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Notes from Underground

  And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?---Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory. I have many evil memories now, but ... hadn’t I better end my “Notes” here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I have felt ashamed all the time I’ve been writing this story; so it’s hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment.  Why, to tell long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an anti-hero are expressly gathered together here, and what matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are...
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Hope

To be human is to be a miracle of evolution conscious of its own miraculousness — a consciousness beautiful and bittersweet, for we have paid for it with a parallel awareness not only of our fundamental improbability but of our staggering fragility, of how physiologically precarious our survival is and how psychologically vulnerable our sanity. To make that awareness bearable, we have evolved a singular faculty that might just be the crowning miracle of our consciousness: hope.-- Erich Fromm


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LEVIATHAN (2014)




 

"One of the best films I have seen in recent years.Political ,moral and spiritual corruption, story of men and women , scenes of the haunting landscapes , it got it all."

The main character in “Leviathan, ” Kolya (Alexey Serebryakov), lives and works on a small but desirable piece of waterside property that the local mayor, Vadim (Roman Madyanov), covets and has claimed for the town. The story opens when an old army buddy of Kolya’s who’s now a slick Moscow lawyer, Dmitri  (Vladimir Vdovitchenkov), arrives to help him fight for his land. Though Kolya loses again in court, which seems under Vadim’s thumb, Dmitri then goes to the mayor and presents him with a sheaf of incriminating documents he’s gathered. It’s blackmail of a sort but at first it seems to work. Apoplectic, Vadim agrees to cut a deal.



All of this happens in a context where there’s lots of vodka drinking, argumentation and simmering discontent of various sorts. Kolya’s moody teenage son by a previous marriage (Sergey Pokhodaev) can’t get along with his current wife, Lilya (Elena Lyadova), a pensive beauty who works in a fishery. Introducing Dmitri into the home ups the chances for both bonhomie and trouble. Meanwhile we see the almost constantly drunken Vadim consorting with a well-groomed priest, who tries to allay his political fears with religious platitudes.
A prize winner at Cannes and Russia’s nominee for this year’s Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar, “Leviathan” is easily the most important and imposing film to emerge from Russia in recent years.
 Since its story conveys a sense of pervasive political corruption, it has been read as a daring and scathing critique of conditions in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and it is certainly fascinating to contemplate on that level. Yet there’s much more to writer-director Andrey Zvyagintsev’s singular artistic vision than simple political allegorizing, as the hypnotic opening of “Leviathan” makes clear.
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/leviathan-2014












The Biblical: The Book of Job

Kolya is presented as a modern-day Job. He is a man who loses everything—his property, his wife, his freedom, and his reputation—despite his attempts to live a "just" life. When Kolya asks a local priest, "Where is your merciful God?", the priest responds by reciting the famous passage from Job 41: "Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook?" * The Skeleton: The iconic image of the blue whale skeleton on the beach represents a dead or indifferent god, or perhaps the remnants of a natural world crushed by human cruelty.

The Philosophical: Thomas Hobbes

The title refers to Thomas Hobbes’ 1651 treatise Leviathan, which describes the "State" as an artificial monster created by men to prevent "the war of all against all."

  • In Zvyagintsev’s vision, the social contract has failed. The state (the Leviathan) has become a predator rather than a protector, demanding that the individual surrender their rights while offering only oppression in return.








  • Awards: The film won Best Screenplay at Cannes and the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. It was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

  • Domestic Backlash: Despite being partially funded by the Russian Ministry of Culture, the film was denounced by Russian officials as "anti-Russian." The Minister of Culture, Vladimir Medinsky, criticized its portrayal of the Church and the state.

  • Legacy: Leviathan remains one of the most significant works of 21st-century cinema, recognized for its unflinching look at power, corruption, and the resilience (and fragility) of the human spirit.








"In the life of every man, there comes a time when one is faced with the system... and must stand up for his sense of justice." — Andrey Zvyagintsev





















The return (2003)






As the movie opens, Andrey (Vladimir Garin) and his younger brother, Vanya (Ivan Dobronravov), return home one day to hear their mother whisper, “Quiet! Dad’s sleeping.” This is a father they have not seen for years, if ever, and the movie gives us no explanation for his absence. Almost immediately, he proposes a fishing trip, and the boys are less than overjoyed at this prospect of leaving home with a man who is essentially a stranger.

The father (Konstantin Lavronenko) drives them to a lakeside. He attempts to impose stern discipline in the car, but this seems less the result of cruelty than because of his awkwardness around young boys. Indeed, the movie’s refusal to declare the father a villain adds to the ambiguity; eventually, he creates a disturbing situation, but does he act by design, compulsion, or impulse? And what are his motives?







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