Traditions of classical literature in the film “Brother” by Alexei Balabanov

Abstract

Alexei Balabanov’s film “Brother” is an integral part of modern Russian culture. An analysis of the audience’s reception of the film suggests that “Brother” is not just a mass action movie. A close look reveals that Balabanov’s film combines elements of pop-culture product and intellectual cinema. The article for the first time offers a holistic analysis of the film “Brother”. Balabanov uses a complex system of repetitions at the level of a phrase, visual image, situation. This allows the author to build a complicated system of motifs that are associated with some literary traditions of classical literature. We are talking primarily about the tradition of the Petersburg text and about a complex of themes and plots that go back to romanticism. The angle from which one should look at the film is indicated by the introduction of an important character named Hoffmann, who warns the protagonist that the city is a terrible force. Motive analysis and intertextual analysis leads to the following conclusions. The plot of “Brother” can be read as a story about a young man Danila, who betrays his ideal (love of music), unable to withstand the temptation of money and power, and pays for this: he turns into his evil doppelganger — his brother Victor. The plot, seemingly tied to a specific socio-historical reality, turns into a potentially eternal plot about a confused romantic hero who changes his ideals after falling into the mythologized space of St Petersburg that fools him.