LEVIATHAN

Today, we have reached a point in civilisation, in our collective human experience, where the rich First World, with its own consistency and experience of People Power and Government in service of the electorate and its constituents, is confident that it could enforce and implement Democracy thru the entire globe, as if it is some kind of an instant capsule the subject society has to only swallow and wait for it to work…

However, apparently it does never do what it says in the prescription receipt.

The warnings that this may only be a social experiment in the developing and the third World, as well as in vast regions where there is no stone cut base and pillars on which to build a transparent and democratic society are most often ignored thru such blunders that created the power vacuum after the departure of Saddam Hussein as well as a consequence of the inexperienced Maghrebi governments across the north African Belt after the Arab Spring.

I remember the day, when I sat in London by the TV, waiting for tony Blair (Bliar, as he is now known the world over) to sell to his own people a costly military campaign in the Middle East, that would in his own words transfer the whole region, from one of corrupt and totalitarian dictatorships, to one of parliamentary and just Western style democracies…

Twenty years down the line, we are more than ever persuaded that we have all been lied to, and for those who were more intelligent to predict a disaster scenario and new that a regime change and a complete society makeover is not just an overnight effort, their careers, at least in Britain were terminated by the same democratic states which by the power of the spin doctors and chief whips, enforce party policy on a whole country like Great Britain, with no apparent opposition despite of the Two Million people strike against the war in the middle of the Capital…

For me, that was the period when I just realised that Democracy is just Hypocrisy, but what of the Middle East and the whole Fertile Crescent left in a complete chaos and power vacuum the likes of which we are now too afraid as the West to own up to?

Iraq is no longer a state, the whole of it the size of France being totally swallowed up by power struggles, which most often occur with the departure of the same structure we, The West have removed but not exactly replaced with a viable option compatible and adequate for that part of the World.

But, was it not us, the First world, that installed totalitarian governments in the first place, knowing all too well that it is probably the only option available left to administer the region?

Anyway, let’s not drift too far away from our subject, the region in mind being Russia, to honour our title and essay topic for today.

One of the very good things about Putin is that he knows all too well that should he make any more concessions to the West, Russia would turn into a completely failed state, empowering local war lords and bounty hunters as well as tribal chieftains to take over and who will own up to that mess?

1

I remember the day when Tony Bliar’s chief whip was sacking backbenchers by the score, because they were the spineless and without backbone kind of people to represent the British people in Whitehall…

But today, apparently despite of our gift to the Middle East, and the only thing I see is a whole region in a complete chaos, now apparently it is their fault they (the Arabs) don’t know how to implement a democracy…

We have long washed our hands from just another serious blunder, we found no WMD anywhere in the region, our commitment was only in order to create war and destroy the country, and the world is not a safer place.

As far as the world is concerned, Tony Bliar is a man who made history, not by destroying a country but by getting rid of the same idiot who at least held the country together, and what of the hundreds of thousands of dead people?

Here, I must once again go back to Leviathan, because it is the same type of irony that befalls the main character at this Entry at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014, and was just as a tribute screened at the Karlovy Vary as well, it is the same kind of contradictions, the same kind of paradox that bothers a young man who lives in provincial Russia…

This is probably why Russia at least for the foreseeable future will only be a limited democracy, to take the transition one step at the time, avoiding the power gap left behind serious changes in government and regime infrastructure…

I don’t want to go into detail explaining to you what happens in the film, as to make it more interesting for you to watch it if you have a chance to get your hands on a copy, but it is these challenges in real life one must deal with, that make the film irresistible, as well as its real observation of a society that is just probably not fit enough yet to become a democracy…

However, as far as I’m concerned, when things work, don’t change them, and so far at least Russia is not perhaps a cradle of democracy, but it works, and it holds its head on its shoulders, despite of it being robbed recently with a preposterous privatisation, that saw a transition on an enormous scale,

And transfer of state assets and the country’s corporate wealth in the hands of few who now live peacefully in London, but that is all good for England right?

As long as all the Russian thieves come here to England to buy football clubs and open up dodgy bank accounts we have nothing wrong to say about the new class of oligarchs, but that is the democracy that we live in…

Many other types of double standards will cross your mind as you watch Leviathan, which exploits these contradictions to turn the main character in the “Lamb of God”, perhaps the only morally incorrupt person in a film that would challenge your faith once again in God, particularly in the struggles of Jesus…

Promiscuity, loyalty, friendship, destiny, justice, all these are finely observed in a story that draws its strength from an extremely realistic portrait of human suffering and abuse of power to an unbelievable extent, but does it only happen in Russia, or it doesn’t?

2

The whole Eastern Europe today is a mock up region staffed with banana Republics, which saw the most criminal minded transition and transfer of corporate wealth of many countries in the hands of few, but I unfortunately don’t see England to say anything about it…

Anyway, criticism of government to say the least is now perhaps a screened and censored reality, but it still is allowed in Russia to an extent…

In actual fact, one maid argue just as well, that democracy has long been implemented given the recent record of disregard for the opposition in England particularly towards those who opposed the war in Iraq after such open resentment resistance on the streets of London…

And more over as I happen to live in London and I’m much more concerned about the sell-out of our own people here, why did you lie to your own people Mr Bliar?

Does the UK government always serve in the best interests of its own people?

Could we say that Kolya, the main actor, wrestles with his own faith to identify with Jesus, in firm belief that he must pay for the Sins of all the people around him, his wife’s affair with his best friend and their adultery affair behind his back, in order to save everyone?

And of course, the stab in the back by a country all too reluctant to change for the common good and the benefit of the people, as he is arrested during an effort to file yet another piece of paper by his friend lawyer to prosecute the local oligarch?

Do we see here references towards identifying the state as the Sanhedrin’s money changers before Herod’s temple during the time of Christ?

I suppose, we’ll end it here with the proposition that there’s always another “Den of Robbers”, however, I unfortunately do not see our Messiah having brought the Salvation, as Kolya is once again sacrificed for the common good, to save us all from the Sins of the world…

The kingdom of Heaven is once again postponed for the Other Realm, and the social justice in the image of Paradise will not come to Russia, not yet…

Excellent, despite of my previous convictions and reservations…

3