I was re-watching an old Soviet post-apocalyptic drama the other day while stuck at home. Well, it seemed to fit the mood of the moment. It’s called “A Visitor to a Museum” or for those of you who can read Cyrillic (in which case you’ve undoubtedly already seen the film a thousand times) “Посетитель музея.”
It has the usual hallmarks of post-apocalyptic imagery. Physical deformities of those directly impacted by the catastrophe, piles of garbage everywhere, darkness, rampant hopelessness – aside from a few who either persevere despite everything, or persist in searching for the proverbial needle in the garbage heap upon which to hang their last pleas for a return to the good old days, when a better tomorrow seems implausible. Of course, being a Russian film, the ending doesn’t go so well for our hero.
Nevertheless, it got me to thinking about our typical conceptions of what an apocalypse looks like. No matter what corner of the Earth you inhabit the imagery is pretty uniform. Everything is dark, dirty, unorganized, angry – in general disrepair coupled with despair. So, it is interesting how as we are facing one of the greatest tragedies in recent memory due to the pandemic, the scenery around us has definitely changed – but not as one would expect as one senses a descent into what very may well be (yet, hopefully not) the beginning of an apocalypse.
Society has seen a declination of populations out and about around the world – either from quarantines or in the worst- case scenarios, death itself. In its wake, the sun still shines brightly. The darkness is within. It is the shower of tears both without and within those who have experienced loss of a loved one. It is the fear of what may be for others who are fighting to avoid an invincible, invisible foe – namely the virus, or perhaps their own despair at enduring isolation, something most are unaccustomed to.
Meanwhile, swans and dolphins have returned to the suddenly clear waters of Venice. Deer are casually roaming the streets of Japan without fear of their former tormentors – namely, us. And while the darkness rages within the worlds we have constructed as well as within our very beings, the world outside our closed windows has returned to its natural origins as in the very beginning of time. I’m an atheist, so for those who hang out in my camp the end is the end and if it comes to that, we’re ok with it. We have no idea if we will simply turn to dust or morph into some sort of ethereal light once we cross the threshold, but just like Malevich’s famous Black Square – anything is possible and that in itself helps us sleep soundly at night. For those who are religious, I can imagine in some respects a sense of a return to the Garden of Eden comes to mind when reading of nature returning to spaces from which we expelled them , wittingly or otherwise– except this time it is more likely than not to flourish without us.
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