Film director Vadim Abdrashitov passed away

On February 12, film director Vadim Abdrashitov passed away. He was 78 years old, and it was hard to believe it, looking at his stately figure. He was in every sense a handsome man, talented, noble, honest. December 15, 2022 was apparently his last public appearance. If you knew…

It was at the closing of the Stalker human rights film festival, whose president Vadim Abdrashitov became after the death of Marlen Khutsiev. All evening Abdrashitov was on stage, handing out awards. One of them, bearing the name of Khutsiev, whom he greatly appreciated, was presented to Pyotr Todorovsky Jr. for the painting “Healthy Man”. The second – for the documentary film “Andrei Sakharov. On the other side of the window” by Dmitry Zavigelsky, calling him sensible and clear in thought, and this is the highest assessment that could be heard from him. He talked about Sakharov’s caliber. Abrashitov himself made just such a movie, in which there is the courage of the author’s position, and he had a human scale to envy.

Abdrashitov’s voice was weak. Shortly before that, Vadim Yusupovich underwent a most complicated operation, but tried not to talk about it. That evening, he quickly left after the ceremony, not staying for a friendly dinner, although he loved and appreciated it so much for the opportunity to communicate with dear people.

He died at home in Moscow. Nearby was his beloved wife – the artist Natella Toidze. They have two children – son Oleg, who followed in his father’s footsteps and graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Technology, daughter Nana is a stage designer. Most recently, at the premiere of “Terminal 3” at the Theater of Nations, where Nana worked as a production designer, Natella Toidze was alone for the first time without her husband. And he did not miss the performances of his daughter. Apparently he couldn’t come.

Vadim Abdrashitov was born on January 19, 1945 in Kharkov in a military family, studied at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, worked at a factory, was the head of a shop at the Moscow plant of electrovacuum devices, despite his youth. Then, when he was 25 years old, he entered VGIK in the workshop of Mikhail Romm. He considered Yuli Raizman, who invited him to Mosfilm, to be his second teacher. In his student years, Abdrashitov shot the short films “Reporting from Asphalt” and “Stop Potapov”, and it is now difficult to imagine that such professional work was done by an aspiring director. Then there were powerful and uncompromising films that accurately witnessed the time, telling about real actions and feelings: “Word for Protection”, “Parade of the Planets”, “Fox Hunting”, “Armavir”, “Turn”, “Servant” (the film was awarded Alfred Bauer at the Berlinale), A Piece for a Passenger (Silver Bear of the Berlin Film Festival), The Train Stopped, Dancer’s Time, Magnetic Storms. The idea for the painting “Plumbum, or the Dangerous Game” arose after an article in “MK” about a vigilante boy. The picture received the gold medal of the President of the Italian Senate at the Venice Film Festival in 1987.

“I shot pictures that I wanted, but I didn’t do those that I didn’t want,” said Vadim Abdrashitov in our interview. Many of them have a difficult fate. They were called anti-Soviet and anti-people. About “Hunting for Foxes” they wrote in the documents, and Abdrashitov himself was fired from Mosfilm for three months because of it. “The train stopped” was put on the “shelf” … for two months. Julius Raizman considered “Parade of the Planets” a creative failure. The painting had to be handed over within nine months. Then they gathered an artistic council, invited “comrades” in the workshop, ”who ruthlessly trampled on the picture, smeared it with special diligence. Already relatively recently, a documentary filmmaker and seemingly decent person wrote a denunciation of Abdrashitov, and then met him in his homeland as if there had been no meanness. Vadim did not flinch, did not remind of the past. I witnessed this fantastic meeting.

The last picture of Abdrashitov “Magnetic Storms” was released in 2003. Years later, we visited Vladikavkaz together after the tragedy in Beslan. Women who experienced grief reacted very violently to this film. Disputes, reproaches began, a misunderstanding arose, implicated in the circumstances of his personal life. Abdrashitov’s films left no one indifferent, they were rightly called the cinema of moral anxiety.

For 25 years, Vadim Abdrashitov worked with screenwriter Alexander Midadze. Together they made 11 paintings. Then Mindadze went into directing. And Vadim Abdrashitov was silent for years, did not shoot for 20 years, although interesting ideas were born, and there was still a lot of strength.

“It seemed to me that I overestimated my time and effort,” Vadim Yusupovich said in our conversation. – I had an intriguing idea that required a lot of money. I was sure that I could find money for it. Wealthy people appeared ready to finance the project. But once it got to the point, it was all over. I can understand them. How can a sane person give 2-3 million for a movie without guarantees of return? There came a time when it became clear that you would not receive any income from the cinema, except for gratitude in the credits or when receiving an award at some festival. I understood that I needed to adjust to a more modest financial option, but this is not such an easy question. What is the average contemporary painting? The one on which the patches are not visible due to lack of money. The question was where to get them.

Both projects that interest me are related to contemporary literature. These are screencaps. The first idea is about the priority of the human life of an individual private person, despite the complex historical and state processes. A story about a man who runs a modest local history museum in the south. Around there are processes of historical scale, and he is trying to preserve the material part of history. This is a short story about stoicism, macrohistory, sometimes destroying real, realistic history. It can be removed. I hope this happens. Mishustin promised some money. But how will the ideological policy be formulated?

A modern picture, even without crazy scenery and costumes, requires a lot of money. They must be obtained. I can’t even understand what’s going on, with me personally. As soon as I come to an agreement with some boss, and I have half of the money, the boss is changed. I can not understand, in the horoscopic sense of the word, what is happening. Just something is planned, and that’s it. I focused on a more modest financial idea, and again no one refused, but time was running out. It runs much faster than we would like.”

How many times did MK offer Abdrashitov to tell in more detail about his plans, then perhaps there would be patrons, as was the case with Marlen Khutsiev after the publication in the newspaper. But Vadim did not want to reveal his cards until there was certainty. Perhaps he was right. It was about “The Capture of Ishmael” by Mikhail Shishkin and the prose of Anton Utkin.

Abdrashitov believed that the main thing in the profession of a director was the ability to listen to the picture. He compared the process of her maturation and birth with the expectation of a child. Parents are waiting for the appearance of a boy, but a girl is born. How to be here? “Educate, cherish,” Abdrashitov answered his own questions. – The same thing should happen with the picture. We must listen to her. And if this does not happen, then everything goes differently: they wanted a boy and we will make a boy out of her. It cripples the picture, and I always see it on the screen. It has its own laws of existence. You shoot an amazing frame, insert it into the picture, and she throws it away. I’m an experienced director and wouldn’t shoot if I wasn’t sure. But the material dictates its own.

Abdrashitov loved what was difficult. That was the only thing he was interested in. He filmed about the complex, but lately he was only thinking. What pain is his prolonged silence. One can only guess what it cost him, how many years of life and health it claimed.