Cinema from the End of Time: Malmkrog by Cristi Puiu and Vladimir Solovyov

Abstract

Arguably Cristi Puiu’s most intricate film so far, Malmkrog (2020) comprises nearly three and a half hours of intense discussions about some of the most pertinent questions of our times since the Industrial Revolution – about the ethics of war and progress, the inevitable end of history, and the elusive nature of Good and Evil – posited by the Russian religious philosopher Vladimir S. Solovyov in his seminal book War, Progress, and the End of History (subtitled Three Conversations Including a Short Story of the Anti-Christ) and published in 1899. The article looks at the screen rendition of Solovyov’s three dominant discourses – statist-militarist, bourgeois-liberal, and religious-philosophical – through the grid of katechon (or “that which restrains”) in its Biblical, and above all, in its political philosophic meaning (following Carl Schmitt, Georgio Agamben and Sergei Prozorov). Furthermore, by introducing the concept of intermedial katechon, the article argues that while Puiu’s audio-visual rendition remains congenially faithful to the original, it transcends its allusions to the tragic 20th century, and illuminates our murky times of ubiquitous (bio-)political, social, intellectual, and above all ethical angst.

Keywords

• katechon
• anti-christ
• anomie
• tolstoy and tolstoyanism
• bare life