Circassian Express – Weekend – Kommersant
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The release of Express is the long-awaited debut of Ruslan Bratov, who is known to critics, film fans and sympathizers for his short film Lalai-Balalai about the surrealism of post-Soviet everyday life, which won at the Window to Europe festival. The feature-length “Express” is a rare domestic film that brings not only tears of recognition, but also hope for change.
In Cherkessk, where we are met by a chronicle of painful events typical of a remote Russian province – Rasteryaeva Street, a lamp under the eye and a burning pharmacy – local youth dream of a different life and are generally quite creative. Thus, the protagonist with the dissonant but exhaustive call sign Sos (Lev Zulkarnaev) makes bets not on higher education, but on the Premier League – in the regional bookmaker’s office, which, by the way, with its ambiance resembles Van Gogh’s paintings “Prison Yard” and ” Potato Eaters” at the same time. That is, a warm, pleasant twilight – there is nothing special to admire, free cooled coffee from a bag, savory smoking – in a bevel. And waiting, endless waiting for a miracle. What if Spartak loses to Tambov?
An average of a thousand rubles is at stake – so much is given to beginners so that they are drawn into the haze of (un)happy accidents. For this modest amount, a unique opportunity to lose fate is provided. However, Sosa does not have a thousand, never had, and probably never will. In Moscow, they are sitting on the pipe, and the rest of Russia is still in dire need of money.
Having met a certain Oleg (Pavel Vorozhtsov) at the sewer hatch – together they had just saved a hedgehog from the oblivion of sewage – Sos persuades a new friend, who has the privilege of a debutant, to write out an “express” (a bet of eight sporting events) in his name. And now an adventurous plot is spinning, of course, doomed to a zigzag of failure in advance.
Similar stories in Russian auteur cinema have usually been inherited by Alexei Balabanov for a decade already – thoughtless exploitation of a gloomy texture, a set of catchy jokes, violence elevated to a cult – the truth seems to be there, but the exit is not marked, and no one is interested in saving those drowning in haze. . They’ve drowned anyway.
An alternative artistic path was invented a few years ago just not far from Cherkessk, in Nalchik, by the graduates of Sokurov’s workshop Balagov, Kovalenko, Bitokov: they don’t seek good out of spiritual tightness – they just run without looking back.
Ruslan Bratov, with the curse of the “Brothers”, if he arranges a reshuffle, then only in order to take this aesthetic out of the game. The hysterical protest and pictorial metaphors of the Sokurovites are not close to him either. His “Express” is assembled not on a white, but on a living thread of glimpses of reality, now especially fragile matter. The author seems to be probing, tapping, applying either a stethoscope or an ear to the body of a patient who has fallen ill with various “isms”. If most of his fellow directors habitually meet a hateful macabra with a cynical grin, then Bratov’s romanticization of hopelessness is opposed by a not at all timid guess: what if, in the territory called the Russian Federation, life has as many chances to play as death. In the end, man is not always a hedgehog to man, and it is enough just to say Sos, in Russian – “help.”
Russia Day is not always Groundhog Day, it’s good that, according to the laws of nature, it will come after the longest night anyway. Both in the first shots and in the final shots, the characters peer into the black hole of the sewer. Who are they looking at – the abyss? Or on us? What if it’s the same thing? I would like the answer to the eternal question to depend not only on the will of chance, in kindness not yet noticed. Beholder, remember: beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
In theaters from September 22
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