“Time of the Barbarians”: The Phenomenon of Barbarism in the Film Brother 2 by Aleksey Balabanov

Abstract

This article presents a look at Aleksey Balabanov’s program film Brother 2 (2000). The hero is the embodiment of the concept of “new barbarism”. The research methodology includes structural-semiotic, mythopoetic and motivational aspects of the analysis of the work of cinematography. Political and ethical meanings were revealed in the image of Danila Bagrov, but the research carried out clearly shows the features of a barbarian in him. Like the creator of Conan the Barbarian Robert Howard, Aleksey Balabanov states that it is the barbarian who is the hero of the current era. In a world that has “moved from its place”, this “new barbarian” brings unbending will and his own rigid moral guidelines. But if in the first film Brother barbarism looks advantageous, combining strength and ethics – even if insight does not occur, and the barbarian goes to conquer new lands, then in the second film of the diptych the hero goes through violence as usual, with cynicism. Formally, he wins, but existentially he fails. Therefore, the mighty force of the “new barbarian” manifests itself locally, in small ways and is realized in private confrontations. There is no worthy test for Bagrov’s heroism, because the world does not correspond to its scale, and therefore the hero is restless – the truly barbaric fullness of vitality does not protect against existential fear. The discrepancy between the attitudes of the barbarian hero and the position of the intellectual director unmasks the author’s alienation from the principles and common truths of the character and complicates the film with dramatic connotations. Keywords: Aleksey Balabanov, Brother 2, phenomenon of barbarism, existentialism, post- and-decolonial thought