THE STUDENT: A Dynamic Cautionary Tale About Religious Zealotry

Venya (Pyotr Skvortsov) spends most of his free time at home, in his room, with the door closed. Hardly unusual for a teenage boy. What is unusual is what he’s doing in there. Tearing out all the furniture and the decorations, leaving the room spartan. Trying to heal his classmate Grisha (Aleksandr Gorchin), who has one leg longer than the other. Preaching at his mother (Yuliya Aug) that she is doomed to spend eternity in hell thanks to her divorce from his father.

Nope, Venya is certainly not your average teenage boy.

Unstoppable Force, Meet Immovable Object

Whilst Venya’s at-home proselytising is troubling, it’s when he takes this behaviour to school that matters get out of hand. Angered by all the flesh on show during his swimming lessons, Venya jumps into the pool fully clothed, quoting bible verses. Rather than being punished for his misbehaviour, the school passes a rule stating that girls must wear one-piece swimsuits rather than bikinis (there is no rule change for the boys).

Venya’s religious anger is piqued again in a biology class taught by Elena (Viktoria Isakova). As his protests about her teaching the class how to use condoms by practising on bananas fall on deaf ears, he takes off all his clothes, and gives the class a more… ahem… anatomically accurate demonstration.

Once more, Venya is not punished for such flagrant trouble-making; it is Elena who is the target of the headmistress’s ire for teaching sex education in the first place. Infuriated by this misplaced reprimand, and concerned at the effect that Venya’s one man crusade is having throughout the school, she decides to ‘fight him with his own weapons’ – finding contradictory biblical passages to the hateful ones that he favours.

The battle between the two is ferocious, neither willing to budge an inch. And it’s not long before the battle moves from the realm of the rhetorical into something a lot more dangerous.

Structural Simplicity and Foreboding

The Student has a structure that resembles a fable in its repetitive simplicity. Venya does something he should be reprimanded for (diving into the swimming pool fully clothed, getting naked in his biology class), backs his action up with biblical quotes, and his progressive teacher is blamed. All the while, Venya is becoming more and more worshiped and Elena more and more vilified.

This fable-like narrative progression is one of the things that makes this film feel so consistently ominous; the structure is so ingrained in us that we know something really bad is coming. Despite the surprising amount of humour involved, there’s an ever-present threat hanging over proceedings.

The structural foreboding is only aided by Ilya Demustky‘s sinister score. It’s as much when it is dispensed as the music itself, that make the effect so portentous. There’s an example of this early on in the film, after we’ve watched Elena and her gym-teacher boyfriend (Anton Vasilev) have a low-key discussion about Venya.

Once they have exited the scene, the camera remains in the environment that they have just left; a strange granite ‘beach’ with big stone anchors that people are lying on instead of sand. As the camera dollies along the ‘beach’, where scantily-clad teenagers are having fun, the eerie score kicks in, followed by Venya’s off-screen preaching. It’s unsettling to have a menacing soundtrack accompanying such innocuous images, but it sets the scene nicely for what’s to come.

The Human Face Of An Appalling Law

More than anything, The Student is a damning take on Vladimir Putin‘s ultra-conservative religious regime. It made global headlines in 2014 when he passed the ‘gay-propaganda law’, which forbids any media or public figures from presenting homosexuality as ‘normal’. Putin’s official presidential portrait hangs approvingly from the wall as Venya is giving one of his first religious spiels.

The effects of this appalling law are given a human face in Grisha, a self-described ‘disciple’ of Venya’s. Grisha is a sweet-natured kid, who’s bullied both due to his sexuality and his limp. When Venya takes him under his wing, Grisha is at first just excited to have found a friend. Soon his feelings start developing into something deeper.

It’s obvious to everyone, both the characters on screen and the audience, that Grisha has a big crush on Venya. Obvious to everyone, that is, except Venya himself, who enjoys the constant presence of an adoring acolyte, whilst remaining completely unaware of Grisha’s sexuality. The spectre of what Venya will do when he finds out Grisha’s true feelings looms large over everything.

The Student is full of frank and fiery talk about a host of important social and philosophical issues, but it’s through Grisha that the theoretical becomes real. In a film filled with spiky characters, he is by far the most likeable, and the one we are most invested in. Serebrennikov cannily uses our feelings for Grisha to underline the importance of the larger discussion.

In Conclusion

What The Student’s ultimate message is, is up for debate. Is it a warning that the loudest, most belligerent voices will always win? A rallying call for the necessity of progressive figures? A reminder that religious fanaticism occurs in every religion? A condemnation of Russia’s draconian laws? A tribute to the bravery of those who do speak out? All of the above?

What isn’t up for debate is the film’s vivacity. This is a lively piece that grips from beginning to end. It’s full of intensity, thoughtful discussion, righteous anger (on both sides), and interesting, dynamic characters.

It would have been easy for a film which such a weighty premise to be drowned by self importance, but Kirill Serebrennikov uses his deft direction and a sly sense of humour to easily keep it afloat. A must watch.

Have you seen any other films that confront similar issues?

The Student is out now in the UK, with a limited release forthcoming on the 28th of April in the US.