The Dilemma of "Elena"

An elderly woman wakes up in the Moscow apartment she shares with her husband. The scene is tranquil, and the pacing is slow, allowing us to take in the little details of her morning routine. This is Elena (Nadezhda Markina), a retired nurse who has been married to Vladimir (Andrey Smirnov) for two years. Vladimir is wealthy, but balks at contributing to the funds that Elena sends to her grown son Sergey (Aleksey Rozin), his wife Katerina (Elena Lyadova), and their two children. Sergey is perpetually unemployed and Vladimir thinks he is a good-for-nothing, who should be the one providing for his family. Elena points out that his he doesn't hold his own estranged daughter, Tatyana (Evgeniya Konushkina), to the same standard.

The plot of "Elena" unfolds in a very simple, direct fashion. Elena's teenage grandson Sasha (Igor Ogurtsov) needs money to buy his way into university and avoid military service. A crisis presents her with the opportunity to provide it, but this requires her to make a hard choice between Vladimir and her son's family. We learn the concerns and the personalities of the characters through everyday conversations and actions. We watch Elena take a long trip to a much poorer neighborhood to deliver her pension to Sergey and Katerina. We watch how Sergey and Sasha behave during Elena's visit. When Tatyana enters the picture, she has two conversations with Vladimir and Elena separately, enough to give us a good sense of what her life has been like, and her opinion of Elena, though nothing is made explicit. The main players rarely display much emotion, but I found myself reacting very strongly to the story.

Andrey Zvyagintsev, who ten years ago also directed the excellent father-son drama, "The Return," once again examines family ties and social ills. This time his camera is more pointed, highlighting class divisions, social mobility, and compromised morals. At the center of the film is Elena, who is perfectly sweet and polite to everyone she meets, but who refuses to drop the issue of money for her children and grandchildren. Nadezhda Markina's performance is warm and natural. At first we sympathize with her. Vladimir is stingy and unfair. Of course Elena loves her offspring, no matter how imperfect. But then, Vladimir is entitled to his biases, and much of what he says has some truth to it. Tatyana may be bitter and resentful, but she's also far more insightful than anyone else in the film. And in the long pauses between conversations, there is ample time to think about why Sergey is so imperfect, and the way that children reflect the faults of their parents, and how those faults can compound across generations.

The visual storytelling is excellent throughout. There are two major scenes of physical violence in "Elena," shot in very different ways, showing different acts, perpetrators and victims. We are invited to compare them. Which is more destructive? Which perpetrator has more to feel guilty about? Are the impulses behind the acts all that different? Perhaps the most jarring sequence is the final one, where we see a group of characters in a wholly different context than we've seen them before, emphasizing certain aspects of their natures. The most mundane acts are heavy with implication - sharing food, playing video games, and tidying up. There's a brief moment early in the film where Katerina prevents Sasha from going to visit with a friend during Elena's visit, scolding him for wasting his time with hooligans. It seems like such a small, typical exchange, but the more I think about it, the more I think it's the key to the whole film.

The pace remains fairly slow throughout, and there are some scenes that will try the patience of some viewers. Zvyagintsev holds some shots for an uncomfortably long time, and others, like a slow zoom in to a photograph on the wall, underline his point too bluntly. However, this also helps him to build a terrific amount of tension, and to establish various characters' psychological states with admirable economy. So much of the effectiveness of the drama come from Elena's family coming across as so ordinary, speaking and acting with hardly any artifice at all.

"Elena" is one of those deceptively slight-looking morality tales that becomes more and more complex and fascinating the deeper you dig into it. Though it's set in modern-day Moscow and is specific to its environs in some respects, the themes are universal. It presents an interesting counterpoint to stories with similar subject matter, such as "Howard's End" and "Raisin in the Sun," which treat social mobility as a positive outcome. "Elena" has far more mixed feelings about the matter, and there is considerable ambiguity about the futures of the characters.

There's no question as to Zvyagintsev's talents though. Between "The Return" and "Elena," he's established himself as one of the best modern Russian directors. And this is only his third film.
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