Signis

Elena

(JPEG)

Russia, 2011, Nadezhda Markina, Andrei Smirnob, Aleksey Rozin. Directed by Andrei Zvyagintsev.

Enthusiasts for Russian films will remember the impact of The Return, winner of many awards, Golden Lion in Venice 2003, SIGNIS award, the story of a father and his two sons. Director, Andrei Zvyagintsev, went on to make The Banishment, a powerful film of relationships and family. He has now gone to a modern Russian city and offered a portrait of a woman who seems to be a person of integrity who is transformed into a suburban moral monster while thinking that she is doing the right thing by her family. Love can also be evil.

The film uses the contemplative Russian style of film-making, right from the very long single shot at the opening with only a movement of birds and gradual light glowing within a house, a scene that marks the end of the film as well. We are interested in what is going on, then surprised at the moral turn of events, then left to ponder what has happened, especially to Elena.

Elena has retired from nursing and has married her older companion. They live in some comfort. We are made aware of this in the minute detail of Elena’s waking, dressing, her make-up, breakfast and waking her husband in his room. An issue is raised. Her son, a lazy, unemployed married man, needs money. Elena’s husband, Vladimir, is unwilling to give anything. He also has an estranged daughter from his first marriage.

We are given a close-up of Elena’s family after she travels across the city to a run-down suburb with three nuclear chimneys dominating the area. She is devoted to them, playing with the baby, friends with her daughter-in-law, who seems a decent woman, tolerant of the selfish and churlish grandson who prefers playing video games, though his father is after money to pay for his education so that he will not have to join the military. Later in the film, we see the son go out with a gang, bashing other young men. The audience is not invited to have any sympathy with him.

The core of the film concerns Vladimir’s death, his will, the bequests to his daughter and cutting out his wife. Elena takes matters into her own hands with his death, the will, the money in his safe - and all for her family. They finally move from their dingy home to the comfort of Vladimir’s house.

In 19th century novels, Russian authors like Dostoievsky explored crime and punishment, some of the banality of evil and its consequences. Elena is a film about crime and no punishment, a critique, an indictment of the loss of moral integrity in the aftermath of the Communist era, which does not bode well for the future of Russian society.

Peter Malone