KMT 2021 nr 4 Download PDF

Modernité, the city and the modern man. Searching for a visual theory of modernity in films of Roy Andersson and Andrei Zvyagintsev

Cite: , Modernité, miasto i współczesny człowiek. W poszukiwaniu wizualnej teorii nowoczesności w filmach Roya Anderssona i Andrieja Zwiagincewa, "Kultura - Media - Teologia", 2021( 48) nr 4, s. 255-284.

DOI: 10.21697/kmt.48.11

The subject of the article is an analysis of selected films created by two 21st-century directors: Roy Andersson and Andrei Zvyagintsev, from the point of view of the theory of modern and postmodern culture. The architecture and places scenery (both external and internal) shown in the films is analyzed as a medium of modernity. In Andersson’s films, the author finds symbolic and timeless modernism; in Zvyagintsev’s it’s two historical types: the old, twentieth century, which today is rather synonymous with backwardness, and the new, 21st century, beautiful, consumerist and inhuman. In the vision of both directors, the city and its buildings organize the lives of the characters, give character to their actions, perpetuating the culture of (post-) modernity as a source of contemporary suffering. However, Zvyagintsev and Andersson seek redemption from modern hell. The way to do this can be deconstructing symbols and monuments of modernity, contrasting modernist institutions with weak and emotional people, or finally the subtle work of the camera that can warm and tame the insensitive urban space.

About authors

dr Dagmara Jaszewska

ORCID: (nieznany)