The power of this movie is far more complicated than I originally imagined.
The director decomposes and reassembles the conflict of power (the conflict between the government and the civilians) that the audience expected to see. We do see two forces fighting together, but they are not simply classified as government and individual.
From the beginning of the movie, the male protagonist Nicholas appeared, representing a powerful and brutal force. He is a stubborn father who slaps his rebellious son and calls it "the caress between men"; he refuses to discuss major family decisions with his wife, and is more willing to confide his resentment and unwillingness to his old friends (wife said, "You will be overthrown by your son in a few years. His response is that I don’t mind it; and only when facing an old friend, his response is to bow his head, “None of us are young boys,” which means admitting ourselves. Powerless). When faced with a confrontation with the mayor, he would first come up with reckless thoughts-murder. He and his grandfather, who built a house on the sea with his own hands and eats with his hands, was the same as his father. A manual worker who still lives in the value of a small peasant and a patriarchal consciousness. The power he represents is like the ruins of a ship scattered on the seashore in the sunset, huge whale remains, primitive, ignorant and charming, and at the same time inevitably outdated.
From the beginning of the movie, this man has stood in the ring. But who is his opponent?
What did his lawyer friend do when Nicholas was put in the detention center on impulse? In the office, he had a close battle with the mayor, and then enjoyed sex with Nicholas's wife in a small hotel. When Nicholas was released, he called his wife (she was with the lawyer with her naked lower body at this time), complaining that she did not care enough about herself. This scene seemed to reflect the physical strength of many people living in the middle and lower classes of society. Workers often complain-why do they get far more than us?
A friend of lawyers, Nicholas's army subordinates, chose a completely different path after coming out of the army until he became the famous lawyer today. In the Russian political environment shown in the film (police corruption, the mayor monopolizes the economy, and rampant dominance), he can enter the Moscow lawyer system and become one of the best, the only prerequisite is that he has fully accepted the existing rules of the game . Although he was on the same front with him in the first half of the movie because of the old friendship, in fact, his identity is destined to be on the same front with the mayor. They represent the same kind of power-this kind of power is more sophisticated, using language and text as the carrier, forming a kind of code, a set of rules of the game, repeated drills among the same kind of people, reinforcement and eventually become an airtight wall. This is vividly demonstrated in a scene in which lawyers blackmailed the mayor: the language they use is completely the same system, full of hints and temptations, a name is like a riddle that needs to be solved, and it looks like a person’s mouth. It was spit out lightly, and the other person would need to spend several days to decipher the meaning behind it.
So his union with Nikolai (and Nikolai’s friends) is only a temporary phenomenon. The power system he uses has changed his way of life, so that he no longer has the explosive power of Nikolai (even if it is meaningless) ). On the social level, he far exceeds his friends. This exquisite social power has surpassed the individual, unconstrained power, so he returned safely to Moscow; and his friend not only lost his wife and house, but also lost 15 years of freedom.
The director is undoubtedly pessimistic. Elites who have mastered "language/words as power" are gradually being incorporated into the system one by one, waiting for them are crystals, aging wines, and high-end bars that play jazz music. Remember that poor priest told the story about Job? Job refused to believe in the invisible God. He kept challenging the bottom line until God "showed great mercy" and appeared before him in the form of a storm, showing him his strength and compassion until he was completely overwhelmed and convinced. What is this story saying? I think the end of resistance must point to obedience, or at least it will end when you see a good one.
However, individuals who have not yet been refined and socialized (just like fish are collected into small grids by an assembly line) still have huge, barbaric power, because there is no organization and no rules to follow, they are on the contrary to an indestructible country. The machine poses the greatest threat. Under the director's lens, they will inevitably appear in the form of ruins and bones from the beginning, because their first awakening actually means destruction.
Absence of Women
Nicholas's wife Liya is undoubtedly a beautiful woman with lingering charm. But it is a pity that her beauty did not add much to her presence in this movie. From beginning to end, we actually don't understand what she is thinking. From the beginning, she lived in a family dominated by men. If the conversation between Nikolai’s son and her at the beginning is replaced by a couple, it is also possible, which implies that she is actually getting along with two powerful men who agree with patriarchy and both have desires for her. In this situation, she was like a silent shadow.
From a plot point of view, Liya’s existence has always seemed to be set up specifically to promote the plot-she had an affair with the lawyer, which caused Nikolai to part ways with the lawyer and became more decadent; her suicide further destroyed Nikolai psychologically. , And provided an opportunity for the government to create crimes. But how does she view this affair, how to view her husband's "forgiveness" (I always think this forgiveness is also a kind of hypocritical self-deception), she did not say, we don't know. But what can be known is that her final cause of death can be attributed to the abandonment of the male world she felt—the "forgiveness" of her husband, the abandonment of her lover, and the contempt of her stepson.
But the interesting thing is that in the whole movie, she is the only one who sees Leviathan. This giant monster representing chaos and evil in the Bible, the substantive image of state power appearing in Hobbes’ book, her husband and lover both chose to confront and fail, but she chose to bear, bear the move, bear the love of the lover. Cheating, enduring rape-style sex from her husband.
So she shouldn't have died. In reality, all such recipients have survived.
Special favorite:
The contrast between the two priests: secular piety and spiritual piety-manifested in two very different language systems, the latter is simply poetry.
At the end of the forced demolition scene, the twisting crane is like a Leviathan on land.
"The Leviathan is a huge creature. When it swims, the waves flow against it. It has flames in its mouth, smoke from its nose, sharp teeth, and a body wrapped in an armor-like solid shell. Its character is cold and merciless, Violence is easy to kill."
Written after the screenwriting class
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