“HOW do you explain this frivolous spending during a recession?” demands one of the characters of our eponymous hero early in Arthur (12A), in a bid to deflect audience resentment at the sight of Russell Brand playing a playboy billionaire who wastes thousands of dollars at every hand’s turn.

A bleak, though beautiful, Arctic landscape is the setting for this deeply thoughtful, largely Russian drama that considers the generation gap, isolation, personal tension, self-examination and the dilemma that comes when one person is less than truthful with another.