The Island (Ostrov)
BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA:
Film title: The Island (Ostrov); Director: Pavel Lungin; Year made: 2006; Country of production: Russian Federation (RF); Language of film: Russian (English version online open access); Length of film: 112 minutes.
GENRE:
Feature film
SYNOPSIS:
During World War II, the sailor Anatoly and his captain, Tikhon, are captured by the Germans who board their barge and tugboat, which is carrying a shipment of coal along the Northern shore. The German officer leading the raid offers Anatoly, who is terrified of dying, the choice either to be shot or to shoot Tikhon. Anatoly chooses the second option and shoots Tikhon, who falls overboard into the sea. The Germans then blow up the ship. The next morning Russian Orthodox monks living on a small island find Anatoly on the shore and he becomes a stoker at the monastery. Thirty years later, Anatoly lives as an ascetic in a small hermitage apart from the monastery. There, he remains in a state of repentance, overcome with guilt for his choice to save himself at Tikhon’s expense and perpetually praying for mercy and forgiveness. Because of his eccentric behavior that contravenes the rules of monastic liturgy and ritual, the other monks do not understand him. But people come to see Anatoly for cures and guidance, believing that he now has the gifts of prophecy and healing. One day, an admiral of the North Fleet arrives at the monastery bringing his daughter who is possessed by a demon. Anatoly takes her away and exorcises the demon. The admiral turns out to be Tikhon. It is revealed that Anatoly had only wounded him in the arm. Tikhon forgives Anatoly, who then announces his own impending death. The monks provide a coffin. Dressed in a white garment such as Jesus wore or an Orthodox baptismal garment, he lies in the coffin, wearing a crucifix. Monks, one carrying a large cross representing the risen Christ, are seen rowing the coffin away from the island.
BACKGROUND/CONTEXT:
This is the first film with a metaphysical subject matter by well-known art-house film director Pavel Lungin. The film’s protagonist Anatoly can be read as an example of a Russian Christ/or Christ in Russia, a national cultural trope since Dostoevsky’s novels Crime and Punishment, The Devils/the Possessed, and Brothers Karamazov. The core elements of this trope include the idea of the Russian people as the “good-bearing people” and the idea of a Russian Christ-martyr, but equally the so-called iurod, the fool in Christ. It also is a film about the phenomenon of so-called “double-belief” (dvoeverie), referring to the interwoven fabric of Christian and pre-Christian/pagan belief systems. This was very much alive in Russia well into the mid-20th century, when the absolute majority of the population had roots in the peasantry and lived in villages.
Lungin made the film during a period of deep crisis for Russians. Since 1991, 20.000 out of formerly 60.000 villages in the country had died out and the average life expectancy of men was 61, the main cause of death being alcohol. The film is a reaction to the agony of Russian society two decades after the end of the long Soviet period. Not only had the Marxist-Leninist atheist ideology collapsed, but all state-ruled institutions and accompanying value systems had imploded. As people lost the fundamental framework and grounds for existence, everything fell into chaos. Crime and social instability ruled. The collapse of the state-planned economy created an opening for Western capitalism with its diverse spiritual marketplace, which Western countries had become familiar with since the 1960s. Unprepared for this diversity and experiencing an intense spiritual and psychological vacuum, the Russian people turned to New Age and esoteric beliefs, which became omnipresent on all levels of society. Against the backdrop of this social situation, the film introduces the topic of religion, albeit in a rather unconventional way by depicting core elements of traditional folk religion that had not only been repressed and forbidden by the atheist Soviet government, but also expelled from the official, loyal-to-the-state, Orthodox church. Shown on television on New Year’s Eve, the film attracted more spectators than the very popular president Putin’s New Year’s speech.
Pavel Lungin’s main condition for making this film was that Pyotr Mamonov play the role of father Anatoly. Mamonov, who was not an actor at all, had been an artist and rock musician in one of the most famous rock-groups of Late Soviet time. An ex-alcoholic, by 2006 he had retreated from public life into a monastery to lead a life of a hermit. Disgusted with the agony produced by the collapse of Soviet society, he made passionate speeches in the village of his monastery against abortion, the sinfulness of life, and also against journalists visiting him to record interviews. Mamonov had to be persuaded to leave his own remote monastery to play a hermit in a monastery on a remote Island in the Far Northern White Sea, where in the Early Soviet period clerics were tortured to death in great numbers. In real life Mamonov, who died in 2021, was already starting to become venerated as a “starets” by people in the village of his monastery.
KEYWORDS:
- Miracle
- Superstition
- Spirit possession
- Mysticism
- Orthodox Heresy
ACADEMIC COMMENTARY:
A few topics from Russian cultural history help for a deeper understanding of this film: Anatoly has the characteristics of a starets,an elder in a Russian (and Greek) orthodox monastery who is highly esteemed by both the cleric and the folk, standing in the Hesychast tradition of Eastern mysticism. The character of the starets Zossima in the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor was made famous by Dostoevsky’s novel Brothers Karamasov. Anatoly’s shockingly unconventional and sometimes lunatic behavior of deliberately flouting social norms, for example, giving up all worldly possessions upon joining a radically pious religious life, identifies him as a starets. Historically, such individuals were known as both holy and blessed fools. Derived from the writings of Paul the Apostle, the fool in Christ or holy fool is innocent in the eyes of God, and therefore especially venerated by ordinary people. Desert Fathers and other saints acted the part of holy fools, as have Eastern Orthodox ascetics.
In his repeated ritual prayers, Anatoly practices the so-called Jesus-prayer (Gospodi Isuse Christe, Syne Bozhii, pomilui mia greshnago; Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, your sinful son). This prayer, a meditation technique of early Byzantine Hesychastic monks who repeated it hundreds of thousands of times, is still practiced on Mount Athos. The Orthodox Church considered the prayer a heresy because it was aimed at an unmediated, sensuous, and personal experience of God contrary to Orthodox dogma. Forbidden by the Russian Orthodox Church, the Jesus-prayer, which is a Hesychastic practice related to the “magic power of the divine name” of God (imiaslavie), retreated to the Athos island. In 1914, the monks there were arrested and taken for detainment to the Caucasus. Imiaslavie (the “magic of the divine name”) lived on as a movement in the deep Soviet underground, especially among mathematicians. Religious Studies scholar Karl Baier “drew parallels between Yoga-Breathing-Exercises and the Eastern Byzantine Orthodox heretic practice of the Jesus prayer – a path to mystical experience, synchronizing heart-beat with breath and an absolutely calm mind.”
Where and how does the film address esoteric practices?
With the Jesus-prayer, the film introduces not only an unconventional religious practice to a wider post-Soviet public unfamiliar with any religion, but introduces an esoteric practice within Russian Orthodoxy. It is esoteric in the sense of rejected knowledge, because it had to be hidden both from the church and from society and because it required special initiatory knowledge. At the same time, Anatoly, by his unconventional healing councils, practiced goal-oriented spiritual interventions. The efficacy of his rituals was opaque, since it remained unclear and at least ambiguous, in its results, whether he was performing miracles or not. His behavior becomes especially causally opaque in the end when he exorcises the possessed young woman by way of the Jesus-prayer and then predicts his own death before “performing” it.
What is esoteric about the film?
In this film, miracles occur which leave the viewer puzzled. Anatoly’s life in repentance was built on an error. Was it in all in vain? To the viewer, it remains open whether Anatoly performs his ritual seriously or whether he is lying, cynically pretending to be a healer for simple people who obsessively seek to believe in whatever figure appears as their savior. In this sense, the film could be read as a meta-commentary, a social critique of the omnipresent popular New Age prophets. But there are features inviting us to understand Anatoly as a serious figure. As someone who can speak to the animals, he recalls St. Anthony speaking with the birds. Seeing Anatoly as an initiated holy man and, especially in the Russian context a holy fool practicing the Jesus-prayer, invites the viewer to believe in the efficacy of his rituals. This opaqueness cannot be translated into any rational solution. It is both an aesthetic device and an intended part of the plot.
Birgit Menzel
