Elena (film)
Elena (Directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev)/2011
Elena could be considered a typical story of a family squabble
over inheritance. However, it goes
beyond that to raise questions about the distribution of wealth and the
“deserving poor”.
Elena and Vladimir are an elderly couple in their
retirement. Vladimir and Elena have met in their later years and have separate
families from the past. Elena is
gentle and caring. Vladimir is a
cold, irritable man with health difficulties. The couple lives in a modern comfortable apartment in a nice
suburb: all due to Vladimir’s wealth.
Elena has come from a more humble background. Even in their nice apartment, we get the sense that she is
not fully comfortable in her own home with all the latest mod cons and the supposed
luxury.
Elena’s son Sergey and his family live in the outskirts of
the city near a nuclear power plant.
Their home is a cramped, dirty apartment: one in the many blocks and blocks of ramshackled apartments
making up the neighborhood. Here
we are confronted by the issue of the gentrification of suburbs and
marginalised poverty: out of sight, out of mind. Let the poor live among the poor because it’s distressing
for the wealthy to see them.
Elena’s son, Sergey, does not do himself any favors. He is unemployed, a day-time drunkard,
and generally gives off an image of a man that has given up on himself. The family’s benefactor is Elena
(through Vladimir). She brings
them food and money but they ask for more. One cannot simply support someone else financially, unless
that support will lead that person to be able to generate income.
When Vladimir has a heart attack scare his long lost
daughter Katerina comes out of the woodworks. She is a daddy’s girl and she charms him despite not having
contact with him for a long time.
In a tripartite relationship between Elena, Sergey and
Katerina, Elena is the source of wealth for Sergey and an obstacle for Katerina
as Elena would get half of Vladimir’s inheritance. In the end Elena takes on the role of god and takes the
distribution into her own hands.
The main reason for Elena’s decision is to save her grandson from going
into the army but at the same time we see that the supposedly greater cause of
preventing a young boy from death is a futile exercise as he could be easily
killed just around the corner.
Katerina ends up with half of Vladimir’s inheritance and is furious.
What would these people do with their allocated wealth? It
also made me think whether what they do with it would categorise them as
deserving or non-deserving. In a
system of wealth distribution dependant on bloodline ie. a pure happenstance,
perhaps it is irrelevant who it goes do as the system itself is not based on
any merits.
In the final scene, we see Sergey’s family and Elena in
Vladimir’s apartment, looking uncomfortable in their new home. With the latest baby added to the
already large family we wonder whether they’ll just wither it away and be back
in their old situation. This movie
left me feeling uncomfortable because it was a stark exposure of the futility
of our social welfare system and humanitarian aid system when they focus on
simply giving rather than enabling people to sustain themselves.
