Elena

Dir: Andrey Zvyagintsev

2011

****

Andrey Zvyagintsev is probably my favorite Russian film maker working today. While I believe it unfair to compare him to Andrei Tarkovsky, as so many people have, I do believe he could follow Tarkovsky, Sergei Paradjanov, Grigori Kozintsev and Sergei Eisenstein as one of the greats. I thought it when I first saw The Return back in 2003 and his few films made since has convinced me further. His 2011 social drama is a vivid evocation of Moscow society, and as Roger Ebert said before he died, shoot the film in black and white and cast Barbara Stanwyck as Elena, and you'd have a 1940s classic. Elena tells the story of the social and cultural distance within Moscow society by focusing on the inhabitants of an exclusive apartment in downtown Moscow and a crumbling khrushchevka in Moscow's industrial suburb. Nadezhda Markina plays Elena, a woman with a proletarian background who met her husband Vladimir, an elderly business tycoon, in a hospital when she was his nurse. Her social position and social rank were substantially increased by the marriage to such a wealthy man but this isn’t extended to her family. Elena's son from a previous marriage is poor and wants money from Vladimir to send his 17-year-old son to university, keeping him out of the compulsory military service. Her son and his family live in a crumbling apartment in the industrial suburb. After being approached by Elena, not for the first time, Vladimir makes it clear that he is not going to subsidize Elena's relatives, and informs her that he plans to make emendations to his will leaving his wealth to his only daughter from an earlier marriage with some residual monthly payments to be made to Elena. Elena is terrified by the prospects of such a new will and is humiliated by the man she thought loved him over everything. She realises she’s lived under him since their marriage and, following a minor heart-attack, decides to murder him by switching his own medicines with Viagra, which would be lethal in his post-infarct state. When he dies in bed, she destroys the handwritten version of the new will which he had not yet been able to formalise with his attorney. Following the destruction of these handwritten notes she then calls officials to find the dead body in bed with her claim that she has no idea and no sense of how and why he died. The death is found upon medical examination to have been caused by the foolish abuse of medications by Vladimir himself, and the actions of Elena as the culprit are completely overlooked. In the absence of a formal will, he dies intestate and Elena inherits half his estate with the other half going to his only daughter. Elena then takes a substantial amount of money to her son in order to pay for her grandson's education. She is thanked and receives the unexpected news that her son's wife is expecting another child. With Elena keeping her part in Vladimir's death a complete secret from her son, her son then gets his wife to open the liquor cabinet in order for the family to toast their announcement of his wife's pregnancy and the future college career of Elena's grandson. Elena's family then decide to move from their decrepit apartment to Vladimir's wealthy home where Elena became the sole occupant after Vladimir's death, in order to start a new life together with Elena. The morganatic marriage featured in the film is Moscow laid bare for the rest of the world to witness, and while the film feels classically French in style (I’m thinking Zvyagintsev was clearly influenced by Claude Chabrol), the conclusion is a modern day October revolution, only on a smaller and more personal scale. The stinger comes when you realise that everything Vladimir and his nasty daughter feared has actually come true. We’re happy for Elena but that doesn’t make her actions right. Her family are generally all of the bad things Vladimir said they were and they have indeed taken over his home. For me the film highlights the need for social balance and a progression away from the idea of the class system. Oddly enough, the film came about when British producer Oliver Dungey proposed a project with four films made by four different directors, all touching upon the topic of apocalypse. For about a month, director Andrey Zvyagintsev and screenwriter Oleg Negin looked for a plot and found two or three curious concepts. Negin then phoned Zvyagintsev one night and he told the director almost the complete plot of the future film. The story is based on an incident from Negin's life and not really about the apocalypse at all. They pressed ahead anyway with the film to be made in English under the name Helen, with Elena, Vladimir and Sergey called Helen, Richard and Dan, respectively. Zvyagintsev soon dropped the idea when he realized working with an English producer meant "overcoming the issues of the creative method, of the language of cinema." Soon he proposed the script to Alexander Rodnyansky and the next day after Rodnyansky read it, he phoned the director and said, "Let's start." The film is seamless, crafted by master film makers who have made it look easy. The acting is also perfect, With Nadezhda Markina and Andrey Smirnov giving perfect performances. Elena Lyadova is also perfectly hateable in her role that really should have been bigger. Andrey Smirnov was Zvyagintsev's only choice to play Vladimir. The director usually doesn't let his actors read the script before filming but he gave it to Smirnov when he offered him the role. At first Smirnov, himself a director, had no intention to act in the film and warned Zvyagintsev during the casting that he couldn't interrupt the editing process of Zhila-byla odna baba, his first film in over 30 years. Zvyagintsev came to Smirnov's place about a month after the casting in order to try to persuade him to star and Smirnov said it was out of the question as he was too busy editing his film, but his wife and son, who were at home too, lashed out at Smirnov, saying he couldn't refuse an offer from a director like Zvyagintsev. The latter promised to adjust the filming schedule for Smirnov. In the end, Smirnov filmed his role when he had days off in April 2010 and managed to devote two weeks to filming in May. He accidentally broke his ribs while filming but didn’t tell anyone as he was to embarrassed, so those scenes in the gym where it looks like he’s in pain – he is! It’s a brilliant film, made by real creative professionals.