Pavel LUNGIN: Everyone says correct words now, while doing the exact opposite

A son of renowned parents, Semen and Liliana Lungin, Pavel could not find his calling for over 30 years, like a character from a well-known fairytale. He carefully listened to and absorbed everything that was done by his parents and their beautiful milieu. He was studying, wrote some scripts, and only at the age of 36 did he produce the movie Taxi-blues, which captivated the audience of different age categories. Since that time with enviable regularity he has been producing movies that are quite different, both in terms of their style and content.

The latest movie directed by Pavel Lungin, Tsar, was shown in movie theaters in November. The screening was immensely successful, and very soon the movie was shown on the Russian First Channel, thus reaching every apartment. Similarly to the movie’s black-and-white format, the controversy it has sparked was polar, too. The production designer did not want to speak about Tsar, as he was absolutely absorbed by a new project.

For many critics it came as a surprise that at the awarding ceremony of the national (Russian) Cinema Prize, Golden Eagle, which recently came to an end, the movie Tsar, though being put in nine nominations (!), won in none. Only the special prize “For general contribution to the Russian cinematography” was posthumously conferred by the jury on Oleg Yankovsky (he died in May 2009) for the entire range of his last works, specifically Tsar and Anna Karenina.

Lungin’s movie shows medieval Muscovy as it was, cruel and dirty.

The movie does not express any delight with the power, and this boldness cost the master of cinematography dearly, and you will see no positive response to the movie from the Russian press. Our interview with Lungin touches on the topic of non-free people of today’s world and the fact that man should learn from past mistakes in order to avoid making new ones.

Mr. Bortko, many people get depressed because of the cruelty in your movie.

“Yes, it is cruel and severe, but it is not bloody for the sake of bloodiness — all the blood is real. Even for me it is difficult to watch the movie, but we cannot imagine real cruelty of those executions and tortures. There is a famous story about an oprichnik, who was executed for cutting too large pieces of a man, which made the victim die too soon. It is complicated to perceive the image of Ivan the Terrible, who in religious ecstasy started giving detailed instructions about who had to be tortured how. Of course, he was Russian Nero, an artist who had a possibility to do whatever he wanted.”

Do you urge the audience to condemn Ivan the Terrible?

“I have a theory, perhaps an absurd one, that Ivan the Terrible with his furious mind, terrible cruelty, and incredibly strong personality impeded Russian Renaissance, which never emerged. However, Ivan the Terrible was very talented; he was a very gifted architect-engineer, who built a cathedral on the Solovky Islands. He grew grapes on the marshes he dried. He created some automatic devices to bake bread and pour kvass. He mined iron in the lakes. And his brick plant worked until the first half of the 20th century.

“It is difficult to understand Saint Philip, who keeps silence. When Yankovsky came, I saw that his binding with Mamonov made the denouement of the movie. Through his role Yankovsky brought along another note to the movie. His sanctity is almost the normality of a person in the skewed world. Only once does he break silence — when he unmasks Ivan the Terrible. And nowadays his words are very up-to-date, although this is canonic text taken from hagiography.”

What about the people?

“Yes, we are used to flatter it, but at least sometimes we need to tell the truth, even if it is bitter. Tyrannical power is terrible and comfortable at the same time: nor morals or restrictions. People are relieved of any responsibility. The people is a huge result produced by Ivan the Terrible, whose shadow is still hanging over us. We are not moving ahead, but are spinning in the same place as a Ferris wheel, observing the surrounding space. There are calls to bring back Stalin and canonize Ivan the Terrible. In our dangerous and strange time, when many people demand that the power be strict, even cruel, these myths should be dismantled.”

Including the myths about oppositionists, because Philip and Ivan the Terrible were people of this kind?

“This is a serious problem for us. We continue to resolve questions that have been already resolved by the whole civilized world. So the world has lost interest in us. We have become obsessed with the problems that have been resolved on the worldwide scale: firm power and dictatorship are nonsensical. Debating this makes even less sense. The world is solving much more complicated problems – those of the individual, man, the woman, and the child, all of which are fighting for their survival on their own.

“Like before, we are contemplating whether the government should wage a civil war with its people or not. Objectively, freedom has grown, while we have withdrawn into ourselves. Russia has stopped addressing global problems. Let us recall the great Russian literature that captivated the world by the fact that it took up the whole burden of the global problems. And now we have left this spiritual globalism and are enjoying this in some strange way. We have our own view, our own problems, and our own democracy. In this kind of society, individuals with their weaknesses and possibilities are not interesting.”

Judging from Contractor, a documentary series about Liliana Lungina, your mother, was the generation of your parents freer and more responsible?

“They were free as they were not obsessed with money and success. Strangely, but in times of severe Soviet censorship there was a lot of space for personal life. This is another one of our phenomena — freedom in a prison, freedom of people that are not free. Once Sinyavsky told me that the happiest years of his life he had spent in camps! He nearly perished of diseases and starvation, but there was a feeling of some special manly brotherhood and honest relationships, deprived of competition. This phenomenon of Russian intelligentsia has disappeared. Now intelligentsia has lost its meaning. At best, members of intelligentsia become intellectuals, while in the worst case scenario they fail to do even this. For the essence of intelligentsia is a moral resistance to power. This has been practically lost, gone, as it appears, with no return.”

How would you characterize the present-day world?

“It is made up of free people lacking freedom. We are running in the direction in which we are being driven. At the same time, we are very strongly competing with each other. We madly desire money and success. We very much fear that we will be deprived of a chair, as in a well-known children’s game. This life can hardly be called free.”

How do you find sense in this life?

“One summer mother was translating Karlsson-on-the-Roof. Father, a scriptwriter, helped her to find accurate cues for heroes. They had great fun, laughed a lot, and read some extracts out loud for me. I was a freckled and quite chubby and looked like Karlsson. My remarks back then may have been included in the book. That was a wonderful time of childhood.

“Is there any sense in my current life? It depends. It emerges and disappears. I try not to do harm to other people. I live with the joys of creation and the ideas that dawn upon me. The sense of my life is to make movies that astonish and give pleasure. ”