Choice of “MK”: which book to watch, which film to read for the New Year

weekend” due to the New Year and Christmas, turn off the TV. Moreover, in the 21st century, for many it is just a widescreen video player. And some film adaptations of literary works turn out to be almost more interesting than the books, or at least equal to them, and much less often the book version deserves more attention than the screen version.

Our correspondent sorted out all the options, selecting five Soviet and five Western films.

MADE IN USSR

“Heart of a Dog”, 1988, directed by Vladimir Bortko. (We watch, then we read);

An exemplary two-part film adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s story about a surgical experiment, as a result of which a stray dog ​​became a man. The sharp satire of the Soviet system delayed the film adaptation for decades, but at the height of “Perestroika” it turned out to be very appropriate.

Watching a movie 100% replaces a book if you are not in the mood to read. But the best option would be to watch it first, that is, visualize the plot in your head, and then read it to enjoy Bulgakov’s text and only it.

“War and Peace”, 1967, directed by Sergei Bondarchuk. (You can only look);

Leo Tolstoy’s four-volume epic is very difficult to overcome even for a reading enthusiast. Firstly, the difficulties are created by the lengthy inserts in French, and secondly, the disproportion in the volume of text and the number of dynamic events per page. Bondarchuk essentially gives everything that is in the book, including stylistically perfect monologues and descriptions read in voiceover, but “stereoscopically.” At the same time, in a film drama of 4 episodes, you need a weekend or a day to review everything – but the long weekend will not be in vain for you, the aesthetic aftertaste of what you see will make you proud of yourself, because it is an ideal picture.

“Running”, 1970, directors Alexander Alov and Vladimir Naumov. (You can only look);

The scale, meticulousness in detail characteristic of the director’s tandem, and the duration – 196 minutes, allow us to speak of the film as the equivalent of Bulgakov’s selected works about the Civil War in Russia, on which the film is based. The play “Running” will definitely not become the lot of the mass reader, the novel “The White Guard” is voluminous and complex, the third primary source is actually an opera libretto. But the film adaptation creates a panoramic picture of the inevitability of defeat and the tragedy of the exodus of the White Army from the dying Russian Empire.

“Ivan Vasilyevich changes his profession”, 1973, director Leonid Gaidai. (Turn off the TV and sit in a chair with a book);

The comedy beloved by millions is an immortal masterpiece, that’s for sure. At the same time, not everyone knows that it was based on Bulgakov’s play of 1934-1936 – that is, that era when Moscow had not yet been built up with blocks of new nine-story buildings, Muscovites had not heard of tape recorders and foreign cameras, and an elevator, telephone or police uniform looked completely different. -different, not like under Brezhnev. The great Soviet comedian Leonid Gaidai ignored this circumstance and simply shifted the time of the story.

It is not easy to read a play from a sheet of paper – but we advise you to make an exception for Mikhail Afanasyevich, if only because what is funny in his “Ivan Vasilyevich” is not at all what Gaidai calls for laughing at. And since everyone knows the film literally frame by frame, it will be very interesting to compare the director’s cut and the original.

“It can’t be!”, 1975, Leonid Gaidai. (Turn off the TV and sit in a chair with a book);

A galaxy of wonderful actors, first-class “scenery”, costumes and reconstructed settings of bourgeois life in the first third of the last century, high-quality additions to it, the popular song “It’s not beer that kills people” performed by Vyacheslav Nevinny – it would seem that everything speaks in favor of the film. But Mikhail Zoshchenko “in the original” will turn out to be funnier than the film world of Gaidai. And, moreover, more concisely. Reading the story will take from two to five minutes, although the film novel corresponding to it in plot lasts as much as twenty.

Why this is so can be explained by the example of a story with a groom who did not recognize his chosen one at the wedding, because he saw her a couple of times, and then on the street in a coat.

Mikhail Mikhailovich has a story “Wedding Incident” (all the same – on several pages) and a more voluminous play “Wedding”. Leonid Gaidai “translated” the play onto film, and we will advise you to take any volume of stories by the classic of Soviet humor, signed on the spine “Favorites” or the collection “Blue Book”. Where there will be a wedding, and a story about a nepman (entrepreneur of the 30s), who was called to the investigator, and during his absence his wife managed to sell her things and find a new husband – in general, dozens of other hilariously funny incidents and adventures.

TOOK FROM THEM

“Forrest Gump”, USA, 1994, directed by Robert Zemeckis. (We watch, then we read);

Even if you’ve seen the Oscar-winning story of the Alabama woodsman several times, it’s worth returning to it in that order – rewatch it to refresh your memory, and then open Winston Groom’s novel of the same name. You will be very surprised at how significantly they differ.

Let’s say that the book Gump is no stranger to “sex, drugs and rock and roll,” although in the film version he is a clean child to whom no dirt sticks. Zemeckis and Groom are two geniuses of American culture, whose genius is known through comparison.

Gone with the Wind, USA, 1939, directed by Victor Fleming. (We watch, then we read);

The most ambitious film epic in the history of American cinema, which (due to its scope) evokes associations with Bondarchuk’s masterpiece from the Soviet selection (see above). True, it was created by Fleming 28 years earlier, but the difference is partly offset by the fact that in the States color film began to be used in film production much earlier, the sound technology was better, and so on. At the same time, the main convergence is the appeal to the themes of the 19th century: in our country, the Patriotic War of 1812 became a grandiose event, on the other side of the ocean – the civil war of the North and South (1861-1865). Both in Tolstoy and in Margaret Mitchell’s novel of the same name, history is given not in itself, but as a force acting on human destinies, preventing the heroes from loving and building their happiness.

“Gone with the Wind” is two thick volumes, and it is impossible to overcome them without effort: you will have to constantly keep dozens of characters, places and incidents in your mind. But with the help of a film, this entire array can be easily “downloaded” into your head and thus make your journey through paper pages easier. But expect unexpected moments: the book and the film are again very different, so you will get pleasure not from two identical ice creams, but from one in a cup and one popsicle.

“Animal Farm” (“Animal Farm”), UK, 1955, cartoon, directed by Joy Batchelor, John Halas. (You can only look);

An animated film about animals who drove away their human tormentor and decided to build socialism in a single farm is, of course, a purely anti-Soviet product. But the mid-20th century version fully reflects (almost to the letter) Orwell’s story “Animal Farm” – just like an audiobook does, but in moving pictures. In our country, there used to be a genre of “cartoons for adults,” but this is animation addressed simultaneously to children of middle and high school age + an adult audience, and the main quality of the texts of the world-famous Briton remains their metaphorical and allegorical nature, which is close to the Russian reader, brought up on Krylov’s fables and tales about animals.

“Awakening”, USA, director Penny Marshall 1990. (You can only watch);

– A dramatic film about patients suffering from akinetic mutism in a psychiatric clinic, awakened by the middle-aged Dr. Sayer from the sleep of mind and body with the help of an experimental drug. Robin Williams (Sayer) and Robert De Niro (Leonard Lowe) give such brilliant performances, and Marshall has created such an authentic film world that it overshadows the memoirs of psychiatrist Oliver Sacks and the play by Harold Pinter based on them. Considering that it is very difficult to find these works in paper form in Russia, it would be more advisable to focus on the film – or try to download the works in electronic format.

“1984”, Britain, 1984, directed by Michael Radford – (Turn off the TV, sit in a chair with a book);

The film adaptation, made by George Orwell’s compatriot, cannot be saved even by such movie stars as John Hurt (Alien, Contact) and Albion film veteran Richard Burton. The book is better – that says it all, and this explains the lack of other notable attempts to make a film based on the exemplary dystopia. If you spend the coming week not only on champagne and Olivier, but also on the novel “1984” (if you haven’t read it) – this will be the best thing you can do with your precious free time. The immortal text created by Orwell can be considered an ideal “vaccination” against Stalinism, although the Western world is moving precisely towards that form of totalitarianism that the writer was so afraid to see not somewhere in “Red Russia”, but in his homeland.