The meaning of Andrey Zvyagintsev's works: experience of typological research

Works of the modern Russian film director Andrey Zvyagintsev is a vivid example of the contradiction between the not advanced (and sometimes reactionary) political views of cultural figures - on the one hand, and the objectively progressive, positively significant philosophical and aesthetic content of their creative works - on the other, this phenomenon being first noticed by classics of Marxism. In sociopolitical terms, Zvyagintsev adheres to the liberal market position, while in his works, especially in the last three films on the screen, he concentrates a wealth of material for socio-philosophical understanding, critically assessing the social and anthropological situation that has developed in Russia over the three decades of its capitalist transformation. The results of applying methodology of the typological approach to the theoretically modified system of images specific to Zvyagintsev’s films demonstrate that the basic reason for all destructions experienced by the Russian society is the focus of modern culture on the mass reproduction of a certain human type - the consuming individual. Using the artistic means of cinema, the director reveals the futility and ruinousness of the worldview typical of the consumption-oriented part of the modern Russian population. Elena’s super-idea is criticism of the mass man; Leviathan is a demonstration of the dead-end and market path, and attempts to return to traditional values; and Loveless is a proof of the stillbirth of the Russian middle class. Detailed analytical analysis of the first two of these films gives grounds to assert that in Zvyagintsev’s films we have an outstanding - not only in artistic, but also in theoretical terms - analysis of the state and prospects of the Russian society of the first decades of the XXI century.