“Night conversation with the Executioner”: how Sergei Makovetsky became a villain
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A wide audience of viewers from today can see the film “The Art of Death” with Sergei Makovetsky and Anton Vasiliev in the lead roles.
At the end of last year, director Vladimir Beldiyan shot an unexpected picture-parable based on the work of Friedrich Dürrenmatt “Night Conversation with the Executioner”. Although the action takes place in Czechoslovakia in the period after the Prague Spring and the frames confirming this flash on the screen, but the parable is a parable: the essence of what is happening goes beyond the scope of a single period of time. The picture at the festival “Amur Autumn” has already received an award with the wording “for convincing directorial courage.”
Its hero, writer and journalist Vilor Svoboda, tired of living in fear, publishes material in which he exposes himself and his colleagues in the journalistic workshop. This causes the “big bang effect”. Naturally, Vilor becomes an outcast. Those who used to make up his “inner circle” turn away from him. The journalist is not a fool: every night he expects the Executioner at his house, who will come and settle scores with his life, demonstrating his “art of death.” And the Executioner does not hesitate to appear in the Writer’s apartment.
For director Vladimir Beldiyan, a student of the workshop of Rimas Tuminas at the Shchukin Theater Institute, this full-length film is his debut. The picture was shot, by the way, by cameraman Ilya Kondratyev, a student of another great master, the legendary Vadim Yusov.
The film narration is built on Dürrenmatt’s dialogues, the Prague Spring is marked by photo and newsreels flashing on the TV screen. Here are tanks, and soldiers in combat gear, and a crowd of people running through the streets, and Leonid Ilyich, walking along the carpet in his unchanging hat.
For the performer of the role of the Executioner, Sergei Makovetsky, this work has become a landmark: it has been highly praised at Russian festivals.
The hero of Makovetsky is dressed in a dark official suit. He is slow, observant, alert. Most of all, the executioner of Makovetsky looks like a harmless neighbor-clerk with a briefcase in his hand. But for some reason I really don’t want to look into this portfolio. The Executioner’s many years of experience and his skill in “curing” the pangs of human conscience, his “extraordinary” approach to the next victim look more like a service in a prestigious five-star hotel.
The executioner is interested in what is happening, in his piggy bank there are subtle cynical observations of the human psyche of people in the minutes preceding their death, and even more than that – dissatisfaction with the inappropriate death of some poor fellows. The character of Makovetsky evokes mixed feelings in the audience, dominated by indignation, disgust and, perhaps, pity. The most surprising thing is that it is the Executioner who denounces the Tyrant to a much greater extent than the “presumptuous” Writer himself.
Anton Vasiliev in the role of the Writer is very convincing. He is impulsive, he is ready to strangle the “offender” for his words, his inner slogan is “Fight!”. He wears snow-white clothes, dressed in a snow-white suit, clearly contrasting with the gloomy attire of Makovetsky. The writer stands on a completely human position, which is obvious to everyone. But, ironically, echoing the slogans of banners that usually flicker on public holidays, then they are often trampled underfoot in practice.
At the end of the film, which keeps the viewer in suspense for an hour and a quarter, the question arises by itself: will someone ever figure it out with the Executioner himself?
From today, the film is available on the KION online platform.
Elena Bulova.
On the picture: film stills
Message “Night conversation with the Executioner”: how Sergei Makovetsky became a villain first appeared on Moscow truth.
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