The theological dimension of Pavel Lungin’s film scripts of Russian culture

Abstract

The paper is a cultural analysis of Lungin’s scripts. The author discusses the similarities between the picture of the world of a tyrant and the one of a monk anchorite. He proves that the anti-world Gnostic-Manichaean dualism is a paradigm arranging their theological imagination, it is a matrix modeling binarily the nature as well as the story and condition of a man trapped by passion which correlate to the nature, it is a pattern of the eschatological dissociation of the world and the underworld. The existential awareness of two so different characters like a tsar and a monk is presented as an evocation of deep deposits of the East Christianity and sect beliefs and ideas. Russia, as a country of embodied Manichaeism, is shown personally – in the figures of its spiritual leaders. According to the author of the paper the depth of the displayed archetypes establishing the viewpoint of rulers and subjects allows to say that Lungin’s movies are texts of culture.