What the three explore is 'no man is an Island', even if he selects to be one, or even against his will he is imprisoned on one. The power in all these stories lies in the individual characters and their expression of their situation. In The Island, Pavel Lungin has complicated his tale by making a saint, who is a sinner, also a trickster, or as the other monks call him, a prankster. On top of that, he is a clairvoyant, gifted with foresight or prescience, a healer and a miracle worker. He helps those who have been failed by Russia's modern doctors.
It is set in the far north of Russia in the White Sea, near a naval base that lies next to a few small islands linked by wooden walkways over shallow water. On this island, there is an old Russian Orthodox church and a monastery. The prologue at the start of the film is set in 1942. On a small ship, a seaman and his captain wait. The seaman tends the ship's furnaces in the boiler room. Then a Nazi naval vessel arrives, seeking the captain. The seaman, Anatoly (acted in 1942 by Timofei Tribuntzev), at first refuses to help, but when beaten and threatened reveals the captain's hiding place. The Germans then offer Anatoly his life if he will execute his captain, Tikhon Petrovich (played in 1942 by Aleksei Zelenski). Shot, he falls into the sea and vanishes. Their ship explodes. Anatoly is washed up on an island. He has survived. His captain has died, by his hand.
