Elena

A bitter pill to swallow...
Maybe `Elena' was just poorly marketed. I wouldn't know because I didn't personally see any advertisements and just happened to stumble onto this when I saw it on Netflix. Apparently some feel this was supposed to be some sort of a noir or a thriller. It's not. `Elena' is more than that. `Elena' is a deeply moving and complex character study that unravels around the relationship between a woman, her husband, his daughter and her son. With long brushstrokes for takes, director Andrey Zvyagintsev delivers what I imagine a Hitchcock film would look like under the direction of Michael Haneke. It is severe, but in a very subtle and observant way, allowing us to get inside Elena's head without feeling beaten over the head by her conundrum of sorts, and the finale is beautifully enriched by an almost stale aftertaste, as if the underscore the decisions of the film's centerpiece. With a brilliant score (truly haunting) and a brilliant leading lady (what Nadezhda Markina does here is...

Harsh realities make a mockery of idealized "goodness."
Elena, besides being a low-burn thriller, is an indictment of contemporary Russia where money is the only thing one can count on, and which corrupts/effects the value system completely, unless one is lucky enough and content to eke out a meager existence in servitude.

Elena starts out as fairly content, having accepted her lot in life and has been practical/lucky enough to become the nurse/wife/housemaid to a man of property and enough wealth, who treats her politely and well enough as long as his needs are met. His daughter, meanwhile has become a hedonistic cynic (and there are intimations that her mother was similar), which is more evidence that they belong to a corrupt nouveau riche, post communist, post czarist Russia emulating itself all over again, where money has replaced party members, and class system by family name, where the right to ownership has been redistributed, but continues the same class system under a different guise.

Elena's husband is not a...

Would Lenin like it?
Vladimir Lenin would have loved it. Score one for the revolutionaries, redistribute the wealth, and let the poor folk have a turn at being fat capitalist slobs with flatscreen TVs and fancy coffee makers. Well, maybe Lenin wouldn't have loved the film after all.

What a bleak look at modern Russia. I don't know what was more depressing: the slum neighborhood with the Chernnobyl-looking reactors, or the money, money, money neighborhood, replete with a private safe with more money, and the "lets catch up on all the money we couldn't have for so many years" desperation that chases money with more money, and this is about where Lenin would come in and put his foot down.

Art films are always serious. And serious is always despairing. I liked the film, I guess. The cinematography was superb. The rich guy's daughter was beautiful. The poor son's wife looked like a weary beauty described by Dostoyevsky. Elena herself was a survivor. She grew up during communism. Her...

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