In another cinematic attack on the Russian Orthodox church, following 2014’s magisterial Leviathan, The Student’s scripture-spouting teenager Venya (Pyotr Skvortsov) launches a one-man protest against decadent modern education. He refuses to strip off for swimming practice, but getting naked to disrupt sinful contraception classes is fine, apparently.
Director Kirill Serebrennikov, adapting Marius von Mayenburg’s 2012 play for his eighth feature, wrings significant humour out of the Messiah/naughty boy dichotomy, particularly in Venya’s mother’s exasperated responses to her issue’s latest decree. Propelled by restless long takes and Skvortsov’s imposing presence (he shares the lofty pugnaciousness of Michael Shannon, whom he physically resembles), The Student finds a higher satirical calling. The toadying responses of the local priest and school principals to the preacher in their midst needle the Orthodox church’s obscurantist influence over Russian public life.
Serebrennikov comes close himself to falling under Venya’s spell, with one indelicate lift from Lars von Trier’s Rammstein sequence in Nymphomaniac hinting he’s not quite sure where to stand on his motormouthed preacher. But if The Student lacks the searing moral exactness of the Russian literature on which it draws, it’s an often hypnotic warning against dogma’s eternal allure.
