‘Loveless’: Modern Russian Society
It’s not a secret that most of people who criticize Andrey Zvyagintsev movies are conservatives who do not want to acknowledge very important issues in their lives and societies. That might happen not because they are scared of harsh reality that Zvyagintsev shows us, but because simply not knowing the situation or the issues that exist. However, it would also not be correct to say that many film festivals are not politicized. However, I want to argue that Zvyagintsev by acknowledging the problems in Russian society also asks universal and fundamental questions that lie within us. A creator does not care about the subject so much as about an authorial style that leads him to interesting decisions. And with that said, Zvyagintsev achieves that perfectly in his new movie ‘Loveless’.
The themes that can be recognized in all Zvyagintsev movies are connected with family. I found an interesting fact about the director. He was raised without a father. That explains why he shows the reality in a such believable and astonishing way. His new movie ‘Loveless’ is a metaphysical journey into reality that surrounds everyone of us, it seems too apocalyptic at some moments, like when the main hero take pictures everywhere and belongs to a consumer society. It is not just the issue that only Russia has fallen into, it appears to be seen in the whole world.
For me, one of the most important things about the story, especially if it’s a gloomy and hard story like ‘Loveless’, is that it has interesting characters who do not show their evil side only but we can sympathize and relate to them. A man and a woman are going to divorce and don’t know what to do with their son. Mother screams and says she is not going to take care of her own child, neither does the father, mainly because he waits for a new baby with his beloved new girlfriend. Nobody needs this boy, and he disappears. Why would the parents care about him when he doesn’t come home? After all, that’s what they wanted — to get rid of him. She wishes she had an abortion, he also doesn’t wish even to communicate with him. Logically, for many people the ending of the story might lie in two ways — whether they find the child or they don’t. But the director Andrey Zvyagintsev shows us neither of these endings.
Where did the child disappear? I believe there can be a million of possibilities but I found at least three explanations of his disappearance in the movie:
1) he was kidnapped and killed, and most likely never to be found
Evidence: That’s the huge possibility that the policeman says to the father, as well as the multiple long shots focusing on unknown characters, like the one that follows a guy for too long time who disappears into the dark path. Was he the killer or we’re just getting paranoid?
2) He drowned
Evidence: First and last shots clearly shows us the static cold and deadly images of lake and drowned trees, and the last shot of the only thing that associated us with the character also shown above the lake. That might indicate the place where he might have slipped and drowned. But because he was alone and never had anyone with him only we, the audience know the possible place of his death.
3) He was the one in the morgue
Evidence: This scene shows us the reaction of both of the parents when they see brutally severed body of a boy. Mother denies it was him, maybe because she doesn’t want to believe it happened. Father cries after his wife leaves the room. That might show us that it was him and he faces the truth. After all of this, we see an empty room of the boy that is ripped and destroyed that might be a symbol of his death.
Zvyagintsev said that the purpose of this movie for him was that the person who watched it has a feeling of going and hugging his family, mother or father, and most importantly a child. I felt emptiness after finishing the movie, but at the same time I started to be more thankful and started to feel gratitude towards everyone I have in my life. The hardest part of the film is probably the ending. We see how mother keeps living with an old and rich man, father seeing how his newborn son plays with toys, looks indifferent and rudely throws him away. This all shows that people don’t change, moreover, the death or disappearance of their son made them even more ignorant and miserable, in other words loveless.
