) on military and revolutionary history. (Condee)
The ‘new quiet ones’
Борис Хлебников
Очень правильно Сергей Шнуров назвал наше поколение — «новые тихие». Это очень точное название. Мы ругаемся и боимся всех этих ментов — пятимся назад и как бы шепчем: сволочи, ублюдки и т.д. На мой взгляд, кино должно быть уже намного более громким и свободным. Мы должны не шептать, а производить кино куда более прямого социального действия.
Proposed new law after Leviathan
Vladimir Medinsky:
ban from public distribution films believed to be “defiling the national culture, creating a threat to national unity and undermining the foundations of the constitutional order.”
Original name of Leviathan:
Batia
Leviathan:
Quote regarding those who have not seen the film but critique it:
“Я Пастернака не читал, но скажу…”
Антон Долин
Leviathan:
Фон, на котором развертываются события фильма, -
это небольшой поселок Териберка (Мурманская область) на крайнем севере Российской федерации.
(Край мира, творенье божье, Звягинцев)
Also a film about vulnerability to power in the regions (Dmitrii: Moscow ’тесный город’)/ (Kolia: Teriberка)
Leviathan:
‘Framing’ of film’
Mikhail Krichman frames the film with a matched series of “evolutionary” sequences: the camera moves initially upward, from rocks and waves to shore and scrub grass, to land and fishing boats, to Kolia’s family home; in the film’s final moments, Krichman returns us through a similar, now de-evolutionary sequence… (Condee).
Leviathan:
Destruction of Kolia’s homestead:
Krichman has chosen to shoot it from inside the house, so that we experience the destruction not of a building but of a home (Condee).
In Elena, plague of locusts was ‘slishkom v lob’, whereas in Leviathan:
by contrast, there are scenes that have the express purpose of explaining the implications of what is going on.
Anton Dolin quote about Western perception of Leviathan:
читая рецензии западных критиков на “Левиафан”, я вижу, что они и понятия не имеют, насколько точно фильм выражает российскую реальность
Stishova on name Leviathan:
Именем этим – левиафан – в фильме маркируется власть, воплощенная в первую голову в образе мэра приморского северного городка. Невидный мужик с казенным лицом, блатной ухмылкой и хозяйскими замашками – он и есть гидра. Многоголовая и стозевная.
(NO): Vadim is still subordinate to those ‘наверху’. The true power is the Leviathan on which Vadim and others feed
Condee quote on Zviagintsev’s ambitions:
“Zviagintsev’s philosophical ambitions are larger than the present moment. “
Stishova’s quote on Leviathan’s artistic effect:
Звягинцев вовсе не отказывается от излюбленных художественных приемов, от иносказаний и недосказанностей, от цезур в монтаже, что лишь усиливает эффект тайны-загадки-чуда.
Zviagintsev on the authorities in Russia:
Regarding Bykov’s The Fool (2014):
- This is looking at things the way they are […]. But the authorities in this country behave as if their power comes from God and not from people (Zviagintsev).
- Difference between state and gang = existence of true rule of law under to which are subject (Ser. dozhd’).
Condee on religious motive for Leviathan:
Zviagintsev’s film is less anti-Orthodox than anticlerical. • The film is a powerful polemic against institutionalized faith.Much is lost in a purely secular reading of Leviathan.
Stishova on religious aspect of Leviathan:
“В фильме правит логика жизни – неумолимая, жестокая, скупая на счастливые развязки. Жизни, где Бог и вера давно подменены ритуалами и риторикой.” (Стишова).
Zviagintsev on Russian orthodox richness:
Taking gifts from people who are breaking the law, stealing and committing various excesses—after all they really do know from whose hands they are accepting these gifts; watches worth tens of thousands of dollars, convertibles and chapels, is this not falsehood before our Creator?! (Graffy).
Maslova on Zviagintsev’s religious imagery:
на его карте непременно где-то должен стоять хотя бы маленький крестик, даже если настоятельной драматургической и идеологической необходимости в нем нет:
(no, religion is crucial to Zviagintsev’s work, particularly Elena, “И последние станут первыми/ конец света)
В “Левиафане” же церковь, Библия, всякие религиозные мотивы и аллюзии присутствуют не для галочки, а как один из принципиальных элементов всей конструкции.
Dolin on viewer’s expectation for destroying Kolia’s home:
стандартно мыслящий зритель мог бы прогнозировать строительство на месте неправедно отжатой земли какого-нибудь “храма Сатаны” — то есть торгово-развлекательного центра с подземной парковкой.
Однако авторы “Левиафана” придумывают кое-что попровокационней:
“Vladyka”/Graffy (Leviathan):
“Vladyka,” a term used in Russian for a range of members of the higher clergy, a Bishop, an Archbishop, a Metropolitan, and a word whose etymological connection with the wielding of power connects it to the wordvlast’.Vlast’is a word that both the Bishop and the Mayor are very fond of using.
• The two men are linked throughout the film. They eat and drink together and they use the familiar form of address (they call each otherty). They have the same aggressive-defensive mentality.
• “They are connected too by their ambiguous lexis, which elides the difference between earthly and heavenly power”
• (CONTEST: Vadim repeats after the Bishop, following his words like a puppy searching for appraisal for his actions: ‘A vot ugodno emu?’
Dolin on the taboo of Leviathan:
Звягинцев посягнул на очень серьезное табу - на Русскую православную церковь, которую даже самые ярые критики режима старались не трогать
Graffy’s quote about Kolia:
“Kolia is a victim of the state and the system, the plaything of cruel fate”
(Scene in Zhit’ directly quoted in Leviathan)
Characters:
Quote (in Leviathan):
Kolia/ Grishka
“Ну и чё? Где же твой Бог милосердный?”
Zviagintsev on Kolia’s options:
Ну, а чем же еще залить этот ужас, который навалился на Николая, - это для него единственный выход! У него жизнь сыпется, как карточный домик!
Стишова about Liliia:
“тайно нелюбимому любимой женой”.
wrong) “Я люблю тебя/ Я знаю…” (Стишова
Graffy’s quote about Liliia:
“Lilia, broken by the drudgery of her work in a fish factory and the volatile character of her husband”
Rachel Morley’s comparison of Liliia:
Liuda, the heroine of Abram Room’s classic examination of gender relations in early Soviet Russia,Bed and Sofa(Tret’ia Meshchanskaia, 1927) (RCRG 2014).
