Autocracy, Orthodoxy, smartphone – Weekend – Kommersant
[ad_1]
On “Kinopoisk” began showing the detective series “Fandorin. Azazel.” In this new interpretation of the first novel in the Akunin cycle about the detective Erast Fandorin, the action is transferred to an alternative universe where Russia is still ruled by the Romanovs.
2023, Russia, in Petrograd on the throne, the ruler, if not crafty, then definitely weak – Nicholas III Romanov (Maxim Matveev) – seriously cosplays his namesake-great-grandfather, who managed to cope with the February revolution more than a hundred years ago and did not sign papers on renunciation. By and large, there are only three consequences of this historical assumption on the screen: firstly, despite the high-altitude regulations of 1844, the entire Petrograd Side was built up with ridiculous skyscrapers in the 20th century, and secondly, Russian employees are forced to wear hot woolen tunics with buttons down their throats even in summer , and thirdly, paper newspapers have not gone away: boys are offering them screaming on the streets (as in a nostalgic movie about a bygone era). Otherwise, everything is the same as ours: smartphones have social networks, student youth live in egg-pods in settlements, and robots drive along the streets of the capital (only not couriers, but policemen). Well, the Third Department, of course, looks after everyone.
In this Petrograd, the events of the first book of the Fandorin cycle by B. Akunin “Azazel” are repeated as in a dream. Shots are fired in the garden (this time in the Summer Garden), a deadly exalted young suicidal man falls, and a young police interrogator Erast Petrovich takes on a deceptively simple case, who is already poked in the ribs by the end of the first series with a knife, whispering menacingly before: “ Azazel!” Everything goes according to the knurled – perhaps, with the only difference that now the main character can not mince with questions about Azazel to the library, but rather simply formulate them in the search bar.
The idea of deploying a new version of Fandorin’s adventures in an alternative Russia-2023 with the tsar-father on the throne in the form of an annotation seems quite witty. With such an idea, it was possible to do a lot of things, arranging a repeated journey through an obscenely familiar plot with at least a curious setting. What would Russia be like if not for the fateful 1917? From such a fantasy, any monarchist will tremble. However, the authors did not come up with anything more outrageous than a descendant of Lenin, who turned into an actionist artist, and old-fashioned skyscrapers painted on the site of the delightful St. Petersburg Cathedral Mosque, built precisely under Nicholas II. By the way, this mosque was built only after the revolution of 1905, which presented Russia with a manifesto on civil rights and a manifesto of religious freedom. So – who knows, maybe the Romanovs also coped with the revolution of 1905?
There are many questions to the alternative reality, rickety presented on the screen – it is very archaic, awkward and curvy. Something similar to those uniforms and liveries of the latest model, in which statesmen of the highest rank pose for Easter in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Does the viewer need such high-concepts when it is enough to turn on the TV on bright holidays? After the first episodes of the new “Azazel” there is an acute urge to revise the old one, staged 20 years ago by Alexander Adabashyan and criticized for the static frame and sluggish rhythm. Yes, slowly. But there, at least, everything was in order with the details, and the screenwriter (Akunin himself) did not look for reasons to “revive” the action with side plots with rehashes of Matilda (in the emperor’s sighs, the dead breath of postmodernity is heard from the polka singer). The plot innovations of the fresh “Azazel” are sometimes truly curious: it is not clear, for example, why settle the new Fandorin in Petrograd, if according to Akunin, an important detail of the story was that the main character serves as a clerk in provincial Moscow, where, in the end, the metropolitan official of the Third departments with special powers. Apparently, incorrigible stereotypes of thinking made the producers see in St. Petersburg (even with the emperor in the Winter Palace, painted, by the way, for some reason not with historical ocher, but with modern azure) that provinciality that they feel when they go out to the platform of the Moscow railway station from Sapsan.
Judging by the title with the name Fandorin in front, the authors of the new film adaptation are planning a big franchise, if not the whole Fandorin “universe”. And “Azazel” will be followed by, scary to say, “Turkish Gambit”, “State Councilor”, and then someday “Coronation”. We will not prophesy that such a plan will obviously put the screenwriters in front of much more serious challenges than the conspiracy pranks of Akunin’s first novel. But I would like to at least hope that by the new seasons the authors will be able to build muscle on the skeleton of their amusing, but not yet adequately implemented concept of Russia in an alternative 21st century – with a smartphone in hand and autocracy in the heart.
Watch: “Kinopoisk”
Subscribe to Weekend channel in Telegram
[ad_2]
Source link
