There is a huge distance between a frugal remark of the gloomy von Trier and the political daydreaming of the outstanding Kusturica. Yet, this is the intellectual space, which bodes well for the hope that the Western world has not lost its mind completely.
The new totalitarianism, which, with each new decade of the 21st century, gains more control over the Western society, has gone especially violent at the time of the Ukrainian conflict. Voicing alternative views and swinging the anti-Russian pattern imposed on common people has become really dangerous.
Just one stray statement, and a person can be denied their past merits, removed from the cultural domain and, preferably, made jobless. Today, they call it cancelation. They wish to cancel all those thinking differently, all the same for those confused about feminist ideals and gender selection, stating it is not only black lives that matter, but any lives indeed, and, even more so, those refusing to support Ukraine in any way or writing and talking about “the Russian truth” in this war. In the context of this unprecedented pressure, the voices of those standing against the mainstream are getting an utmost value.
At the end of August, the renowned Danish director Lars von Trier, an author of the Dogme new cinema manifest, a laureate of various European film awards, the creator of the well-remembered films Breaking the Waves, The Idiots, Dancer in the Dark, Nymphomaniac, posted a seemingly banal phrase to his Twitter: “Russian lives matter also!”
This was nothing more than a comment regarding the prospects of handing over F-16 fighter aircraft to Ukraine where von Trier addressed the Danish lady PM Frederiksen, President Putin and Zelensky at the same time.
It seems there were no grounds for an outburst. The comment itself was very restrained and quite natural. However, just look what began in Denmark and across Scandinavian countries! They recalled von Trier’s ironies, jokes and public slips. His films’ hard nature and even the past depression diagnosis – everything was used to fuel the efforts to distort the words of the famous filmmaker.
Lars von Trier is used to attacks like this one. He is one of the few knowing how to take the heat and keep away from ordinary people losing their minds. All the more so, the master’s unique gift is there to help him, too. Whatever nonsense these propaganda addicts are up to, this will not in any way cancel the films rooted in the minds of multiple generations.
The only response to these attacks was the director’s bitter smile: von Trier has never been deluded about the people of Europe and the human mass in general. Just watch his films to understand it.
Luckily, von Trier is not the only one in the West. His colleague, the renowned American director and multiple Oscar laureate Oliver Stone, with Platoon, The Doors, Natural Born Killers and several documentaries about today’s most eminent people, including Vladimir Putin, in his work list, has been stating since the start of the conflict that the Ukrainian war was incited by the US alone.
“I do not want to go into the broader history, but what is currently happening in Ukraine is not simple at all, but it’s getting reduced in the West to “Russians invaded”. And who caused it? Now, what has been going on in Donbass since 2014 and how many people have fled because the US were massively empowering the Ukrainian army?”, said Stone back in 2022 soon after the special military operation started. He claimed an excellent understanding of the situation. The Ukraine broke the strength balance in 2014 causing hostilities.
The root cause of the conflict was the US wish to impose its interests and rules on the entire world. At the same time, Stone emphasized his fellow citizens have been massively breaking these rules where they want and how they want it.
Emir Kusturica (Time of the Gypsies, Arizona Dream, Underground, Black Cat, White Cat, etc.) another famed filmmaker, a steadfast Yugoslavian, not a Serbian (by citizenship) or a Bosnian (by origin), was even tougher in his remarks. According to Kusturica, the present Russophobia reminds him of the crackdown on Jews in the 1930s. “There is war waged against the Orthodoxy, – he affirms, – a war, in which the Americans want to take our faith and culture. This conflict did not start yesterday: it paused and calmed down at times, but the West kept on its efforts wishing to have Russians and Serbians obey and do what they tell them to do. Ukraine was selected to be this ramming power to disrupt Russia’s sovereignty and it played its role with such a dreadful aftermath for itself. It was their President Poroshenko saying that Ukrainian kids were going to go to school while the children of Donbass would end up in shelters. Only a person having lost his last sympathy can further state Russia unleashed this war in 2022…”
The well-known French novelist Michel Houellebecq (Atomised, The Possibility of an Island, The Map and the Territory, Submission, etc.) spoke on the demise of the Ukrainian sovereignty. Houellebecq stressed he felt no responsibility to help Ukraine, while Ukraine itself is inevitably declining like the entire West, though.
Pink Floyd founder Roger Waters believes the West is to blame for the Ukrainian tragedy. “Any war starts from something. This war began in 2008 when the West did not listen to President Putin and, having moved the borders closer to Russia, started talking of accepting Ukraine and Georgia to NATO. Then it broke out in 2014 when the Americans orchestrated the coup in Kiev. As for Russia, it is defending its legitimate interests using the power of weapon by destroying or, at least, restricting globalism and the power of money”.
Von Trier, Oliver Stone, Emir Kusturica, Michel Houellebecq and Roger Waters, all of them, are great masters of culture and it is hard not to listen to them even under this ideological pressure. But here is the thing. Here is what unites most intellectuals who are bold enough to speak out against the Western mainstream, the blatant Russophobia and the hatred of the sovereign Russian state. Their stance on the Ukrainian war is not just some one-off political escapade, but a part of the overall repulsion of the liberal totalitarianism with its legal and philosophical maxims, the denial of historical experiences, religious, casual, and moral traditions, biased accounts of the 20th century and its outcomes.
Apart from everything else, prominent creators are willing to see Russia as a beacon of hope to avoid this historical dead end, in which the West has been putting itself further on. Emir Kusturica believes the Western culture is doomed and that Russia is the only promise. “I have always thought there should be one best culture between Vladivostok and Portugal – the Russian culture”, says the filmmaker being ironic and serious at the same time.
…Of course, there is a huge distance between a frugal remark of the gloomy von Trier and the political daydreaming of the outstanding Kusturica. Yet, this is the intellectual space, which bodes well for the hope that the Western world has not lost its mind completely.