“In my heart I am an inhabitant” – Weekend – Kommersant
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At the box office, “Healthy Man” by Pyotr Todorovsky is the story of a successful TV presenter Yegor (Nikita Efremov), who accidentally saves an unfamiliar woman from a rapist, after which he decides to help people. First, Yegor becomes a volunteer in a children’s oncology hospital, and then joins the Liza Alert team. But the more he goes into volunteering, the further he is pulled away from his past life – and ultimately loses his job, friends and family. Pyotr Todorovsky spoke about the image of a volunteer in Russian cinema and the privileges of a hereditary filmmaker Konstantin Shavlovsky.
Is the plot of “Healthy Man” based on a true story or is it pure fiction?
The idea, one might say, is based on a true story. Just like the hero of Nikita Efremov, one night I woke up from cries for help coming from the yard. My first thought was to get up, get dressed and go out, but then either I was scared, or lazy, in general, I didn’t go anywhere. My wife and I just called the police, and I never found out what really happened there. And the next day I began to feel a sense of guilt and some bewilderment about myself: what kind of person am I that in these circumstances I did nothing. And I began to think, what could happen if I went out. Would it be dangerous or not dangerous? In vain or not in vain? And in general – what is in vain and not in vain, what consequences could this act have?
That is, the plot of “Healthy Man” is also such a therapy: if he came out, would he lose his job, friends, and wife?
No, of course not. The question of whether it is necessary to go out into the yard if they are screaming for help is not worth it for me. Of course we had to go down. It’s just that I’m probably a layman at heart, no matter how sad it sounds, that’s why I didn’t go anywhere. The hero of Nikita Efremov in this sense did absolutely the right thing.
Did you interact with real volunteers while working on the film?
Of course, this scenario would be impossible to write without detailed research. We were helped by the volunteers of Lisa Alert, for which we are very grateful, and we were advised by one of the charitable foundations that helps children with cancer. We interviewed doctors, parents, talked to their volunteers. But they asked not to name their foundation in our film. Because when they read the script, they immediately said: yes, in principle, this happens and everything that is written there is true. But they felt that our film could scare people away from joining the ranks of volunteers. And this is not in their interest.
And how, in your opinion, is it possible to read “Healthy Man” as a criticism of the volunteer movement?
In no case. And in this film, I make it quite clear that not all volunteers are like the hero of Nikita Efremov. Egor is ill-suited to volunteer work, and everyone around him is talking about it. You can probably even call him a bad volunteer. Although he is a good person. Therefore, I really hope that “Healthy Man” will not be perceived as anti-advertising of the volunteer movement. And the final picture, I think, can be considered, on the contrary, advertising. What Yegor does, despite the fact that he is a bad volunteer, is actually what makes us human.
What exactly?
Indifference to the suffering of others and the ability to see someone else besides oneself besides oneself.
But Yegor helps strangers to the detriment of his family, and this is also quite clearly shown in the film.
I will say this to this – sometimes people get divorced because someone opens the window, and someone closes it. And to consider that the heroes of Efremov and Starshenbaum had a happy marriage, which was destroyed by volunteering, in my opinion, is wrong. The problems that they have existed, let’s say, before the beginning of the film, and the point here is not so much in volunteering, but in some kind of global mismatch with each other.
If you look at how activism and volunteering are presented on the Russian screen, it seems that the cinema cannot capture this image in any way without questioning the very idea of charity.
In our case, it is still much simpler: it is quite difficult to talk about a hero who does not have an internal or external conflict. And if our hero is a volunteer, then external and internal conflicts are naturally connected with his occupation.
But why must volunteering be shown as something for personal gain, childhood trauma, or a desire to fill an inner void?
I wanted the film to have some volume and, if you notice, the soliloquy about volunteers being unhealthy people is delivered by a drunk party guest. And this is definitely not the author’s view of the problem. Or, for example, the theme of the hero’s inner emptiness – yes, his friends think so, at some point his wife thinks so, and, probably, he thinks so too. Because he is afraid of it, like all of us. I don’t know if that’s all, but sometimes I’m afraid that I have an emptiness inside and I don’t feel anything. But that’s not true. And in the hero of Nikita Efremov, there is no emptiness, from my point of view. This is definitely not the main problem of this character and this film.
And what is the main one?
His main problem is that he took on a responsibility that he cannot bear. On the one hand, all his aspirations are wonderful, and the fact that he started volunteering at all indicates that he has not only emptiness inside. But, on the other hand, almost the entire film, not counting the finale, he says: “I, I, I, I.” I will save, I will change, I will take a loan and so on. It seems to me that this is generally a feature of modern man. All the time to say and feel this “I, I, I, I”, no matter what happens around. And so I wanted to bring him to the fact that he realized that, by and large, he can do nothing, no “I” really works.
What works?
And what works is that he came to this boy and they sang this song together, and the boy laughed. And so it was not all in vain.
The compositions of VIA “Nanotoptyshi” and Antokha MC sound in the film – is this your musical taste?
This is definitely my musical taste, especially “Corns”! (Laughs) Somehow I came up with them right away, back in the script, I just heard it many times at children’s holidays in the Pioneer Palace: “I look at tomatoes, tomatoes look at me …” A good song, and, in my opinion, she is right there. But at the end of the picture there was another song that we could not buy. And probably, this is for the best, because during the editing it turned out that Antokha works better.
And especially now the song “Sailed, sailed and sailed” that sounds in the finale is read in a certain way.
Oh yeah. But of course, we didn’t include this in the cinema.
Why did you decide to give the characters the profession of TV presenters – to further emphasize that they live a fake life?
I don’t think they live real lives. I gave them this profession, because I myself worked as a journalist in various editorial offices, including on television, and I knew this world, it was easier for me to describe it. And I also wanted them to work together, and in journalism this happens quite often.
But they work in sports journalism, and this is a very special environment. If they were investigative journalists, the film would certainly have been very different.
You know, since I myself am a journalist by profession, if the topic of modern journalism in Russia had been seriously touched upon in the script, I think that the film simply would not have been made based on it.
Did you know that in parallel with the “Healthy Man”, Efremov and Starshenbaum played a married couple in “Sisters” Ivan Petukhov?
I did not know – and when I found out, I was even a little upset. I knew for sure that I wanted to shoot Ira and Nikita, and before the “Sisters” they still played together in the film by Roman Vasyanov “dormitory”, and the producers had doubts if we were repeating ourselves. But I couldn’t do anything with myself, because I saw them in this story. Because Nikita is very mobile and emotional, and he, like no one else, can play such a neurotic, an adult child. And in Ira, on the contrary, I saw a woman who is strong and in love with her husband, who is trying to save her personal world.
Almost the entire part devoted to the life of the characters together is filmed in sterile, featureless interiors that speak not about specific characters, but rather about their belonging to the middle class. When working with space, did you want to emphasize the typicality, and not the uniqueness of your characters?
I just wanted everything to look believable. Here I live in my Moscow apartment, it’s true, it’s not mine, but my grandmother’s, my wife and I arranged it a little, bought Ikeev furniture, made repairs in the bathroom. But I can’t say that this apartment says something about me or my wife. And in the apartments of my friends and acquaintances, as a rule, everything is the same. It seems to me that there is very little in our life – and I do not separate myself now from a typical city dweller – of something truly alive. And the desire for something alive, albeit through pain, to find and feel and see some meaning in it, because there are absolutely no meanings in our life — probably, all this is related to our film. This is also why I wanted their apartment, and what they are wearing, and what they live in, to contrast with where Egor is drawn to.
Almost every review of the “Healthy Man” writes about the continuity of generations: the grandson and son of Todorovsky shoots the grandson and son of Efremov. Actually, Nikita also played in Polet with his father. Do you even think about how your names are read on the poster?
To be honest, I never had a goal to somehow emphasize this. For example, in the pilot of “Flight”, another artist played in general, and then, thank God, Nikita appeared, who, from my point of view, played this role a thousand times better. But he didn’t appear at all because his dad played in the film, and it was very important for me, as Misha sometimes joked on the set, “to make sure that only majors shot this picture.”
Do you often think about your, shall we say, privilege?
I have a tragic relationship with my privilege. Because if this privilege somehow helped me a lot at the beginning of my career, then I probably would still suffer because they compare me with my father and grandfather, but then I would start shooting my first picture earlier would not put on the shelf. And now it turns out that I have not fully tasted this privilege, but at the same time everyone is still talking to me about it.
Recently we spoke with Petya Balabanov, who went to study as a film artist, because he could not imagine how he would go into directing with such a surname.
Maybe he is right about something. While you are afraid that someone will say: “Aaaaa, you have a father Todorovsky”, it is probably better not to do this. Because you will not shoot a movie, but look back.
So you are a brave person?
Don’t think. It’s just that the desire to make films is stronger than fears, which, of course, live in me too.
At the box office from March 2
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