Zvyagintsev: Elena (2011)

[Chris Knipp]

Andrei Zvyagintsev: ELENA (2011)


NADEZHDA MARKINA IN ELENA

Family issues

Zvagintsev returns strongly to form in a tense domestic drama with class and money issues quietly brought to a brutal Darwinian boil in Elena. The film begins with a slow morning ritual in which the dowdy Elena (Nadezhda Markina) wakes up her rich older husband Vladimir (Andrey Smirnov) and fixes him breakfast. The beautiful cinematography by Mikhail Krichman (who shot the director's first two films as well as Silent Souls, NYFF 2011 ) languidly shows off the handsome, spacious flat in a secluded quarter of Moscow whose modern elegance carries with it a certain coldness that is shared by the couple, who are loving, but not very warm toward each other.

The movie's slow unfolding reveals gradually Elena's situation, and Vladimir's. Vladimir has a dissolute, cynical daughter whom he generously supports despite her hostility and distance. Elena has a son from a previous marriage in a shabby area a train ride away, hard by a nuclear power station. She visits regularly with CARE packages and cash. Sergey (Aleksey Rozin) is out of work and lives with his wife (Evgenia Konushkina)) and two kids. The older, teenage Sasha (Igor Ogurtsov), is an indifferent student who prefers video games and seems on his way to becoming a beer-swilling slob like dad. Elena, however, tries to protect these semi-dependents through cadging donations from Vladimir. When we see how he responds to a request for a substantial donation to bribe Sasha's way into university, it's obvious where things are going.

A heart attack while Vladmir is working out at the gym reveals details about how he and Elena first met (she was his nurse a decade earlier for a lesser but still serious illness) and also brings things to a head. When he asks to see her, Elena tries to bring back her husband's estranged daughter Katerina (Elena Lyadova) on friendly terms. When Elena later learns how Vladimir is planning financially for his possible demise, she is moved to take drastic action.

These superficial details can't possibly convey how rich and marvelously subtle -- as well as tautly suspenseful and thought-provoking, this film is from start to finish. It all comes through the dry, tight-lipped dialogue by Zvyagintsev and Oleg Negin, which makes so much good use of few words; through the handsome images; unobtrusive, lived-in performances; and the superb pacing. While Sasha and Sergey and their lumpenproletariat limitations are not much elaborated, neither are they stereotypically demonized or victimized. Katerina is mysterious and full of fascinating contradictions. We don't know what cruelty or coldness or earlier parental errors may lie behind her hostility, but there is the natural and inevitable warmth of close family ties there too, as shown in her hospital room reunion with her father, the most many-layered and real of all the scenes, which starts with argument and provocation and ends with hugs and whispered declarations. Most complex of all is Elena herself, of course. Is she a saint, or a villain? Her final act brings not only pain and desperation, but its own kind of long ongoing purgatory. The last scenes are all the more telling because there's no spoken dialogue.

Zvyagintsev's debut, The Return (2003) was one of my favorite films of the early 2000's, an unexpected gift from an unknown. It evokes tense child-parent relations with a tale that's both like a mysterious fable and full of intense natural emotion and it's full of stark, painterly landscapes. The director's next film, The Banishment (2007; Film Comment Selects) was a disappointment. It's too complicated, long, and slow; it never quite comes together and is marred and weighed down along the stumbling way by heavy-handed religious messages. Elena is both a fresh start and a renewal of earlier stylistic strengths. This time Zvyagintsev has pared away all the heavy-handedness and gotten smart and contemporary, without ceasing to be universal. In fact here the issues are more powerful and universal than ever. This tale of greed, sloth and need, of a poor wife and an rich old man sitting on his money is as classic and biblical in its roots as any tale out of Chaucer. But the filmmaker has spoken enthusiastically of the story as a chance to explore Darwinian materialism in action, "the central idea of the early modern period: survival of the fittest, survival at any cost." The details of situation are even more fresh and contemporary when seen as an aspect of the lawless, cutthroat greed of post-Soviet Russia. Miraculously, though the issues are moral and fundamental, they are never obvious or unsubtle. Symbolism and eternal conflict come out simply rooted in action and terse dialogue. The Philip Glass score like everything else is sparingly and very effectively used. Once again Zvagintsev has made a great film and shown himself to be one of the best directors in the world today.

Surprisingly, Elena was shown out of competition at Cannes in May 2011 but it received the compensation of the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize there. Some other major festivals followed, including Toronto and Sundance. A Zeitgeist Films release, Elena will have its US premiere at Film Forum in New York Wed., May 16, 2012.

[Chris Knipp]

By the way this film has received rave reviews and has the highest current Metacritic score, 90. (May 23, 2012).

[oscar jubis]

Ah, Russian Cinema...I think that every movie directed by Aleksandr Sokurov is a must-see. Other than him, I enjoy the films of eccentric veteran Kira Muratova, but they are never distributed in the US because they are...well... baffling, like Rivette at his most fanciful. Perhaps my favorite Russian film since Russian Ark is Ilya Khrzhanovskiy's 4. I liked Zvyagintsev's The Return enough for an Honorable Mention and liked Elena even more. Without wishing to be reductive or to imply anything but admiration let me say that I was reminded while watching Elena of Claude Chabrol at his best.

[Chris Knipp]

This is a big return -- to form -- after Zvyagintsev's dull follow-up to The Return. You're right, the plot of Elena does resemble Chabrol, most definitely, though the feel is different. I liked The Return more than just at "honorable mention" level, but Elena may actually be more well made, able to touch more people too.

Sokurov is amazing, but we like different things. Russian Ark, for instance, the darling of the US art houses, didn't do it for me. Nor would I agree every film of his is a must-see, because I've tried to see them and they aren't. But he still is amazing, unique, remarkable, and kind of crazy. My favorite of all is The Sun, but that's not the only other one.

I see that Khrzhanovskiy's "4" is available on Netflix so I'm giving it a try shortly. There are three titles by Kira Muratova, Passions and Chekhovian Motifs. But Melody for a Street Organ is "save" and those never seem to arrive. Are those ones you recommend?

[Chris Knipp]

Ilya Khzhanovsky: 4 (2005)



Mesmerizing and provocative first feature

The screenplay of "4" is credited to edgy contemporary Russian author Vladimir Sorokin, and in case you think movies aren't serous business any more, reportedly everybody who worked on making "4" was beaten by angry viewers. It may be that Khzhanovsky went a little haywire in the latter part of the 2-hour-plus film, losing some of Sorokin's structure because he became a little too taken up with a lively and colorful group of wizened crones who are the actual inhabitants of the remote village to which protagonist Marina goes for the funeral and wake for her (twiin?) sister. Did the crones actually get drunk on the vodka they are shown swilling in the wake scene and thereafter? Was the camerawork meant to grow increasingly sloppier? Warning to young filmmakers: don't let colorful locations run away with your picture. Nonetheless this is a humdinger. Dangerous to be so provocative with your first big feature film. It made him famous (or notorious), but it was six years till he finished another film (Dau, an epic biography of the scientist Lev Landau, which is now in post-production).

The film begins slowly but intriguingly with a half-hour sequence of three people telling lies to each other at an after hours bar, inventing fantastic occupations. Marina, who is a whore, pretends to be in advertising. A stylish, somewhat effete man who is really a meat dealer claims to purvey spring water to the president. The other man, deadpan chain smoker with a crewcut who later admits to Marina he's a piano tuner, tells a preposterous and revolting story about being a geneticist involved in cloning of humans that he claims has gone on since the Stalin era. "4" refers to the habit of cloning double twins. When he gets into a tale of homosexual rape among black clones in a slum the meat broker goes off in a huff. His discovery of "round" piglets sold at a fancy restaurant is assurance, if needed, that "4' is bizarre and surreal. Everybody has written about it. The Times called it "mysterious" and "mesmerizing," and Jonothan Rosenbaum wrote about it favorably (though I can't access his review -- some of the online archives don't go back as far as 2005 or 2006).

Although at the one-hour mark, with the film half over, things only are beginning to happen, and that's not very good, the opening sequence at the bar, even if over-long, is atmospheric and intriguing. One excellent and admiring review by Ty Burr of the Boston Globe described the scene as a surreal, futuristic Russian version of Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks" "come to life with a script by a post modernist prankster"(and Burr identifies Sorokin as "one of the more controversial voices in post-Soviet literature"). But it's scary and provocative rather than dreary. It's interesting to begin with three characters who are quite mysterious. Unfortunately the film delves into the meat broker's life only briefly, and the pretend geneticist piano tuner not at all. Perhaps it was best to stick to one of the three, to give the film unified focus, but it still makes things feel structurally left dangling. Doubtless the round pigs, the shaggy-dog bar conversations, the Stalin-era meat preserved in a vast freezer at 28º (below?), the large dolls whose heads are made of chewed bread, are all products of the fevered imagination of Vladimir Sorokin. So too are the repetitions of doubling, doubling scenes, twins, the fantastic clone tales, hinting that the world has gone mad and gone bad. Unfortunately the barking dogs, the endless trek cross-country to a wake peopled by colorful locals already had the quality of déjâ-vu, maybe because I've recently seen similar sequences in Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia and the Bulgarian Konstantin Bojanov's Avé, and I think I've seen it before that. I'll bet Emir Kosturica did some sequence like this somewhere. This movie is accomplished, ambitious in its eccentricity. Some of it nonetheless reminded me of Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers. And it made me appreciate Sokurov and Zvyagintsev even more, and, in a more popular vein, Bekmambetov, who's an entertainer and a technical dazzler, and no slouch in the surrealism department. Certainly, though, "4" is very much in the Russian vein. The sound design, though typically grating and overblown, is technically the film's most original aspect.

[oscar jubis]

Thanks for the review of 4. I'm really glad you decided to watch it. Rosenbaum did not write a long review, only a capsule:
Scripted by novelist Vladimir Sorokin, this 2004 debut feature by Russian director Ilya Khrzanovsky is puzzling, intriguing, and often compelling, apparently set in the present but magical and futuristic in tone. Three strangers—a prostitute, a meat vendor, and a piano tuner—meet in a bar and bullshit at great length about who they are and what they do before going their separate ways; like them, the film then veers off into different directions, growing increasingly strange and phantasmagorical. A highly original blend of observation and imagination, this remains as unpredictable as its characters (some of whom are stray dogs). In Russian with subtitles. 128 min.

Muratova is at least as strange but in a different way than Khzhanovsky.
It's hard to say I "recommend" anything by her because her filmography is something of an "acquired test" perhaps... I'd say watch Chekhov's Motifs (with a spirit of adventure).
Here's Rosenbaum essay on the occasion of a Muratova retrospective at the Siskel Center:
http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?p=5957

[Chris Knipp]

I don't get why various reviewers say it's the future, and I don't know if the film is 2005 or 2004, but otherwise I agree. I like the bit about some of the characters being stray dogs. Dogs wander in and out of the set all the time. The Wikipedia entry (in English) points out "He is the son of Andrei Khrzhanovsky (b. 1939), one of the top Russian animation directors, and grandson of actor Yury Khrzhanovsky (1905—1987)." And I might have mentioned that "4" won big at Rotterdam, a festival with a leaning toward avant-garde cinema.

I'll put Chekhov's Motifs on my Netflix queue, but it's not available in Instant Play like "4".

I'm obliged to you for referring me to these directors.

her filmography is something of an "acquired test" perhaps

LOL. Yes, maybe.

[oscar jubis]

The Wikipedia entry (in English) points out "He is the son of Andrei Khrzhanovsky (b. 1939), one of the top Russian animation directors

You were impressed with his film ROOM AND A HALF when you reviewed it (2009 NYFF) but I haven't had a chance to watch it...

[Chris Knipp]

Yes, Andrey Khzharnovsky, Room and a Half, NYFF 2009. I saw that the other day then forgot it. I've since, since seeing that film I mean, not since the other day, become friends with a Russian Jewish couple, exiles from Petersburg, who didnt like this film very much, said its tone was all wrong, but I guess I did like it myself, yes. I guess they thought it was too fanciful, they were offended by the distortions. It was Ilya's father's first non-animation film. That's just their opinion, but they are thoroughly acquainted with Brodsky, which I am not hardly at all. I'd still recommend it for the inventive mix of looks and techniques. Have you seen any of Andrey's animation films?

[Chris Knipp]

I just want to add ELENA is the best-reviewed film showing now according to Metacritic, with a socre of 89. It was even higher earlier, in the 90's. And at least unlike the no. 2 one, IN THE FAMILY (Patrick Wang), it is not impossible to see. ELENA is showing here and there all over the country now, though the Zeitgeist release is spotty. Schedule here: http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/playda...toryname=elena.

It is currently showing in the New York area on three screens, and in Berkeley at a Landmark theater. It showed at the Miami Cinematheque June 8-14 and came back for one day, June 24.

On rotten tomatoes, which rates higher, ELENA has a 93%.

[oscar jubis]

We (Cosford Cinema) showed Elena on June 8-10th.
We are showing In the Family this weekend and next.
I haven't seen Room and a Half or anything by Andrey K.

[Chris Knipp]

In the Family got such great reviews, I'd certainly like to see it.