A feat that is always with you – Weekend

A feat that is always with you - Weekend

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The movie “Bullfinch” is released – a production drama about how two guys from a seafarer trained on a fishing seiner. The new film by Boris Khlebnikov, one of today’s most profound and intelligible Russian directors, plunges the viewer into icy water, offers to understand the laws of the storm and fit into the catastrophe.

Text: Xenia Rozhdestvenskaya

Eighteen-year-old rookies Nikita and Maxim go as trainees to the Snegir, a fishing trawler on which cool men trawl fish, poison stories, record idiotic viral videos, try to earn money – in general, they are running from themselves. Gouging Yurets (Timofey Tribuntsev), a goofy cook in a T-shirt with palm trees (Sergey Nasedkin), a bore Grandfather (the last film role of Evgeny Syty), a fighter for all good father Gennady (Alexander Robak), a cunning captain (Anatoly Popov) – they are a team, they they know who to forgive, who to mock. The laws of the male team are clear, unshakable, tested over the years. “Always put on gloves, don’t hit the levers with your ass,” Yurets shares his maritime wisdom, instructing the youth. Young people are not instructed: Max (Oleg Savostyuk, “One Little Night Secret”) is still, okay, diligent, but Nikitos (Makar Khlebnikov, “My Mom’s Penguins”) with his eternal smile is completely alien. Then he faints, then he catches a carrot from the soup – he does not eat it. And then he generally says that he accidentally went to the sailor, not at the call of his heart.

We are squirming here, and he, therefore, is not called.

The initiation of two rookies will go against all the laws of the genre, and what kind of genre is this, in fact? A parenting novel? Yes. Do not touch the levers with your ass. Growing up story? Of course, with one amendment: no one here will grow up while alive. He gets old, he gets stupid, he sobers up, he learns not to take responsibility, he forgets everything, he becomes a hero, he gets drunk – but he does not grow up. Disaster movie? Yes, in many, many ways: catastrophe is what happens to rookies when they get into the world of adults angry with themselves, catastrophe is what happens to a trawler when there is a ten-point storm, disaster is what happens after the real disasters.

It is also a rare quality production drama. Khlebnikov knows how to make a production drama from literally any surah – honest, detailed, funny, tragic. In his films, work is the only place where a person can feel incomplete and final insignificance. Any job: the craziest, as in Crazy Help, the most needed, as in Arrhythmia, the most thankless, as in “Happy Long Life”, the most overwhelming, as in “Free Swimming”. hard labor, as in “Bullfinch”.

The rocking camera of Alisher Khamidkhodzhaev, grandiose scenery, special effects that do not allow the viewer to emerge from the film, accuracy in details, a powerful cast – Boris Khlebnikov shot his best movie, which, over three years of filming and post-production, not only has not fallen behind the times, but has gained momentum, matured, became tougher and more ruthless.

“Bullfinch” is a very free adaptation of Georgy Vladimov’s novel “Three Minutes of Silence”, published at the beginning of the stagnation, in 1969, in the “New World” (critics asked: are they Murmansk fishermen?). The narration was conducted in the first person, the hero, a tired man of twenty-something years old, could neither find himself nor decide on his women, and he was no longer looking for the meaning of life. “How would I know, I thought, when does it come, this day, what suddenly you see – everything is late, life has missed.”

And only in a storm, saving the Norwegian fishermen in distress, the hero forgot that there was no point. But there is life. Only it is arranged in an idiotic way. “And I still won’t find peace anywhere: why are we all strangers to each other, always enemies? For some, this is probably beneficial – but we are all just blind, we don’t see where we are heading. What disasters do we need to come to our senses, to recognize our own! But we are good people, that’s what you need to understand; I would not like to think that we are nothing. And we carry bastards on ourselves, and we obey those who are more stupid than us, like sheep, and we torture each other in vain … “

Khlebnikov with his co-screenwriter Natalia Meshchaninova (“My Mom’s Penguins”, “Heart of the World”, “One Little Night Secret”) completely reassembled Three Minutes of Silence, taking out of this construction not only the narrator, but the hero in general. All the characters that the viewer follows deceive expectations, fall short of heroes or anti-heroes: Nikitos is too infantile and alien, Max is too malleable and inconspicuous. True, the fussy Yurets is charming in his own way – Tribuntsev, playing the fool, plays the eternal buffoon who hopelessly ruins everything, and then he himself climbs to fix it and fix it, and they will forgive him – and again he will turn away at the wrong time, and everything will fly into hell again. It seems that father Gennady, the mentor of youth, takes on the role of the hero, but in fact he does not know how to behave, and in general he is tired. In Khlebnikov’s Storm, Alexander Robak was already looking past the camera, slightly resentful, as if regretting what he was about to do; there is also this view.

Khlebnikov says in interview: “Vladimov had an idea that I liked terribly – about the ability of a Russian person to a feat and inability to ordinary life.” The whole team, in fact, is good for nothing, they are not even able to catch fish properly. And so the viewer does not want to be associated with anyone from this team.

So he has to become a hero himself. He ends up on the “Bullfinch”, a cramped trough with the cave laws of the male brotherhood, with a refrigerator for fish corpses and knives for cutting off fish heads. He watches from his corner the conflict of grandfathers and greenhorns, preferring not to interfere. Laughs at Yurtz’s disgusting jokes. He eats soup with carrots. Listens to “On a small raft”, anticipating a catastrophe. And disaster comes, and with it ecstasy in battle and the gloomy abyss on the edge.

And on this edge of the abyss, a real hero suddenly begins to appear: the men suddenly become a team. One woke up, the other sobered up, the third drags an unbearable load, the fourth gathers all his strength – and here he is – a feat, and now – a heroic salvation, and the salt of the ninth sweat freezes on the etched skin of the back. And then the storm subsides, and again – no heroes, only jesters, criminals and indifferent.

A feat for the Snegir team is just a way to justify themselves, wash off the dirt, at least for a while convince themselves that “we are good people”, despite everything that has happened to them, is happening and will happen. Realizing this, the viewer tries to inhale – and cannot.

At the box office from June 8


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