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Главная » 2011 » Март » 26 » Andrei Zvyagintsev. Banishment
21:09 Andrei Zvyagintsev. Banishment |
It seemed that curses and swearing would sweep yesterday’s favorite down to the ocean of oblivion, and Andrei would drown in it along with Baluyev, Lavronenko, and Maria Bonnevie to boot.Professor Gibbern’s Preparation
The Banishment, the Venice triumpher Andrei Zvyagintsev’s second feature-length motion picture, was received by the film audience rather coldly. After the first screenings, bewilderment reigned even among “advanced” cinema enthusiasts. Some applauded languidly, some grumbled discontentedly, and when cineastes read slashing reviews by renowned film experts, a torrent of criticism pounced on Zvyagintsev like tsunami on the province of Aceh. It seemed that curses and swearing would sweep yesterday’s favorite down to the ocean of oblivion, and Andrei would drown in it along with Baluyev, Lavronenko, and Maria Bonnevie to boot. Those who only yesterday had raved about The Return, regretted their past admirations: as they said, “we were “bought” all for nothing at the time”. Those who had silently swallowed the success of The Return, felt relief at last by stating that “the movie is total shit”.
Yekaterina Barabash argued that Zvyagintsev had invented “spiritual glamour”, merciless in its form and meaningless in its content. Yelena Ardabatskaya noted that it had been a difficult viewing experience since The Banishment has nothing at all in it: no people, no scents, only Emptiness. Roman Volobuyev himself, who at first confined himself mostly to sneering at ultramarine bread bins, finally succumbed and began to speak his mind. According to him, even Mikhalkov, now an object of scorn, “is a complex personality, while Zvyagintsev is a single-layered structure; he is a good professional director, at the level of an average American TV series maker, who makes films about things he does not give a damn about – and out of mercenary motives at that, and because he works not in the segment of My Perfect Nanny but in the segment of Russian, kind of, spirituality, his indifference and the fact that he knows nothing about those abstruse things that he depicts in his movies is the most terrible thing”. Even peacefully disposed Sam Klebanov complained, “It seems as if it is repeatedly suggested that we should think about the meaning of all those religious parallels. Perhaps, we did not think well enough, but somehow we have not thought up anything”.
I am not going to list all the complaints and accusations of displeased cinema experts and female viewers; I am just going to say that the criticism against The Banishment boils down to three things:
1) Namelessness of the time and place of the film
2) Artificial plot
3) Absence of meaningful content.
Let us figure them out one by one.
Time and Place
Perhaps, in some other film soft slopes, jade crockery and flecks of dust in sunbeams would be hurrahed, but the sophisticated aesthetics of The Banishment repelled the audience. The mannerism of mises en scene, the scenic splendors in conjunction with the director’s maniacal determination to drive all marks of time out of the shot built a wall of incomprehension between the audience and the movie. It appeared to many that it was nameless ghosts, not living people, that were wandering in empty rooms and lonely copses, that the director tried to disguise the poverty of the content behind the beauty of the shot. Is that the case? Let us try and look at the situation from another angle.
Have you ever tried to recount your dream? If you have, you certainly experienced a sort of frustration because it is impossible to communicate these feelings that only you can comprehend. Well, why should we speak about dreams! Even in our day life there are such breakdowns, such overflows of feelings, such “psychological spaces” that cannot be told about because words fail us. Sometimes poetry can help, sometimes music, and sometimes cinema. There is an expression “dream cinema”. At times this kind of cinema opens such layers of memory, gives such feelings that can be both more vivid and more exuberant than, for instance, your reminiscences about your first love or your visit to China. Alexei German’s film Khrustaliov, My Car! is regarded as a classic example of dream cinema. I cannot speak for others, but The Banishment reminded me of my experience of my first day in Madrid, which was a prominent, say, rough experience at first, but completely forgotten afterwards. For some reason, it is the first days in a new place that always stand apart. Of course, everyone has one’s own psychological reality. It stands to reason that there will always be someone left indifferent by the aesthetics of the film, and “this is right”. Look at cinema from that angle, and maybe some other film will awake something in you which cannot be expressed in words. However, the point is not only about dream cinema. The opinion that cinema is the closest to the world of dreams is shared by as much as half of the film experts, and I can only agree with that opinion.
Apropos, The Banishment was filmed in south Moldova, 5 kilometers away from the city of Vulcanesti. I do not know where precisely in Moldova Hare over the Abyss was shot, but as soon as I saw the landscapes of The Banishment I immediately remembered Keosayan’s picture. Such is Moldova, beautiful and sentimental! So, any “namelessness” is quite a relative thing. The matter is about the breadth of vision.
Artificiality of the Plot?
Can we say that the plot of The Banishment is artificial? It depends on how you look at it. Indeed, at first sight, the harmonious story about adultery, pregnancy, about relationships between a man and a woman collapses like a house of cards at the end of the film. And the blame is to be attributed to the “sacrifice” of the heroine. Female viewers were especially outraged by the fact that the character of Vera is phony throughout, that instead of a woman Zvyagintsev presented a phantom, the masculine perception of women. It is funny that a considerable difference is observed between the male and female assessments of The Banishment at IMDB. Whereas women assessed the film at 6.4 on the average, men’s assessment was 8.0. This does not happen often. But the thing is, I am convinced that the family drama, the outline of events, is only the threshold of the deeper layers of the film. In this context, the absurdity of Vera’s actions, her adultery, her allusions and sacrificial abortion acquires an entirely different undertone. It is interesting to note that with the massive introduction of the DNA test the problem of adultery roused an unprecedented polemic in the society. And there came Cannes laureate Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and Zvyagintsev’s The Banishment, in which connection fierce clashes began in network forums with regard to adulteries and related abortions. But in The Banishment the abortion is not the subject but only the cause of the dispute. The film is not about the abortion; then what is it about?
On November 21, 2006 Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an interview with Andrei Zvyagintsev. Answering the question of correspondent Valeriy Kichin’s concerning The Banishment the director says the following:
Zvyagintsev: …In general, it should be said that the personage is important to me not at all as a character or social type, but as a carrier of certain ideas. Not as an individual, but as a function embodied in that actor or actress.
Valeriy Kichin: In other words, you understand a film as a working model of life?
Zvyagintsev: Yes, as life arrangement. Not at the popular level, but at the metaphysical, perhaps, even at the mystical level. About the same thing happened to The Return: there, the father was not simply, and not only a concrete person, but also a certain function, the personification of some concept. And the children too, though. I am just constructed this way: I begin to get interested if I don’t so much discover the hero as a character as find a clue to his idea. The beauty of the world is not at all embodied through disgraceful fights in the world of people who live by their emotions, greed and passions. It is expressed through the battle in the world of ideas. There, this battle is never-ending and beautiful.
These words immediately turn everything upside down. The conscientious viewing of the film will allow you to see a story with carefully arranged prompts behind the heap of words and events from the very first shots. Zvyagintsev did not want to perplex the viewer at all. On the contrary, he shows his cards by both the film itself and direct allusions in his interview. It turns out that an enormous world opens up behind the outline of events, where all puzzles turn into solutions. So, what is this film about?
Content and Meaning
The reviews of The Banishment said repeatedly about its numerous allusions, quotations, metaphors; but in those reviews all allusions, hints, quotations spilled like beads on the floor. It seemed as if the plot lived its separate life, whereas the quotations lay about separately. Meanwhile, the careful and slow viewing of the film will immediately change the viewer’s attitude to it.
0 minutes 0 seconds – 4 minutes 18 seconds
First scene: A spreading tree grows by a country road between a tilled soil and a field until a car appears on the horizon. The car rushes along the country road; after enveloping this tree in clouds of dust it travels farther.
It then rushes along a highway between a forest and a field passing out of sight three times.
The car enters a city, its industrial suburb. Clouds of smoke pour from chimney stalks. It is spitting and getting dark. Please note that if at the beginning the car moves in the open space, now it moves either between factory walls or between a canal and a string of buildings. In other words, the route of the car is strictly confined.
The car can turn neither right nor left. In spite of anxious blinking of the traffic lights, the car moves ahead determinedly.
At this moment a train blocks the way. That’s it. The car stops. A shower begins. The driver uses the pause to bandage his blooded hand, but as soon as the crossing gate rises, he drives ahead. At last the car drives up to a house in the dead of night, that is, it enters the city in the daytime and drives up to the house at night! At night! What the hell is this megalopolis that you have to drive through from morning till night?! This is not Tokyo or Moscow, after all! There are no traffic jams.
How should we understand this? From the first seconds of the film the director begins playing a frightful, inconceivable game with the viewer, but almost nobody notices it! The ordinary, worldly worldview is left behind, and we are falling, falling, falling into a dream, a myth, some metaphysical universe. And here, in the world behind the looking glass, the country behind the eyelashes, everything becomes suddenly clear. So, a car, a field, a forest, and a city. There it is! This is a direct paraphrase of the history of the Civilization, or, to be more precise, a historical narrative with its traditional division of the time into three periods: the Ancient World (field), the Middle Ages (forest) and the New Time (city). From this angle, The Road becomes the Metahistory in itself, and the Tree becomes a symbol of Eden or the prehistoric Paradise.
That’s that! “That’s all, babies, that’s all, chickens, get off, here we are”. The Banishment begins with the imposition of a sentence, with a peculiar The Decline of the West from Zvyagintsev. The thousand-year history is pressed within four minutes and a half. Having started its movement in the blooming Paradise, the civilization ended it in impenetrable gloom: there is no further way. No further way? And in general? Is there any way out? Is there any alternative to the onward movement in the “Car”?
4 minutes 18 second – 9 minutes 31 seconds
As it turns out, the driver’s name is Mark, and he has come to his younger brother Alex. The name Mark is derived from the Latin word Marcus, which means “hammer, sledge-hammer”. Bloodstained Mark needs some rest and a night’s lodging. Not only this. He needs help. And this help is provided by Alex, as Mark declines Alex’s offer to call in a doctor. It is Alex who extracts a bullet from Mark’s shoulder and then washes off his blood. As it will turn out later, the refusal from doctors has proved to be a quite a prudent step.
Throughout the film Mark is an example of unparalleled courage and self-renunciation. A perpetual wanderer who is used to rely in everything only on himself, the most courageous and heroic character, Mark proves the most vulnerable as well. While Vera goes to her death of her own volition, Mark fades away before our eyes. Wounded, exhausted and sick, Mark dies from a heart attack.
The younger brother is not such a straightforward character. On the one hand, sullen and taciturn Alex resembles his brother in his “self-standing”, striving to decide everything on his own. On the other hand, Alex constantly hesitates. It is not a “hammer” or “sledge hammer”. The name Alexander is derived from the Greek words Alex (“protector”) and Andros (“man”). Alex is in no hurry to make decisions. His ability to hesitate, to pass his decisions through doubts, that is to say, his tendency to contemplate, turns out to be a colossal advantage to him. Alex will stay alive.
So, Mark finds an abode at his brother’s place. At this time Alex tells him that a certain Robert promised him a two-month job, after which he is going to visit his parental home. In other words, while Mark’s way is the movement to the city, Alex’s way is the movement from the city to the place where Mark has just come from. The brothers differ from each other even by this insignificant detail, but the principal difference of Alex from Mark is that the former has Vera.
9 minutes 31 seconds - 11 minutes 49 seconds
Alex’s wife, Vera, is an absolutely enigmatic human being. Vera is almost always subordinate and lacks initiative. Her fate seems to be sufferings and tears. However, it is Vera who is the plot center, the catalyst of the drama. Her contradictory actions break the plot of the movie, her monolog about children and parents totally perplex the viewer. As is known, the Russian word vera (“faith”) is not just a woman’s name. What if Vera is not only Alex’s wife, not only the mother of his children, but also vera (“faith”), that is, “conviction”, “belief in something”, a religious category? How will she fit in the plot structure in that case? Let us think.
Some time later Vera and Alex go by train. They go not by themselves, but with their children, a boy and a girl. The son’s name is Kir, and the daughter’s name is Eva. In spite of the fact that Alex do have vera (“faith”), it exists separately, so to speak, as if in a parallel world. Despite wedding rings, an abyss of estrangement has opened between them.
They are separate both in their marriage bed and in the train compartment. What is more, it is not only they who sit separately. Alex sits with the son, and Vera sit with the daughter. In the course of the film Zvyagintsev repeatedly separates, estrange male and female protagonists.
It is evident even by the structure of the mise en scene “in the train compartment”. Whereas Vera’s relationship with the male half of the family is tragically broken, her relationship with her daughter Eva is happily established.
As soon as the train approaches the destination, the sunshine lightens Vera as a sign, as a divine testimony. Vera’s face is illuminated with a smile.
With maniacal persistence the director likens the city to the Kingdom of Darkness, and the surroundings of the House of the Father to the Light Paradise. The train arrives at the destination and the family gets off the train to the platform. Even the shape of the station hints at different directionality of these worlds: one arrow points to the left, and the other to the right. The following episode, though barely noticeable, is conspicuous here: Vera lingers with her things, and Alex and Kir goes ahead. Eva stays with Vera, but then dashes after her father and brother. And for some reason, as it will turn out.
11 minutes 53 seconds – 19 minutes 37 seconds
After leaving the city, the family returns to the house of Alex’s father. Why there? What is special about it? If you take your time, you will be able to notice that the house is separated from the outside world by a deep ravine. The ravine is covered with a wooden bridge. Before the bridge, there is a telegraph pole.
All of a sudden, this telegraph pole, more exactly, only its cross-shaped top starts hitting the eye literally from any camera angle. Watch the film carefully. The cross, inconspicuous at first, obtrusively gets in the center of the frame. It is looked at by Georgy and Victor, Alex and Kir. This cross can be seen from any window, from any room. There is a wide cross on the house faade. In addition, the camera lingers on cross-shaped rafters, window sashes and door beams in the form of a cross.
An unequivocal testimony is obvious: the paternal home, the family cradle is nothing else than the House of God, the Church or Christianity as a whole. There, beyond the ravine, there are cars, flocks of sheep pasturing; but here is the House of God as the place of last hope. The House of God is consigned to oblivion by people in exactly the same way as Christianity almost everywhere in modern-day Europe. Only the extinguished hearth and gray ash are left.
Nevertheless, Alex, Vera, Kir and Eva begin to adapt to it, settle in its rooms. The shutters are opened, fire burns in the hearth again, and light illuminates dark corners. Is seems that the forgotten temple will be reanimated. Will it? Something uneasy floats in the air from the first minutes. Leafing through a book, Kir opens an enigmatic art reproduction featuring three occult or folklore figures. Then Kir asks Alex about the strange odor that is present in the house, but receives no answer.
Crucial significance is attached to the symbolism of water. As is known, water as a symbol of life has been used numerous times in esoterics, painting and cinema. In The Banishment, water, or rather its absence, the thirst for water, conveys a sinister meaning. On the way home Eva says that she is thirsty. Then a certain spring located in the walnut garden becomes the focal point of the conversation between Kir and Alex. Alex answers that they can go to the garden, that is, to the spring, only after bathing. Bathing or ablution acts here as an allusion to the Baptism of Christ, that is to say, one can get to the garden or Eden only after being baptized.
The omnipresent cross, ablution, ravine, the House of the Father are only the beginning in the endless sting of biblical, historical and Christian allusions, which not only stick out everywhere from outer events, but also fit in a clear sequence, form several storylines. Each storyline – biblical, metahistorical, familial – affects and depends on the other lines, and each episode is reflected in mirrors of different notional levels. And the most important thing consists in the fact that it is not the parable that explains the reality, but the reality explains the parable. In his interview to Kseniya Golubovich Zvyagintsev said, “Few people think about the fact that any event of their own lives is underlain by a “myth”, a “pattern”, some turn, which has been known to the humankind for millions of years. We do not live any new fates, we do not perform any new deeds. All deeds have already been written in heaven and rest in our ancient brain”. In other words, Zvyagintsev’s cinema is neither more nor less than a repercussion of such already almost forgotten philosophical school as structuralism.
Alex, Vera, Kir and Eva climb a hill and find themselves in a wonderful grove which looks like Eden. There used to be a spring there. Water from the spring used to flow down a stream, pass under the house and rotate its millstone. It can be assumed that the spring in Eden, the watercourse, the millstone operation used to animate the House of God. However, the spring dried up. Alex had seen water in this spring before that time, but Kir did not. Alex answers Kir’s question why the spring dried up, “God knows”. Thus, while Heavenly Eden used to give reviving water to the Church in the past, it does not give it any more by the will of God. The parallelism between “dryness” in the Christian life and the life of modern family is obvious. Which is cause and which is effect is not important.
19 minutes 37 seconds - 21 minutes 42 seconds
The plot becomes tenser. The episode begins with a dialogue between Vera and Eva. Vera makes an apple and calls her daughter “bunny” or “sunshine”. Eva suddenly bristles up: she does not want to be “sunshine” any more. She wants to be just “Eva”.
In other words, the New Woman Eva, also wants to find herself in self-standing, in her own independent feminine essence just as the New Man Mark wants to find himself in masculine independence. For Vera, Eva’s repudiation is a disaster. If this episode is viewed as a family story, Vera’s reaction looks unnatural and paradoxical. There is awe in her eyes. The mother cannot react to her daughter’s innocent caprice like that. Yet, The Banishment is not the game of “daughter and mothers”. The only possible answer is as follows: Eva repudiates Vera, repudiates her “solar” essence. In other words, Eva denudes Vera of her last hope, the hope to give herself to the humankind, as Kir and Alex are already estranged from Vera, and all her expectancies were associated only with Eva or the female half of the humankind. Now all connections are broken. Now Vera needs some way out, some other opportunity, and she finds such an opportunity.
Vera tells Alex that she is pregnant but the child is “not his”. Thus, the child, the being of which is questioned, becomes an opportunity for Vera to find salvation. This possible child has become the reason of the conflict between Vera and Alex. Alex is shocked and crushed by Vera’s announcement. The latter makes futile attempts to have it out with him, and retrospectively gives a “metaphysical explanation” to Robert, but this “explanation” requires a tremendous effort from the one who is listens, but Alex is able neither understand nor even lend his ear to Vera.
The logic of Vera’s actions baffles not only Alex, but also the viewer. Her sacrifice seems unthinkable, inexplicable. As it will turn out, her sacrifice is almost absurd, but it is absurd at first thought. The famous maxim Credo quia absurdum est, or “I believe it because it is absurd” is a paraphrase of a fragment from the early Christian apologist Tertullian's work De Carne Christi where in polemic with Gnostic Marcion he writes, “The Son of God was born: there is no shame, because it is shameful. And the Son of God died: it is wholly credible, because it is ridiculous. And, buried, He rose again: it is certain, because impossible”. The faith is absurd, but the Being in its extreme foundations and the Universe in its laws are no less absurd from the point of view of human routine. Yet, in spite of the fact that these laws seems unfathomable and absurd they are still laws. They do not condescend to everyday ordinary consciousness. On the contrary, Man must rise to their height, by no means otherwise.
In the very same way the demand of Vera (faith) that Alex (Man) should accept her and (and his) child is irrational and inconceivable. To accept Vera, it is necessary to make an intellectual effort, make a leap over the abyss of misunderstanding. All the same, Vera’s demand is absolutely necessary, since Vera is an invaluable gift, a condition of human existence. Alex cannot rise to the challenge of this demand. He leaves Vera. The black night falls.
On the country road Alex meets a car. A certain Max (“Greatest” in Latin), the son of Georgy (“Agriculturist” in Greek) is at the steering wheel. Max proposes Alex to give him lift. Max offers to give Alex a lift. Alex agrees. Max knows Alex well since he works as a postman (herald?) in the city, but Alex does not remember him. With Max, he reaches the same station at which they arrived not long ago. From there, he phones Mark and tells him that they should meet. Mark agrees. However, something hinders Alex. In spite of the fact that mysterious Max lends him his car, Alex does not reach the city. At the crossroads of times, at the border between the City of God and the City of Man, restless Alex chooses Vera. He stops the car at the boundary between a cultivated forest and a treeless area. Once again, night is succeeded by morning, and gloom by light.
30 minutes 57 seconds – 39 minutes 14 seconds
Upon arriving home Alex behaves as if he wants to find reconciliation with Vera. However, whenever Vera tries to start a conversation, Alex imposes silence upon her again. He is just unable to listen to her. Her words are just unbearable for him.
At this point a number of new characters begin to get entangled in the plot. They communicate with Alex like relatives who have not seen him for ages. As though not finding faith in Vera, Alex searches for it in his old family. First, he invites Victor’s family to his place for the evening, and then goes on a visit to Georgy. Georgy, a hoary old man, arrives to Alex’s place in a car and takes him with the children to his farm. When meeting crestfallen Alex Georgy lights with pleasure. It is apparent that Alex’s arrival is a great holiday for him. In the course of their conversation it turns out that Alex has not been home 12 years. His father longed for him “painfully” and died without having seen his grandchildren. For Gerogy, the departure of Mark and Alex is also a puzzle: “People lived. Everything’s fine, it seemed, and, out of the blue… You never know what is waiting for you”. Nevertheless, Georgy is overfilled with joy all the same… There is a lot of wheat in the farm yard. Georgy introduces Alex to a donkey, leads him to the mill as if opening his world for him trying to interest him, entice him away. The mill is located high, it seems as if it hovers in the skies.
In Luke, Chapter 15 you can find the famous parable of the prodigal son told by Jesus to his apostles. The parable tells about a father and his two sons. The younger son exacted half of the fortune, left his father but, after spending all his money, after many years of drudgery and suffering returned home. He did not expect his father’s mercy and returned just wanting not to die from hunger as his father had always had a lot of bread. Contrary to his expectations, the father displayed great joy instead of anger and presented him with sandals, a ring and a well-fed calf.
It is apparent that the episode with Georgy is a rendering of the evangelical parable, where the figures of the father and the son are transposed to several characters: Alex’s father and Georgy, on the one hand, and Alex, Mark and Kir, on the other hand. In the context of the movie the visit to Georgy’s farm can be construed as a heaven-sent opportunity for Alex: God opens his munificence to Man, God requires nothing of Man except for love, but Man remains deaf proving himself to be incapable of accepting these gifts. Alex withdraws into himself and pays no attention to Georgy. He seeks salvation on his own and sinks in the bog of the Fall still deeper. Therefore, not finding Son in Alex, Georgy turns this attention to Kir. Note that for some reason Georgy ignores Eva.
John, Chapter 12 says, “Jesus, finding a young donkey, sat on it…”, and further on, “Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your King is coming, seated on a donkey's colt”. In other words, in this episode Georgy acts as the Father in relation to both Alex and Kir, that is, encountering Alex’s incomprehension Georgy looks for a new Savior in Kir. The mise en scene with the hands of Georgy and Kir being crossed resembles the fragment of Michelangelo's fresco Creation of Adam. God breathes life into the man by putting out his hand to the man’s hand: dead clay comes to life owing to the divine touch. Adam is born at the moment when God’s hand in the hypostasis of the Father and Adam’s hand touches each other. According to Christian apologetics Adam is the prototype of Christ. While Adam was the first man of the Old Testament, Christ was the god-man of the New Testament. Interestingly, 2007 saw the release of critically acclaimed Simple Things by Boris Popogrebsky, which film I love and which also quotes the Creation of Adam.
39 minutes 14 seconds – 50 minutes 16 seconds
The episode with the arrival of Victor’s family develops the theme of “salvation”. Alex makes another attempt to approach his wife, but Vera’s timid words infuriate him again and he strikes her a swinging blow. I do not know what Zvyagintsev meant by this episode, I would only like to note that after Victor’s family arrival misunderstanding separates not only Vera and Alex, but also spreads to all male and female characters of the film. Just as Alex cannot understand Vera, Kir also cannot understand her sister Eva and Victor’s three daughters Flora, Faina and Frida. Victor himself is also unable to understand his daughters.
The children start playing hide-and-seek, and at this moment it becomes apparent that notwithstanding the supposedly general rules of the game, Victor’s daughters and Eva use other rules which are totally incomprehensible to Kir. Kir and Faina compete for who will be the first to run up to a tree. Kir is first, but the fact means noting to his sister: “no, she is the first”, Eva states. Flora goes beyond the conventional limits of the game altogether and finds herself in the garden where Kir finds her.
The children walk through the forest and have a relaxed conversation. In one of the episodes of the movie, Alex and Vera walk in the same forest, but note that they “walk” in the opposite direction. What is the matter? Genesis, Chapter 3 says, “So He drove out the man and He placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life”. In other words, for some reason the expulsion of Adam and Eva took place through the eastern gate rather than the north-western, if any, or somehow without any gates at all. If you look at a usual geographical map you will see that the east is on your left. Italian painter Masaccio’s painting The Expulsion represents Adam and Eva being expelled. In Masaccio’s canvass, Adam and Eva move from right to left. In Zvyagintsev’s film, Alex and Vera also walk “to the left”, which means to the east.
But Flora and Kir, “out of spite”, walk from left to right or from the east to the west. So as not to bog in unnecessary political insinuations I will suppose that the walk of Kir and Flora is an antithesis to the “Expulsion” of Adam and Eva, the “Discovery of Paradise” of sorts.
Not only Vera, but all women in The Banishment behave very strangely, like extraterrestrial Niya, “the messenger from planet Dessa”. The climax of incomprehension is a strange conversation between Victor, Alex and Max. Victor remarks that something strange is happening and he can only vaguely surmise WHAT it is. Faina, Victor’s daughter, comes up to him. She does not want to play any more and she says that she is bored. Suddenly Faina walks aside and stands on her head. For her, this inverse state is almost natural. She can stand upside down for a whole hour. Victor remarks, “Acquire three daughters and you may be sure that you’ve acquired three more wives”. When Victor makes an attempt to stand on his head, he falls right away.
At this point I would like to leave plot collisions for a minute and mention the unusual artistry of Leningrad actor Igor Sergeyev. Typically, when speaking about The Banishment reviewers note the powerful acting of Konstantin Lavronenko, Aleksand Baluyev, Maria Bonnevie. Well, what can be added to this, if Lavronenko received the Best Actor Award in Cannes, but the supporting cast is also very good. I have always been impressed by films, in which supporting characters look like live people and not just a kind of biomass. In this respect, The Banishment is faultless. “The girls from Victor’s family”, Faina, Flora and Frida, or Sveta Kashelkina, Elizabeth Danzinger and Yaroslava Nikolayeva, respectively, are real kitties with infinitude of charm, and the acting of their “father” in the drinking scene deserves a special monetary award.
Perhaps, for this reason, the role of “messenger” at this moment is taken by rather an inconspicuous character. While Alex, Victor and Max drink wine and talks about the incomprehensibility of women, the women, as usual, talks about their children in the kitchen. The conversation is between Vera and Victor’s wife Lisa. Knowing nothing about the pregnancy, Lisa hints to Vera that the third child is desirable, “God loves Trinity”. In general, the motif of Trinity is repeated in The Banishment many times: Victor has three daughters, Max, Alex and Victor talks as they are three, and it can be seen on old photographs in the house that Mark had three children. The film has three male protagonists: Alex, Mark, and Robert. Who is Lisa, or Elizabeth, after all?
Luke, Chapter 1 tells that the angel Gabriel appeared before the Virgin Mary with the message about the forthcoming birth of the Savior from her. In doubt, the Holy Virgin asked angel a question, “How can this be, I do not know a man?”. And the angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you”, and then in confirmation that “with God nothing will be impossible” mentioned Elizabeth as an example. Righteous Elizabeth is the mother of John the Baptist, the wife of priest Zacharias. According to Apostle Luke, she is the cousin of the Virgin Mary. Mary visits her pregnant cousin, and Elizabeth is the first to tell her about her coming fate.
If the Holy Virgin gave birth to the Savior, Elizabeth became the mother to John the Baptist. The Holy Virgin, as well as Elizabeth, accepted the will of God. The Mother of God’s words, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word” became the moment of the Virgin Birth, and the Gabriel’s message became the Annunciation. The Annunciation has been regarded as the first act of redeeming, in which the Virgin’s obedience counterbalances Eva’s disobedience. The Holy Virgin becomes the “new Eva”. It is considered that Goв sent the Archangel with the Good News on the 25th of March, but the 25th of March is the day of the Creation.
Thus, the humankind was given the second chance. Similarly, the second chance is given to Alex’s family, but if the first divine message was sent to Alex through Georgy, now it is sent to Vera through Elizabeth. According to the logic of allegory, which goes in parallel to the outline of event, Lisa is God’s messenger.
50 minutes 16 seconds – 01 hour 01 minute 22 seconds
Not everything is so simple in the sublunar sphere. The telephone rings, and Alex learns that Mark waits for him at the railroad station. Alex has to leave the guests. He takes Kir with him. Eva also wants to go, but despite her pleas Alex leaves the daughter at home. On the way Kir tells Alex that in his absence Robert visited Vera… Robert visited Vera, that is that…
At the station Alex tells Mark about the cares of the last day. He waits for advice. Mark listens to his brother with an acid look on his face. As if the Wandering Jew who has seen everything in the world, Mark gives quite an extraordinary piece of advice, “Whatever you do, everything will be right. If you want to kill, then kill. The gun is in commode at the top. And this will be right. If you want to forgive, then forgive. And this will be right too…” (By the way, Baluyev has such a countenance during the shooting: in Moldova it was extremely hot at the time, there were a lot of mosquitoes and flies). It is obvious that such an answer bewilders Alex.
However, is Mark’s answer so paradoxical? Actually, Mark’s thoughts are nothing else but a paraphrase of the well-known thesis of the Greek sophist Protagoras: “Man is the measure of all things”. This slogan was brought back to life by the humanists of the Renaissance and caught up by the New Time. Later on, the concept of Man as the center of the Universe and the ideology of anthropocentric humanism built upon that concept have become the main trend of development for the modern society. Some people believe that Nietzsche’s philosophy became the acme of Protagoras’ maxim development. However, in the 20th century this idea was attacked from very different positions, from religious fundamentalism to leftist trends. (In my opinion, the most subtle and ingenious criticism of anthropocentrism can be found in Heidegger’s works).
There is no doubt at all that Mark is a parody of the anthropocentrism of the modern society. Mark behaves as the Superman, as the Hero of the New Time. He always finds justification of his actions in himself. Sometime his adamant stoicism runs up to self-renunciation. Mark has forgotten his mother, father, wife and children. Mark has neither past nor future, but, notwithstanding the obvious pain of such renunciation he finds a certain mysterious meaning in it. It is evident that the sad fate of Mark in The Banishment is Zvyagintsev’s original answer, the original “answer to Curzon” from the Venice laureate. But this is not everything yet. Do you remember Kir’s words “about a strange odor in the house”? After the conversation with his brother Alex drives home, and on the way Kir gives an explanation to the source of this odor: “Mark smells like inside the house”. Georgy said by the way that Mark had often visited in the parental house.
…In Judaism, there is a mention of a certain Beelzebub or Baal-Zebub, a demon borrowed by the Jews from the Babylonians. The name Beelzebub is translated as “the Lord of the Flies”. From Judais
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