Gordon and Baranovskaya sang the horrors of family life

So, so, so. No, people are multifaceted, and television, this distorting mirror of our life, reflects it in full, every facet.

So, first of all, the people sing. Yes, and we’ll also eat from the heart. Through all channels, with and without Malakhov, parodying and from myself, from the bottom of my heart. And the heart is not a stone.

And now “Male/Female”, the highest rating that can be. Because they show us ourselves without embellishment. And we love this.

It is hosted by Alexander Gordon and the ex-wife of Russian football star Andrei Arshavin (“Your expectations are your problems”) Yulia Baranovskaya.

What are we talking about? About the people, the God-bearer, the bond-bearer, who rose from their knees. Here in the studio is a 25-year-old mother. She has five children, small and small. They want to take them away (by law), because the mother, in general, has no time for them. Children from different husbands. The latter, of course, is currently in prison. Where else? While he is sitting there, his faithful wife has found a replacement for him, and now she has a new boyfriend. So what do children have to do with it?

It’s as if these wonderful children (orphans, in fact) are being sold at auction to good hands: whoever can take them. In fact, this is still the most innocent, ordinary topic of the program. Light, not hardcore at all. How scary it is to live.

What to say? We are brave people, we do not hide anything from anyone, first of all, from ourselves. This is where real glasnost is, this is where freedom of speech is. In the USSR, TV carefully hid such incidents from our lives, showing exclusively advanced leaders of communist labor, excellent students in combat and political training. That’s why, when the Soviet people learned the whole truth about themselves during perestroika, they simply went nuts and threw their unfortunate country out of harm’s way.

This means we will tell the truth and only the truth, heal with the truth, play at the truth. I remember how Sergei Dorenko, of blessed memory, started a column on high spirituality on his radio: this one killed his neighbor out of nothing to do, out of drunkenness; the wife stabbed her husband to death… We will remain silent here about isolated but frequent cases of brutal sadism, despite the whole truth of life.

The people are ready for debauchery, as Shukshin said, loving these people immensely. The people in all their glory, and not just ours, it’s the same everywhere. Just remember “Leviathan” by Andrei Zvyagintsev, where all the “horrors of our town” are taken from American life.

But everyone watches it with pleasure. Because they want to see their own kind, but to know that they have it even worse, oh, how it elevates them in their own eyes!

They watch out of sympathy; after all, no one has yet canceled the worldwide responsiveness of the Russian people.

Well, just to have some stupid fun. Yes, in the entertainment category, the main prize goes to the people. We love to laugh at ourselves. Is it laughter through tears or a horse neighing at its own kind? God knows. You still can’t understand Russia with your mind.

PREDICTION

On OTR “Prediction” by Eldar Ryazanov. 1993 release. In this film, Ryazanov predicted a lot, and our life today too.

Outstanding master. No, he had failures too, but compared to his masterpieces they simply didn’t count. Ryazanov experimented, did not stand still, did not look for easy ways. Once he caught his blue bird, happily achieving incredible success, he suddenly left his own standard into the unknown. That’s why after “Carnival Night” there was almost an operetta in verse “The Hussar Ballad”; after the lyrical comedy about great and pure love “Office Romance”, the highly social, unthinkable for the USSR “Garage”; and after “The Poor Hussar”, “Cruel Romance” is not at all Ryazanov’s. And everything worked out for him.

But by the end of the Soviet Union, Ryazanov had a breakdown. “Dear Elena Sergeevna” is pure journalism, late right at the moment of its release on the screen. Because even then there was “Little Vera” and the terrible truth from Juris Podnieks “Is it easy to be young?” “Promised Heaven” was his last film under Soviet rule, very uneven, but accurately showing and feeling the atmosphere of the barricades of 1991.

And here is “Prediction”. Ryazanov made this movie based on his own story. Yes, not only “Nature has no bad weather,” he is also a writer.

Tragic fantasy, completely new, so uncharacteristic of Ryazanov. But there really is something mystical in his prediction.

He anticipated the 93rd, all these events at the White House. The very atmosphere in the film is terrible, disgusting, the sky falls to the ground, the air thickens so that you can’t breathe – a premonition of civil war, and invisibly Yeltsin-Rutskoy, dance with sabers.

…Ryazanov also predicted a very personal, unbearable thing: the death of his beautiful love Nina Skuibina… And a new marriage with Emma Valerianovna… There, in the film, Basilashvili’s hero’s wife dies in a car accident… Then he meets another woman, played by the French woman Irene Jacob.

And another prediction. The reincarnation of Basilashvili in his youth (Andrei Sokolov) leaves the country urgently, practically runs. He has a ticket to Israel, to Tel Aviv. Here he speaks about Russia before his death: “This country has no future. Run. This is not emigration, this is evacuation.” The main character takes his ticket (they have the same first and last name), goes to Sheremetyevo… and suddenly, at the last moment: “I was born here, my life passed here. I will accept whatever comes my way. This is my country, my people. I will share the common fate. Maybe I’ll still be useful.”

Eternal dilemma, eternal dispute.

…Then Eldar Aleksandrovich filmed a lot, but it was not the same movie, not the same Ryazanov. But that’s not why we love him at all.