Mushrooms with eyes – Weekend – Kommersant

The Last of Us is the long-awaited film adaptation of the computer game of the same name. The creators of the show – one of the authors of the computer The Last Of Us Neil Druckmann and the main serial specialist on life in the contaminated area, the author of “Chernobyl” Craig Mazin – risked the wrath of gamers, but made us passive observers, not participants in the game.

Text: Tatyana Aleshicheva

In 2003, a deadly pandemic swept the world – the cause was a fungal mutation. Infected with mushroom spores, they turned into picturesque monsters, as if born from the wild imagination of Arcimboldo, only with the habits of zombies. The mushroom picker grew rapidly, and the leading mycologist called for the bombing of the infected cities.

In 2023, the cities have long been lousy, and the survivors live in quarantine zones at gunpoint – government troops do not let anyone out of the perimeter. The only people who break the curfew are smugglers like Joel (Pedro Pascal) and underground members of the Cicada organization, which includes his brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna). When his brother stops communicating, Joel makes a deal with the Cicadas – they will help him get into the free zone, and he will take the girl Ellie (Bella Ramsey), who has immunity against infection, there.

It seems that there is nothing in this story that we have not seen before: a stern Mandalorian with a child wanders through the rough terrain of The Walking Dead, ferociously fighting off marauders and infected. But series creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann are surprising from the start: they haven’t been infected by the convulsive flashback spores that plague every other current series. The scriptwriters now for some reason do not believe that the viewer’s attention can be held by a story told in order, and because of this disbelief, they constantly switch his attention, flicker, exhausting him with jumps in time back and forth. Against this backdrop, Mazin and Druckmann, filming the old fashioned way, look almost revolutionary. Of course, they also retell the backstory of the characters, but in a measured, unhurried and far from complete way. Moreover, they omit entire plot layers, leaving the viewer to think for himself. Why are Joel and Tommy living apart now? Where did Ellie come from and how did the Cicadas find her? What is the relationship between Joel and his girlfriend Tess (Anna Torv)? Without taking their audience for a fool – let them think up the missing ones themselves – they make a show where the unsaid relationships between the characters look as tense as the fight scenes.

But the main news here is that the highbrow channel HBO, which has been supplying the viewer with intellectual shows for two decades, has generally taken up the film adaptation of a computer game. If the series is successful, it will be a signal for the industry to film everything that moves and shoots from now on. The stakes were high from the start: the show was meant to be more than a game, and certainly nothing less (there should be plenty of action!). This is strictly followed by the most biased audience – gamers, who could not be completely appeased even by the creator of all things. Admirers of “original sources” are usually worse than mushrooms – living in and mentally appropriating their favorite universe, they are ready to attack anyone, even the author, for deviating from the usual course.

And then Mazin and Druckmann took it and went for broke, turning the third series into a sprawling romantic drama about the bearded conspiracy theorist and “survivalist” Bill (Nick Offerman), who at the beginning of the epidemic turned his house into a fortress, and then let the random tramp Frank go there ( Murray Bartlett) and lived with him in the tenderest gay marriage. Brutal video game fans should have been a little taken aback by this alignment. And also to signal to everyone that Mazin and Druckmann are not looking for easy ways and are not afraid to troll their electorate.

Of course, all this was not done by accident. It is impossible to translate even the most cinematic game into the language of another media without sacrificing anything. And here the most important thing is lost – involvement. In the game we can influence the story and participate in it, on TV we can only watch. Therefore, this understatement, which includes imagination, these long sentimental runs, conversations and characters are so important not in dynamics, but in statics, which allows them to be better considered. They are eaten, and they look – and now you have already lingered on them with your eyes, sympathized, got into trouble.

And there is something to get into. The dramaturgy of the series does not boil down to the fact that the main characters wander from point A to point B. They also change on the go, develop in opposite directions. Next to the girl, hardened from past losses, Joel, whatever one may say, thaws. And Ellie, a child who finds herself in a world where violence comes at every level, on the contrary, is getting stale every day. Watching this is no less exciting than shooting back from walking mushrooms. But the most curious thing is that serious spectator passions are already boiling around this uncomplicated series. It seems that the clue is that the touch of this spectacle coincided with the mood of the moment: the world is going to hell, but this is a game that we cannot play, because we have all been transferred to a passive role.

---

Subscribe to Weekend channel in Telegram