Andrey Zvyagintsev Research Articles

More beautiful areas: Performativity and presence in the integrated soundtrack

In 2019, I presented a paper at a conference in NUI Maynooth, Ireland that used Kevin Donnelly’s notion of the soundtrack as spectre as the starting point for discussing performativity and presence in the films of Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev. During the discussion that followed, Danijela Kulezic-Wilson, who was in attendance, raised several observations concerning the relevance of Donnelly’s concept to her own research exploring the integrated soundtrack. This paper essentially seeks to continue that conversation. By revisiting several examples explored in Kulezic-Wilson’s chapter on “Soundtrack’s Liminal Spaces” in Sound Design Is the New Score, alongside others including Nick Cave’s score for The Proposition (John Hillcoat, 2005) and Birdman (Alejandro Iñárritu, 2014), I explore to what extent Donnelly’s analogy can be expanded to consider instances in film where the foregrounding of tactile musical gestures and spatial placement within the audio mix results in a distinctly performative, quasi-physical sensibility that challenges the “insubstantial” status of Donnelly’s spectral presence. Drawing on a broad framework of theoretical concepts including Miguel Mera’s discussion of the haptic score and Paul Sanden’s network of liveness, this paper aims to provide a complimentary perspective to an important aspect of Danijela Kulezic-Wilson’s significant contribution to the study of film sound and music.

Wygnani z raju - analiza toposu domu w filmach Andrieja Zwiagincewa


 
 
 The topos of ‘home’ is one of the most important motifs in Andrey Zvyagintsev’s films. The director perceives ‘home’ as a material and symbolic term. It applies to the place where a family lives and to the house of God. The article refers to Eliade’s well-known concept of home, but also to the more modern one created by Zbigniew Kadłubek, who writes about oikology in the context of faith. The article reveals the richness of mythical, cultural, religious and artistic references. Each film exposes different images of ‘home’, but they use common metaphors, such as the fall, destruction and the apocalypse. Contemporary man, turned away from God, recreates the mythical thread of exile and ceases to have a safe place to be in the world. In such works as The Banishment, Leviathan, Elena, and Loveless, the director fully showed the consequences of losing the spiritual dimension of life. The proposed interpretations of Zvyagintsev’s films expand the reception of his work in Poland.
 
 

Transforming Leviathan: Job, Hobbes, Zvyagintsev and Philosophical Progression

The allegory of Leviathan, the biblical serpent of the seas, has undergone numerous distinct and even antithetical conceptions since its origin in the book of Job. Most prominently, Leviathan was the namesake of Thomas Hobbes’s 1651 political treatise and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s 2014 film of the same name, a damning indictment of Russian corruption. These three iterations underscore the societal transition from the recognition of power as being derived from God to the secularization of power in Hobbes’s philosophy, to the negation of the legitimacy of divine and secular institutional power, in Zvyagintsev’s controversial film. This examination of Leviathan’s three unique iterations elucidates the evolution of philosophy and the solution to a world devoid of authority. An autopsy of Leviathan’s allegorical beached corpse invites the individual to create and recognize their own authority and purpose, thus fabricating a fourth transformation of Leviathan.

Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless as the remediation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The heart of a dog. Towards the question of cultural memory

The article aims to examine the relationship between two texts: Loveless (Нелюбовь, 2017), the latest of Andrey Zvyagintsev’s feature films, and The Heart of a Dog (Собачье сердце, 1925), one of Mikhail Bulgakov’s most popular short stories. The studies are focused on finding the parallels showing the work of cultural memory, which is understood – following Aleida Assmann’s and Astrid Erll’s findings – as the process of continuous remediation, retranscription and negotiation of essential ideas in the space of culture. Consequently, the author is not interested in treating Zvyagintsev’s text as the illustration of Bulgakov’s plot, but rather in discussing certain topics which are deposited in Russian literature and constantly reused and reinterpreted, creating the framework for communication across ‘the abyss of time’. The analogies between the selected texts are sought in the area of their structure, some thematic overlapping, the authors’ approach to the issue of the authoritarian ideology and the role of technology as well as in exploring the function of space as one of the narrative mechanisms, in particular in the context of the category of home and anti-home.

Is Loveless (2017) a film festival film on demand?

This is a is the Deep Focus roundtable discussing on Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev’s film Loveless (2017), originally published on 1 July 2018, and facilitated by then editor-inchief, Zhao Jin. While two of the guests expressed relatively positive opinions of the film, film scholar Kai Yin gave Loveless a low score, calling it a dianying jie feihua yishu dianying (literally, ‘nonsense arthouse cinema at film festivals’), which was also referred to as a ‘film festival film on demand’ during the discussion. The panelists also discussed the global trend of making zhongxin sixiang shi dianying or gainian xianxing dianying (‘concept-oriented films’), or wei yishupian (‘pseudo art films’), which feature simplistic, ideological messages and cater to the tastes of major film festivals; they also sharply criticized the commercial, industrial operations of the film festival system.

Following Brodsky. Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Apocrypha

The article presents the study of the short film Apocrypha by Andrei Zvyagintsev. The text is aimed at the interpretation of the movie in the context of the problem of memory, which is emphasised in the selected work in the explicit and implicit visual associations with the figure and poetry of Iosif Brodsky. The recognition of these characteristic elements in the structure of Zvyagintsev’s film has the influence on the perception of its meaning, leading the culturally aware recipient towards discovering its broad interpretative potential in view of the Russian literary tradition. The study is conducted using the comparative method of analysis. The core theory which constitutes the methodological foundation of the study is Astrid Erll’s concept of cultural memory expounded as intertextuality, i.e. the continuous building up of layers of texts, which are mediated, as well as her idea of transcultural memory, defined in the first instance as a process of fluctuation between the individual and collective level of remembering. Attention is turned to the motifs, which are characteristic both for Brodsky’s and Zvyagintsev’s poetics, such as the aquatic symbolism, temporal and topographical relationships, chromatography of cold colours etc. The application of the selected methodology in the presented discussion allows for exposing the dynamics of the changing nature of culture, which becomes the container of the social and territorial fluctuations of memory.

Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan: The Unbearable State of Nature

Leviathan by Andrey Zvyagintsev is a movie that depicts the world in a state of nature, with no prospects for creating a Hobbesian social contract. Set in the Russian peripheries, the film depicts a respected and caring family man who is gradually deprived of everything because of lack of political order with enforceable law and justice. The movie is a depiction of a contemporary “failed state”, equalized with the state of nature, where there is no legitimate power and violence remains the only tool to achieve goals both in private and public spheres. Religion consists of empty rituals that serve corrupt officials to maintain power. This world cannot last without innocent victims, scapegoats of the society, one of whom is the protagonist of the movie. This paper offers a legal and philosophical inquiry into the film, as it draws especially on the theory of the social contract proposed by Hobbes. It depicts a Russian town as a symbol of the state of nature as envisioned by Hobbes and describes the reasons why the social contract has not been made. According to Hobbes’s theory, in the state of nature concepts like justice and injustice do not convey any meaning; therefore, this paper investigates other: theological and anthropological concepts, to explore the meaning of Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan.

Performatism as the Overcoming of Postmodernism

The article maintains that Russian culture since the late 1990s has turned away from postmodernism and has entered a new, post-postmodern era that the author calls performatism. The main strategy of performatism is to compel belief using formal means (per formam). This belief takes place in an independent esthetic realm apart from any religious rituals or institutions. In theory, performatism operates within narrative by creating closed spaces in which positive identifications take place and give arise to experiences of love, transcendence, beauty, sincerity etc. These positive identifications in turn ward off postmodern irony. The article shows in concrete terms how performatism works by examining in detail five of its major strategies. These include double framing (creating closed spaces in a narrative), the stylization of a radically separated subject and a mediator, the empowerment of that subject, the development of an ethics of transgression, and the use of ostensive signs. These are exemplified by the works of such well-known contemporary Russian writers and filmmakers as Victor Pelevin, Evgeniy Grishkovets, Alexander Ilichevsky, Zakhar Prilepin, Andrey Zvyagintsev, Andrey Konchalovsky and others. The article also delves into the limitations of posthistorical (postmodern) thinking, which treats cultural artifacts exclusively in terms of their place in a spatial context and ignores their relations to one another in time (diachrony).

Corruption as Shared Culpability: Religion, Family, and Society in Andrey Zvyagintsev's Leviathan (2014)

This article engages in close analysis of how Andrey Zvyagintsev depicts corruption and its various manifestations: moral, familial, societal, and institutional, in Leviathan (Leviafan, 2014). While other post-Soviet films address the problem of prevalent corruption in Russia, Zvyagintsev’s work is the first to provoke strong public reactions, not only from government and Russian Orthodox Church officials, but also from Orthodox and political activist groups. The film demonstrates that the instances of legal and moral failings in one aspect of existence are a sign of a much deeper and wider-ranging problem that affects all other spheres of human experience. By elevating corruption from a well-known and accepted mundane problem to a religio-philosophical one, Leviathan creates a sense of shared culpability that underpins contemporary Russian society.

Ruined intimacy and intimate ruins in Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless (2017)

The collapse of the Soviet Union, followed by a period of cultural disorientation, and ensuing the rise of unfettered capitalism, offers scholars a conceptual magnifying glass with which to understand radical social change. Contemporary Russian popular culture, emerging in this unique social context, becomes a privileged venue to scrutinize the nature and implications of radical change. This article explores the transformations of intimacy through the lens of Andrey Zvyagintsev’s latest feature film Loveless (2017). This film captures a profound disruption of intimacy in compliance with market principles, technology and social media. Zvyagintsev juxtaposes instances of ruined intimacy with spaces of intimate physical ruins. The article suggests that the cinematic visual meditation on ruins and ruination implicates a more expansive meditation on the transient and permanent aspects of our lives, the intersection between nature and culture, as well as the play between presence and absence. By drawing on Aronson’s (2015) cross-cultural work on emotional frameworks, this article argues that Loveless (2017) shows how Aronson’s regime of (rational) choice colonizes the regime of (passionate) faith, with deleterious consequences.

Suggestive techniques of screenwriting: taboo and unpredictability

The subject of this research is the suggestive techniques of screenwriting on various level of perception of the movie, which engage the audience into cinematographic scene. The majority of movies reproduce the topic of social taboo, pulling upon the forbidden desires, and thus, instigating the audience. Such movies intend to distort the socially accepted moral and ethical restrictions, blurring the boundaries of the generally accepted standard. Alongside the violation of social taboo, one of the most important elements of drawing attention of the audience is unpredictability, used in dramaturgy to create an effect of incompleteness of story and the desire to reveal it. The research is based on the analytical and comparative methods, which allow analyzing particular effects intended by the author at the conceptual and dramaturgical level of the screen work. As a suggestive dramaturgical element, unpredictability can be reflected as a deferred event or a unpredictability  that forms the screen image and character of the hero. Analysis is conducted on the movies “The Return” (2003), “Loveless” (2017) directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev; “Fight Club” (1999) directed by David Fincher; “The Departed” (2006) directed by Martin Scorsese; “Melancholia” (2011) directed by Lars von Trier. The research result consists in characterization of the modern trend of preserving unpredictability within a narrative structure of the movie to maintain non-triviality of the storyline.

Концепт ДЕНЬГИ в фильме А. Звягинцева «Елена»: вербальная и визуальная репрезентация

The article deals with the representation of the concept of money in the feature film Elena by Andrey Zvyagintsev. Money is first of all a plot-forming element because this is the reason behind the conflict between the main characters, which is shown in the film. At the visual level, the concept is represented explicitly by constant demonstration of money, and implicitly, with the help of objects reflecting the level of people’s welfare. There is a striking contrast between the ‘world of the rich’, whose main representative is Vladimir, and the ‘world of the poor’ where Elena’s son’s family live. The protagonist unites these two worlds. We also found out several attributes of this concept at the verbal level, in the discourse of the characters. Some of these attributes are connected with the functioning of money, its use in the daily life, and legal financial aspects. Vladimir’s discourse contains verbal markers reflecting his idea of money as a symbol of work, responsibility for one’s own life and their family’s welfare, a symbol of maturity and independence. The analysis of the discourse of Elena and her relatives revealed completely different realizations of the concept, demonstrating that in their worldview money represents help and support which people are obliged to give to the ones who are in difficult situations. Less frequent concept attributes are meaning of life and freedom.

Смысл творчества Андрея Звягинцева: опыт типологического исследования

Смысл творчества Андрея Звягинцева: опыт типологического исследования

Russia's Post-Soviet Ideological Terrain: Zvyagintsev'sLeviathanand Debates on Authority, Agency, and Authenticity

Much of the literature on post-Soviet ideology interprets ideology as the content of state-sponsored doctrines or measures it via persistent strands in public opinion. This paper relies on a different notion: we think of societal and state perspectives as engaged with each other in a contentious dialogue that is constitutive of ideology. With this dialogic conception of ideology, this paper provides a map of Russia's ideological terrain through an analysis of the debates surrounding Andrey Zvyagintsev's 2014 filmLeviathan.We show that the film and the debates it provoked engaged with state-sponsored narratives and highlight three key themes of ideational contestation in contemporary Russian politics: authority, agency, and authenticity. An examination of these ideational battles in which provocative and resonant societal critiques challenge dominant narratives provides an original account of ideology in contemporary Russia. It also speaks to debates on civil society that have increasingly become interested in ideational politics.

Sensing and Longing for God in Andrey Zvyagintsev’s The Return and Leviathan

This article explores apophatic ways of presenting God (the Other) in two films of Andrey Zvyagintsev. The lens for this analysis is the phenomenological theology of John Panteleimon Manoussakis, using the following concepts: (1) God as personal Other; (2) the relational nature of God’s self-disclosure through prosopon; (3) God as revealed in space/sight; (4) God as revealed in hearing/time; and (5) God as revealed in touch/self-understanding. This analysis, pursued through close examination of Zvyagintsev’s The Return (2003) and Leviathan (2014), demonstrates the relevance of Manoussakis’s theology to the study of religion and film, particularly in its sensual and experiential themes and emphases.

Different Images of God: Theological-aesthetical Evaluation of Films by Andrey Zvyagintsev and Pavel Lungin

Different Images of God: Theological-aesthetical Evaluation of Films by Andrey Zvyagintsev and Pavel Lungin

Aspirations of Home in Post-Soviet Russia: Domestic Spaces and National Resonances in Andrei Zviagintsev’s Elena

This article analyses the role of domestic living space and its connection with identity in the Russian feature film Elena (Andrey Zvyagintsev, 2011), winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. The film uses a spatially symmetrical structure based on two separate apartments frequented by the film’s eponymous heroine, both of which represent distinct socioeconomic and historical aspects of Soviet and Post-Soviet life. The first is Elena’s husband’s large, modern, upmarket and centrally located apartment that is as cold, tomb-like and indeed lifeless as it is chic. The second is her son’s older, tiny, squalid relic of the Soviet past situated on the periphery, with its claustrophobic walls providing a sense of human contact and warmth, despite its toxic air of decadence, indolence and violence. As in the earlier Russian film Little Vera (Vasili Pichul, 1988), it will be argued that in Elena, identity is inextricably linked with physical living space in a specifically Russian context. Elena is an ironic ode to the apartment, both Soviet and modern. Drawing on Marc Auge’s theory of the non-place, it will be argued that the universal aspiration to live in comfort, while human and understandable, is shown, in the post-Soviet landscape depicted by Zvyagintsev’s powerful film, to result in a form of living death.

Symbolism in Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan: Modern Interpretation on Job and Hobbes.

Symbolism in Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan: Modern Interpretation on Job and Hobbes.

Fathering and the Consolidation of Masculinity: Notes on the Paternal Function in Andrey Zvyagintsev's The Return.

The film The Return, directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev, depicts a weeklong "crash course" in masculinity offered by a father who returns after a prolonged absence. It is here analyzed here in terms of paternal functions related to love, work, and play. The story culminates in the father's "accidental" death. The image of his corpse sinking into a watery grave suggests that this "[not so] good enough" father both returns to his former condition as mythic-and-absent, and also assumes the position of the "always already dead" symbolic father. Psychoanalysis has admirably explored many fathering issues (specifically the experiential qualities of presence and absence, both emotionally and physically). This paper presents the argument that more attention should be directed to the (mis)alliance between the actual and the symbolic father (both of whom are always both present and absent in psychic life). It is noted that an actual father can be killed and mourned, whereas the symbolic father is "always already dead," and can neither be killed nor be mourned except in the crucial sense wherein we are all called to grieve the omnipotent fantasy/phantasy that we might not be "castrated"--to grieve the delusion that we might be able to speak from the locus of the "phallus," which is the generative position held exclusively by the symbolic father.

The Significance of Myth in the Work of Andrey Zvyagintsev

The subject-matter of the article is the mythological layers in A. Zvyagintsev’s films “The Return” and “The Banishment” and their effect on the artistic structure and processes of the audience’s perception