LOVELESS/ NELYUBOV

Russia, 2017, 127 minutes, Colour.
Maryana Spivak, Aleksey Rozin, Marina Vasili.
Directed by Andrey Zyagintsev.

With a title like “Loveless�, audiences would not necessarily be expecting a cheerful entertainment. And, since the film comes from Russia, that might be another indication for very serious themes and treatment. And for those who know the films of the director, Andrey Zyagintsev (The Return, Banishment, Elena, Leviathan), they would appreciate that for 15 years he has been looking very seriously at a Russian society, the post-Soviet era and the transition from totalitarian socialism to the impact of capitalism and individualism in society and, especially in this case, in the family.

The film opens and closes with beautifully bleak fixed camera gazing at forests, lakes, snow – and then the glimpsing of high-rise buildings in the background. We are in a Russian provincial city, the usual location for Zyagintsev’s films. After this invitation to contemplation and reflection, the camera gazes at a building – then doors suddenly burst open, children running out from school, and a focus on one young 12-year-old, walking solitary, finding a long piece of material and tossing it up into a tree branch. This is Aleksey who is then seen at home, doing his homework, finding prospective buyers of the family apartment inspecting. His parents are divorcing. We can see that he is angry, even resentful.

This is compounded when we see his mother and father and the audience is made observers, unwilling participants, in their constant and loud, bitter bickering – with a boy outside the door, weeping.

The film then spends quite an amount of time building up the characters of the mother and father, and the terrible flaws in those characters. There seems to be nothing redemptive about the mother, resenting her marriage, her unexpected pregnancy, her wanting to have an abortion, especially with her harsh mother’s advice, her husband persuading her against it, her feeling her life has been ruined, that she deserves some happiness and comfort – and is willing for her husband to take custody of the son whom she resents. The father, on the other hand, seems a milder character, says that he wants his son to stay with his mother because she is the better nurturing parent for him at that age. She disagrees, saying a father is better for the son.

The next step is to find that each of them is in a new relationship. This is a threat to the father because his company, with leaders who take more fundamentalist Christian approach to morals, does not tolerate divorce. He has also taken up with a young woman, a rather clingy woman who is long-term pregnant. On the other hand, the mother is in a relationship with an older man, wealthy, divorced, with adult children.

While the parents might have forgotten their son, the audience has not. Then the news comes that he has disappeared.

The bulk of the rest of the film is concerned with the details of the search for the boy – rather intense, perhaps a bit long for many audiences who might find this section somewhat drawn out. There are volunteers for the search, groups combing through the woods, calling out the boy’s name, searching a warehouse and basement, printing posters to be put around the city…

There is some suspense, of course, as to whether the boy will be found. And we are made privy to the reactions of mother and father, still some bickering between them, going to the boy’s grandmother who is a severe and condemnatory woman.

In fact, with the atmosphere of the film, it is a microcosm of Russian society, and, of course, a microcosm of world society showing its self-centredness. A pervading atmosphere of lovelessness.

Oscar nominee for 2017, a powerful portrait, depressing and challenging.

1. The title, the tone, meaning?

2. The Russian city, the seasons? The opening winter shots, the trees, the water, the snow? The high-rise buildings in the background? The focus on the school, apartments, searching the city for the lost boy, the woods? The warehouse? The musical score and its tone?

3. This story as a microcosm of Russian society? 21st-century? Dysfunctional families and the effect on children? Selfish parents, angry parents, self-satisfaction?

4. Nature and the opening, and the end? The mood and the insistent music?

5. School coming out, the focus on Aleksey, wandering by himself, the ribbon and tossing it onto the tree? Alone, in his room, thinking, his homework?

6. The visitors to the apartment, examining it, the square metres? The boy shutting the door? The mother explaining the divorce? His father coming home, the fight and the bitterness, the shouting, the discussion about telling their son about the divorce? His standing outside the door? Weeping?

7. The boy at breakfast, his mother and her insistence, asking for thanks? His disappearance? The extent of the search throughout the film? The effect on his parents? His never being found? The lost boy?

8. The mother, with her son, wanting thanks, bitter, the shouting with her husband, the divorce, selling the apartment? The venom in her remarks? Her reflection on her pregnancy, not wanting to be pregnant, her mother urging her to have an abortion, her husband not wanting the abortion? The attitude towards her mother? On the train, going to the beauty parlour, the conversations about her private life, the haircut and styling and her gossip about herself?

9. The father, softer in his personality, the bitter argument with his wife, the issues of custody, and not wanting the boy, his not wanting the boy and thinking it was better with his mother? The car, going to work, the subtext about the coming apocalypse and the date, fundamentalist Christianity and its effect on Russians, even to strict moral guidelines for employees and the company? At work, at lunch, with his friend, asking about concealing divorce, and telling the story of the man hiring a wife and two children for social? The father, the threat of his job loss?

10. Mother and father and their new partners? The father, Masha and her pregnancy, her clingy personality, going home, sex, food and cooking? The contrast with the mother and her new boyfriend, his age, wealth, his daughter working in Portugal and the Skype contact with her, issues of love?

11. The father at work, the phone call, the news about his son’s disappearance, blaming his wife? The initial sense of denial? Hesitation? The mother going to visit her mother – and her abusive attack on her, blaming her for all that had happened?

12. The search leader, the speeches, the participants, their methods, the area covered, walking through the woods, calling out the boy’s name, in the streets, the posters, the large building and the search, the visit to the mortuary and the mother’s breakdown?

13. The effect on parents, their sleeping with their partners? Masha and her clingy phone call from the supermarket? The mother, asleep, the phone call, willing to help and search, visiting the hospitals?

14. The visit to the morgue, the mutilated body, the effect on each parent, the screams of the mother, the weeping of the Father?

15. The parents giving up, surrendered Fate?

16. Years later, the father and Masha, living with her mother, her mother suggesting they were too crowded, moving out? The father putting his young child brutally in the
playpen, the child weeping, calling for its mother?

17. The mother, her new husband, affluence, on the exercise bike – and the question of whether she was fulfilled on not?

18. Experiences of love – and more of lovelessness?

19. The finale, the boy disappeared, the snow, the insistent score, and the audience left with this experience?