Elena (2011)
First off, I have to say it's a little annoying that I now think about what I'll write about the movie while watching it. And that I'll write about thinking about writing about it. And write about thinking ... and so on. Of course you can only think through finitely many levels of meta during the finite time that it takes to watch a movie.
(I thought about that, too.)
Anyway, this movie is very slow. Like incredibly slow. The first half an hour or so is basically just slice of life with no discernible plot. It also opens on like a 1 minute long still shot of a tree, as if to make a point. But it has a plot in the end, and yeah less is more; you don't need to have that complicated of a story as long it feels real, and feeling real it does.
I usually have no clue what a movie is about going in. It was some recommendation connected to YMS, but by the time it finishes downloading, I don't remember what it was at all. Though in this case, at some point it reminded me of Leviathan, and then I realized that it's got to be from the same director. Still haven't confirmed but there's no way it's not. The way the music is used alone is so distinctive. It's this really loud, intense music that's only used sparingly, and it's basically the same every time.
You could summarize both as kind of like an incredibly sober(ing) depiction of what humans do to each other. Both movies do a phenomenal job in depicting real-feeling humans. Although Leviathan was more specifically about Russian Culture. I definitely enjoyed the second half, and I did watch it in one sitting, so despite being incredibly slow it wasn't that boring. Probably 7/10? A bit weaker than Leviathan.