Question: There are different categories of cinema. Arthouse is experimental cinema. There are more serious films, there is Hollywood, and everyone positions themselves as something important. I used to be fascinated by arthouse. But now I cannot even watch these films because essentially they are flat experiences, like you said about Dostoevsky, that a man killed an old woman and writes about it. In fact, there is no benefit in this at all. What does it actually give a person?

Answer: The problem is that there is no clear benchmark that a person can measure themselves against.

For example, Dostoevsky has wonderful statements about love on one hand, and on the other hand, such hatred. He does not know how to position himself.

That is, people lack an absolute reference point, a standard. And that makes it very difficult.

And that art that you are talking about, various experimental films and whatever else, is all endless chatter because there is no clear basis in human nature, nothing from which to measure ourselves.

As a result, all of this is doomed to neglect by the person who begins to rise above the level of animal existence. These are intelligent, searching people, but they are confused. Everything is fine except for one thing: there is nothing against which to measure themselves, no absolute point.

Therefore they cannot create any image that will remain for eternity, despite what has been written. After all, if it is a depiction of a person’s inner world without the correct measurement in relation to the Creator, it gives nothing. So it all remains the same—he killed an old woman and nothing more.

That is why art is dying, that is why people begin to neglect all the great works that humanity has created over the millennia. Only a few naïve intellectuals remain who value this.

Everything will die out, except perhaps music, because in a musical piece each person can somehow express themselves. But literature or painting, or something else…

Painting still has some kind of future because there is a false convention about its value, since there is nowhere else to put capital. Rembrandt, let us say, is worth a million dollars, Rubens—five hundred thousand, another one—such and such, and so on. Their paintings will remain as currency. This is how painting will be valued, and nothing more.

And why are diamonds valued? The fact is that in the world there are many diamond deposits that are prohibited from being mined, otherwise their price would collapse, and then people would be left with nothing. But this way, let us say, I have a little stone in my safe, worth, say, 30 or 100 million. But if you suddenly throw a couple of kilos of diamonds onto the market, the price of my stone will automatically fall tenfold. I will not let you do that! So the value of all these things is relative.

But classical music will remain because it conveys all human feelings, and in it one can express absolutely anything. Its harmony corresponds to the structure of the soul. Painting will remain because it is like securities. And literature will not remain at all.

Question: Then what use is literature at all? The classics, Tolstoy, Pushkin?

Answer: Who will read that?! I am sure that even now it is no longer read. Does the younger generation read these books?! No.

Perhaps there are abridged versions of the classics, where all of Tolstoy is presented in fifty pages. Well, who today will sit down and read War and Peace? Who has time for that? Can it replace today’s Internet with all its possibilities for a young person? It is a completely different world! And young people cannot be blamed for that.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Arthouse, Hollywood, Dostoevsky, Diamonds and Mushrooms”” 9/8/10

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