Film “Take and Remember” by Baybulat Batullin. Review

The film “Take and Remember” by Baybulat Batullin was released, which received the main prize in the competition for feature-length debuts at the “In Short” festival this year. This touching dramedy, according to Yulia Shagelman, represents a rare example on Russian screens of a truly successful movie for the whole family.

Six-year-old Ilham (Yunus Tairov) spends the summer in the village with his grandfather Rasim (the director’s father, Tatar playwright Rabit Batulla) and grandmother Sufiya (Rosa Khairullina). Soon his parents, who have returned from vacation, should come to pick him up, and in the fall he will go to first grade. But on the appointed day, for some reason, mom and dad don’t show up, their phones don’t answer, but the old people receive a call, after which they ask each other the same question: “How to tell Ilham?” None of them have an answer to it, only grandfather takes out a hidden bottle, and grandmother quietly cries. Every day she puts new delicacies on the table, Rasim shows his grandson how to make a pipe from a green onion stalk, but the boy cannot be won over by such simple distracting maneuvers – he continues to ask when his parents will arrive.

Then the grandfather comes up with a new plan – he invites Ilham to play the game “Take and Remember.” To do this, you need to break a V-shaped chicken bone (in Tatar “yadesh”), and from this moment one participant can take something from the hands of another only by saying “I remember.” The first one to forget loses and must fulfill his opponent’s wish. While Sufiya looks on with disapproval, reminding her husband again and again that they need to talk to the child, he clearly gives in, and thus Ilham wins a whole refrigerator of ice cream, a tub of soda and an impromptu disco. Then sincere excitement awakens in Rasim, and gradually Sufiya and the rest of the village are drawn into the game – neighbors, the local police officer (Siren Bayramov), even the head of the settlement (Almaz Khamzin), betting on their most cherished dreams. But the echo of that terrible call does not disappear anywhere, the question “How to tell Ilham?” hangs in the air, and on the threshold appear either police from the city, or a specialist who must take a DNA sample from the boy, or a strict guardianship officer.

The action of the film takes place simultaneously in the fairy-tale world of childhood, when any simple object suddenly acquires magical properties, and, if you want, you can easily become a superhero, turn your grandmother into a robot or Catwoman, and your grandfather into an invisible man, and into another, adult, where no game allows you to completely forget about the misfortune that happened, everyday problems and the burden of the past years. However, old people, especially Rasim, in many ways behave exactly like children: having grown up in a traditional culture, where it is not customary to talk about feelings and show them openly, they try to hide, close their eyes, as if this way all the bad things will disappear by themselves. For Sufiya, whose role in the family has long been reduced to silent cooking, cleaning and patient acceptance of her husband’s quiet drunkenness, his infantile reaction to the misfortune with Ilham’s parents becomes the last straw. For him, the sudden understanding that his wife has been unhappy with him for many years opens his eyes and pushes him to deviate from his usual rut.

“Take and Remember” talks about serious things: grief, acceptance of grief, a crisis in relationships, which in old age may be even more difficult to survive than in youth. But this is a very funny film, and the humor here is not forced, but naturally grows out of familiar everyday, sometimes completely sad situations. Beybulat Batullin and his script co-authors Tagir Mingazov and Daria Besedina easily walk the line between comedy and drama, maintaining balance and not overexerting either side of the equation. Sometimes the creators introduce folklore and fairy-tale elements, which they also use with great taste, without slipping into condescending urban affection for how these “ordinary people” live, who have only one computer with the Internet in the entire village.

The overall impression of life naturally flowing on the screen is contributed by the scenery of the Tatar village, which is unusual for the Russian cinema mainstream, and by the fact that almost all the roles in the film are played by non-professional actors. Initially, the film was shot in the Tatar language, but it is released in Russian dubbing, which can be explained by commercial considerations, but it’s still a bit of a pity, although neither the jokes nor the sincerity of the intonation, fortunately, were harmed in the translation. After all, in the end, “Take and Remember” speaks to the audience about universal things that are equally understandable in any geographical location and at any age.