THE FILMMAKER’S PHILOSOPHER MERAB MAMARDASHVILI AND RUSSIAN CINEMA ALYSSA DEBLASIO The Filmmaker’s Philosopher The Filmmaker’s Philosopher Merab Mamardashvili and Russian Cinema Alyssa DeBlasio Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © Alyssa DeBlasio, 2019 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun—Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in Monotype Ehrhardt by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 4448 4 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 4450 7 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 4451 4 (epub) The right of Alyssa DeBlasio to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). Contents List of Figures vi Acknowledgments vii Note on Transliteration and Translation ix Introduction: The Freest Man in the USSR 1 1. Alexander Sokurov’s Demoted (1980): Consciousness as Celebration 30 2. Ivan Dykhovichnyi’s The Black Monk (1988): Madness, Chekhov, and the Chimera of Idleness 57 3. Dmitry Mamuliya’s Another Sky (2010): The Language of Consciousness 78 4. Alexei Balabanov’s The Castle (1994) and Me Too (2012): Kafka, the Absurd, and the Death of Form 100 5. Alexander Zeldovich’s Target (2011): Tolstoy and Mamardashvili on the Infinite and the Earthly 124 6. Vadim Abdrashitov and Alexander Mindadze’s The Train Stopped (1982): Film as a Metaphor for Consciousness 147 Conclusion: Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless (2017): The Philosophical Image and the Possibilities of Film 160 Appendix 177 Bibliography 181 Index 196 Figures I.1 Merab Mamardashvili, early 1970s 10 I.2 Mamardashvili as a student of philosophy, early 1950s 14 1.1 The demoted taxi driver in the early morning light 47 1.2 Water imagery in Demoted 51 2.1 Tania seems to address Kovrin by addressing the camera 60 2.2–2.3 Two monks: Dykhovichnyi’s Andrei Kovrin and Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev 72 2.4–2.5 Kovrin speaks to the camera when he speaks with the monk 73 3.1 Mamardashvili in Should the Sighted Lead the Blind? 85 4.1–4.2 Remote winter landscapes and religious symbolism in Balabanov’s Me Too and The Castle 105 5.1 Zoia is measured by Viktor at 27 percent evil and 73 percent good 140 C.1 Zhenia runs on the treadmill in the snow 166 Acknowledgments As with all large projects, the publication of this book calls for expressions of gratitude to friends and colleagues near and far, all of whom have gener- ously offered their support in some way. At the earliest stage of this project, as a fellow with the American Council of Learned Societies, I benefited from the generosity of Sergei Kapterev and Nikolai Izvolov (Institute of Cinematic Art, Moscow), who helped me locate important primary source material. I am grateful to the many film directors, especially Alexander Zeldovich, Olesia Fokina, and Dmitry Mamuliya, who shared their experiences in Mamardashvili’s classroom. Alexander Kolbovsky, Olga Shervud, and Vsevolod Korshunov assisted in making important connections, while Anastasiya Khlopina was extremely valuable as my research assistant during the summer of 2017. My work benefited from conversations with students and colleagues at the Slavic departments of the University of Virginia and Princeton University, where I was invited to talk about this project; thank you to Edith Clowes and Victoria Juharyan for making these visits possible. Conversations with the participants of the 20th Annual Russian Film Symposium, too many to name here, were instrumental as I completed the final chapter on Zvyagintsev. Irina Anisimova, Andrew Chapman, Mikhail Epstein, Viktoriia Faibyshenko, Margaret Frohlich, Diana Gasparyan, Phil Grier, and Chauncey Maher provided valuable feedback on this work at various stages. I also extend thanks to my editors at Edinburgh University Press and the two peer reviewers, who captured the role of “anonymous reader” perfectly—by providing careful commentary that encouraged me to clarify my thinking at critical moments in the text, but in a way that was always in the spirit of the project I had set out to undertake. My friends and mentors, Nancy Condee, Phil Grier, Volodia Padunov, and Jim Scanlan, have been models for my work on the intersections of philosophy, litera- ture, and film. I am grateful for the support of Dickinson College Research and Development funds, which supported this project in several forms. My colleague, Elena, has created a departmental environment that is conducive viii the filmmaker’s philosopher to both vigorous research and rewarding teaching. My irreplaceable friends—Claire, Peggy, and Sarah—have since 2010 been encouraging faces across the table for many hours of writing and non-writing in the small town of Carlisle, PA. My sincere gratitude goes out to Alena Mamardashvili and the Merab Mamardashvili Foundation for their permission to use the archival photo- graphs included within. It is commonplace to thank one’s family, but indeed mine—Chris and Nina—has made me a more efficient writer and a more empathetic reader. They are always eager to join me on adventures and not only afforded me the extra time to do this work when the project hit critical moments, but are the reason for the work in the first place. Note on Transliteration and Translation All citations to Russian-language sources follow the Library of Congress system, i.e. in the notes, the bibliography, and the appendix. Russian proper names pose particular challenges when writing in English. While there are several established systems for transliterating Russian into English, ranging from technical to reader-friendly, contemporary authors, critics, and filmmakers often have preferred English spellings of their own names, few of which conform to any of the accepted transliteration systems. In this book, I have tried to balance two things: readability (for non-specialists) and consistency (both within the text and with the way people spell their own names in English). For these reasons, Russian proper names have been transliterated according to the Library of Congress system, with some important and widespread modifications. I have spelled well-known names according to their established English spellings: e.g. Tarkovsky instead of Tarkovskii and Tolstoy instead of Tolstoi. For prominent filmmakers and authors, I use the spellings that appear most frequently at international festivals and in English-language promotional materials and/or their preferred spelling of their own name: e.g. Andrey Zvyagintsev instead of Andrei Zviagintsev and Dmitry Mamuliya instead of Dmitrii Mamuliia. To facilitate reading, I have also removed diacritical marks from proper names even within the Library of Congress system, resulting in, for instance, Ilia instead of Il’ia and Evald instead of Eval’d. These adjustments might initially be unfamiliar to scholars used to working with scholarly systems of Russian transliteration. It also means that certain common names appear in multiple ways in the text, depend- ing on which spelling the name holder uses. My goal was to bring my transliteration choices in line with existing international film promotional materials and with the wishes of authors and filmmakers themselves, while also making the manuscript as accessible as possible to readers in other fields, especially those who do not read Russian. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. INTRODUCTION The Freest Man in the USSR The kind of freedom that Pushkin possessed is not something he could, say, pass on to his pupils. It is no coincidence that he didn’t have a school of followers. Merab Mamardashvili, Cartesian Meditations (1981)1 Why do you consider Tarkovsky a good director? It’s because he died, and even Pushkin said that this country loves only the dead. Merab Mamardashvili, interview (1991)2 Merab Mamardashvili has been called many things: the Georgian Socrates of Soviet philosophy, a lighthouse of the late-Soviet intelli- gentsia, a pioneer in using cognition as a form of resistance against state authority, a gifted orator in the classical tradition, and even a “preeminent theologian.”3 He was Merab Konstantinovich within the conventions of Russian formality, he was Merab to his friends, and to Marxist philoso- pher Louis Althusser he was “my dearest Merab,” a confidant abroad, and a “sympathetic brother.”4 Between 1966 and his death in 1990 at age sixty, philosopher Merab Mamardashvili taught and worked at some of the most prestigious institutions in Moscow and Tbilisi, includ- ing Moscow State University, the institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, and Tbilisi State University.5 He was one of only a handful of Soviet-born practitioners of a European, French-influenced style of philosophical discourse that, in Mamardashvili’s case, bordered at times on a form of Marxist exis- tentialism, given both his methodological foundation in Marxist analysis and his commitment to investigating the human experience. Though his name was nearly unknown outside the communist bloc, his lectures drew crowds of listeners from across the social strata