In Hobbes’s writings, Leviathan refers to a country with absolute power—a man-made person; among them, sovereignty is its soul, officials are its joints, rewards and punishments are its nerves, and wealth is its own. Benefits, security are its business, consultants are its memory, fairness and law are its sanity, peace is its health, turmoil is its disease, and civil war is its death.
In (Bible), Leviathan is a kind of sea monster that symbolizes evil. It has hard scale armor, sharp teeth, spouting mouth and nose, and spikes under its belly. It is the destroyer of the world.
Russian movies and novels always bring people a kind of exploration and rhetoric about human suffering, such as Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Toftoyevsky's crime and punishment.
In Leviathan’s movie, the story told takes place in a village near the Barents Sea (in fact it can be anywhere), and the insatiable mayor looks at the house where Nicholas’s family lives. And tried to occupy that piece of land for nothing-in fact it was forcibly occupied. The mayor behaves rudely because everything is under his control. The final outcome was that his wife jumped into the sea and committed suicide. Nikolai was sentenced to 15 years in prison, and his family became fragmented from intact.
At the beginning of the film, there is a detail. Nikolai went to the station to pick up his good brother-a lawyer from Moscow. On the way back, the traffic police Stepaniz once again asked Nikolai to repair the car for him. thing. Nicholas said angrily to his good brother: "I am annoyed by Stepanitz and his broken car, and said that any corrupt traffic policeman can buy a good car for five years. "His good brother said: "Maybe he is a clean policeman." Nicholas said jokingly: "Yes, and kind." Then the two looked at each other and laughed.
Any trivial problem often points to a bigger problem. After going to the court and failing to appeal, Nicholas and the others returned home. At this time, the drunken mayor came to the door to make a fuss unreasonably and disdainfully said, you spoilers, you won’t have power, don’t even think about it. think. From this I think of a sentence mentioned in Berlin's (Two Concepts of Freedom) speech, that for people who are unable to use freedom, freedom is nothing. In this incident, the freedom Nikolai exercised was the "positive freedom" power proposed by Berlin as a person, and this freedom was suppressed here. On closer inspection, the mayor’s logic is simple and rude-the people are ants and do not have power, so they must accept it. The mayor is facing a general election at this time. He ignores that his power comes from the votes in the hands of the "ants" he calls. This is an irony to Russia's current system.
When we placed our hopes on Nikolai’s good brother, the lawyer from Moscow, such a bridge appeared inexplicably in the film, and the traffic policeman Stepanitz read this sentence in the newspaper: An introduction to the development of the reversed life history. From life to death, a long span of time is the theory of evolution. From this point to Hobbes’s Leviathan once again, you can actually guess the movie’s meaning here without any doubt. It's over.
In the next plot development, whether it's Nikolai's good brother lawyer sleeping with his wife, or a wild meal and shooting competition, it's more to show some conflicts in the plot of the movie. They all point to the same theme. ——The final tragedy.
Russia is a religious country. In the movie, the anxious mayor asked the bishop for help more than once. After being threatened by a lawyer, he asked the bishop again for help. The bishop’s speech is quite interesting. : God is the ruler of everything. Where there is ruler, there is power. If you have the power, use your power to solve problems, do not ask for help, otherwise the enemy will think you are very weak. I really admire the bishop for stealing concepts and mud So the mayor once again confidently decided to use his power to intimidate the lawyer, and successfully drove the lawyer away.
It is recorded that after God created man, man asked God: "God, we are too weak. Please create another hero and let him protect us." God said: "While the hero protects you, he will also oppress you and eat you." Later, in order to resist all kinds of external risks, people created a Leviathan and created a behemoth that can make them feel of belonging-the government, but the government, the Leviathan, has a two-sided character. It is composed of people and operated by people, so it has the qualities of half gods and half beasts in human nature. While protecting people, it also eats people.
So the story is moving towards tragedy as we expected. Ancient Greek tragedy is fatalistic, and it has only one rule, that is, fighting against fate will never succeed. But what Nicholas showed was a tragedy under the system, that is, fighting the system will never succeed.
After Nikolai met his good brother and lawyer and abandoned him, and after his wife died, he found the priest and asked, "Where is your merciful and almighty God?
" "My God is in my heart." As for yours, I don't know. What are you praying for? I have never seen you in church, you have not fasted, you have not taken the sacrament, and you have not confessed. "
If I light a candle and do all this, will everything be different? Maybe it's not too late. Will my wife come back from the dead? What about my house? Or, it's too late.
"I don't know, God is Ethereal. Said the priest.
"You don't know, why should I go to confess?" What do you know? Nicola asked.
"Can you catch Leviathan with a hook? Or a tongue tied with a rope?" Will it ask you for forgiveness? Will it be polite to you? Nothing in this world is equal, it reigns over the arrogant aquarium. "The priest asked back.
"Do you know Job?" Job saw his great-grandson and lived to be 140 years old because he obeyed his destiny. "
Obedience to one's own destiny seems to be the way the world is preached by religion, so under the oppression of tyranny, people are at a loss, and personally appear so insignificant in the face of the huge Leviathan. It shows us a world where the weak and the strong. In this world, power is truth, and country is Leviathan.
So in an era where state power and secular theocratic power are coexisting and corrupting, what power does the people have? No one seems to be able to counter this fate. People seem to be accustomed to accepting adversity. They are like lambs, gentle and cowardly. They will only make weak resistance and make miserable screams before the butcher knife cuts their throats.
It seems to reveal to us such a truth, to be a gentle and tamed person, because all these paths (including suffering) lead to Jesus Christ.
The priest said: "My God is with me. I don't know where your God is."
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