A fairy tale for the strange – Newspaper Kommersant No. 31 (7476) of 02/18/2023

A film by Roman Mikhailov was released. This is the second premiere in half a year of the most unexpected domestic debutant. Just in October, the film “A Tale for the Old” was released, which he shot in collaboration with actor Fyodor Lavrov and won the prestigious international festival in Khanty-Mansiysk “Spirit of Fire”. Without waiting for the director to shoot his third phantasmagoria in India, Mikhail Trofimenkov came to the conclusion that the 2022/23 film season can definitely be called “Mikhailov’s season”.

Snow on the screen is really neck-deep. Elena’s sister (Ekaterina Starateleva) committed suicide a long time ago and only invisibly participates in the action. As, however, is the wolverine, who was frightened by her granddaughter Kolya (Fedor Lavrov) in her childhood from time immemorial.

Years later, Elena, following in the footsteps of her father, who was repressed in the Andropov years, will become a sectarian preacher. And Kolya is an undercover cop who catches drug dealers, but is by no means alien to psychedelic flights in gypsy huts. However, today – a huckster, tomorrow – sectarians classified as extremists – what’s the difference.

It makes one want to melodramatically exclaim: it was here that they, a potential victim and a potential punisher, met. And here it is not. The whole film they will – thanks to the mistake of the telephone operator – only talk on mobile phones and sincerely love each other from a distance. And, what is most surprising, you believe unconditionally in this distant love of a brutal drug addict body hunter and a charming soul hunter.

“A Tale for the Old Ones” was supposedly a gangster ballad. Snow, Sister and Wolverine is supposedly a social melodrama. But when it comes to Mikhailov’s cinematography, any genre definitions go downhill. For two films, he built his own cinematic universe.

The universe, stuffy and free at the same time. Fairy tale – only the lazy did not speak about the archetypes of a fairy tale in A Tale for the Old – and naturalistic. On the face of a terrible, how terrible at first glance are the standard shaved brothers and cops, but surprisingly tender.

It’s no joke: in the world of dens, “graters”, magic tunnels and sects, to which the definition of “totalitarian” clings out of habit, no one kills anyone in two films. Mikhailov’s world is a world without violent death. And if someone somewhere was once killed, then he will come to life in another place and at another time. Hell yeah, he doesn’t seem to have any bad people in the movies at all. There are evil ones, there are dangerous ones, but not bad ones.

Where did he even come from, this director, what a miracle of nature? Former member of the evangelical Pentecostal community. A man well acquainted with the crime of the past. Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor of the Academy of Sciences, specialist in homological and homotopy algebra, whatever that means.

Esoteric prose writer and playwright. A wizard capable of making a film these days for – on average – one and a half million rubles. Yes, in such a way that one of the best Russian actors Yevgeny Tkachuk with his smart horses, and Oleg Garkusha from Auktyon played with enthusiasm, as in the “Fairy Tale”. In “Snow”, by the way, both the goats and the pigeons, with the help of which the hucksters transport narcotic “heat” to the zones, play as obediently and talentedly as Tkachuk’s trained horses.

From an author with such a history, you expect either fierce graphomania or spectacular quackery. He’s about to pull a marked scenario card out of his sleeve. It is not for nothing that Mikhailov’s talents also include the ability to shuffle cards, which he demonstrated with apparent pleasure in “The Tale”, where he played one of the fabulous bandos.

In addition, Mikhailov admits that he not only did not understand what kind of garbage this movie was, but also sincerely despised it. Until, suddenly changing his mind, he himself stood behind the camera. Yes, he stood up like that, as if he had finished a couple of VGIKs, having mastered the accuracy of dialogues, the science of creating an on-screen atmosphere, and the skill of close-ups.

Mikhailov works very strangely and bewitchingly with the space of his films. In both The Fairy Tale and The Snow, he first unfolds it as rusty rather than carpeted. It places the heroes in a semi-realistic, semi-dream setting, from where it pushes them into the endless Russian space. And in both films it seems that there is no way out of this space – whether urban or rural – and cannot be. And in both films, this space suddenly folds comfortably into one point, gives the characters a chance to meet, and the audience to believe that after the bitter cold, a “good spring” will come, for which the brothers drank at the end of “Tales”.