Leviathan
director: controversy shows film 'touched something' in
Russia
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[January 29, 2015]
By Thomas Grove
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Director
Andrei Zvyagintsev, whose bleak depiction of his
homeland in the Oscar-nominated film Leviathan divided
Russia, said on Wednesday the polarization proved his
movie had "touched something very important".
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The Golden Globe-winning film exposes some of the country's
modern taboos, portraying the doomed struggle of a man in
Russia's far North against a greedy and corrupt local mayor
while casting the Russian Orthodox Church in a dubious light.
"The audience, the country was split over it," said director
Zvyagintsev at a news conference to promote the Russian
screening of the film, which will be heavily censored due to new
obscenity laws.
"It should have been understood that the public would be
polarized, but the extreme points of view over the film show it
was a success," he said. "It touched something very important."
Russian fans of the film say the story mirrors life in Russia in
the 15 years since President Vladimir Putin first rose to power,
with corrupt state officials enriching themselves with impunity
at the expense of ordinary people.
Ironically, some of the harshest criticism came from the Culture
Ministry, which co-financed the film. Minister Vladimir Medinsky
accused Zvyagintsev of blackening Russia's image to gain Western
praise.
"Films focused not only on criticism of current authorities but
openly spitting on them ... (films) filled with a sense of
despair and hopelessness over our existence, should not be
financed with taxpayers' money," Medinsky said in a newspaper
interview, when asked whether the ministry would support similar
films in the future.
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Zvyagintsev said the 19th-century novel Crime and Punishment also
faced street protests when parts were first published, but was at
pains to say he was not drawing parallels between himself and the
great Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky.
"Leviathan", largely shot in the village of Teriberka on the Barents
Sea, was premiered in mid-2014, but cinemas in Russia will start
screening it only in February.
Russian newspaper Izvestia quoted a Russian Orthodox activist
calling for the film, which shows dubious cooperation between the
mayor and local clergy, not to be shown in Russia because it
vilified the Russian Orthodox Church.
(Reporting by Thomas Grove; editing by Andrew Roche)
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