The Meaning of Andrei Zvyagintsev's Work: An Experience of Typological Research

Philosophy

Abstract

The work of contemporary Russian filmmaker Andrei Zvyagintsev is a vivid example of the contradiction between the not at all progressive (and sometimes reactionary) political views of cultural figures - on the one hand, and the objectively progressive, positively significant philosophical and aesthetic content of their work - on the other hand, which was already fixed by the classics of Marxism. If Zvyagintsev adheres to a liberal-market position in socio-political terms, then in his works, especially in his three most recent films, he concentrates rich material for social and philosophical reflection, while critically evaluating the social and anthropological situation that has developed in Russia during three decades of its capitalist transformation. The results of the application of typological approach methodology to the theoretically modified system of images specific to Zvyagintsev's cinema demonstrate that the main reason for all the destructions experienced by Russian society is the orientation of contemporary culture toward the mass reproduction of a certain human type - human consumer. By using the artistic means of cinematography, the director reveals the futility and destructiveness of the worldview attitudes held by the consumer-oriented part of the modern Russian population. The supernatural idea of "Elena" is a critique of a mass man, "Leviathan" is a demonstration of the dead-end nature of both the market way and the attempts to return to traditional values, and the film "Nelyubov" is the proof of the stillbornness of the Russian middle class. A detailed analytical analysis of the first two of these three films gives grounds to assert that Zvyagintsev's cinematography is an outstanding not only in artistic, but also in theoretical analysis of the state and prospects of Russian society in the first decades of the 21st century.