Review of a documentary film about Mikhail Gorshenev from the group “Korol i Shut”

Both parts of the documentary directed by Daria Ivankova “Mikhail Gorshenev. The Legend of the King and the Jester”, the release of which was timed to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the death of the frontman of the group “Korol and the Jester”. The film is over three hours long in total. Igor Gavrilov believes that there is no other way to tell the story of this musician.

The title of the film contains the word “legend”, but, unlike the series “The King and the Jester” released in the spring, in which an attempt was made to reproduce the worlds of the band’s songs on the screen, here the realism rolls over and everything is built solely on the testimonies of the participants in the events. At the same time, in the documentary about Gorshka (a nickname, it is also the stage name of Gorshenev), a huge amount of animation of various types was used, including one based on the drawings and manuscripts of the hero.

And yet, the most terrible stories are told in the film in the simplest language and understandable to anyone, even a viewer who is not too initiated into the affairs of punk rock.

On the tenth anniversary of the death of Mikhail Gorshenev, statistics from the NAFI research center were published: more than half of Russians have heard of the Korol i Shut group, and 44% are familiar with its repertoire. But many more Russians are familiar with themes that run through the film like a red thread: the relationship of generations within the same family, alcoholism, addiction to drugs. Perhaps, in none of the domestic musical documentaries on these topics have they spoken in such detail.

The father of the Gorshenev brothers, Yuri Mikhailovich, served in the KGB. The film talks a lot and in detail about what and how Pot did in order to distance himself from both the profession and his father’s beliefs. A son, a 100% punk, and a father who investigated bloody riots in the colonies. What happened between them? Gorshenev Sr., by definition, was obliged to crush all these punks. And Michael one fine day just left home. But then he returned more than once or twice, because it was his parents who were the people who pulled him out of hard drinking, treated him for drug addiction. Nevertheless, there was a “dictatorship of the father” in the family, as Gorshka’s colleague in the group Andrei Knyazev (Prince) calls it.

The pot sat down at the table with his father, but the conversation did not go well, everything rolled into swearing and ended with the words: “You, dad, didn’t understand me.” And the father, even having visited the group’s stadium concerts, even shedding tears from the success of his son, could throw him: “Do you think you are a star for me? You are shit to me.”

Mikhail Gorshenev’s relationship with drugs is also not described in the film in the most obvious way. “The pot was fine without heroin, and without alcohol,” says Alexander Leontiev, ex-guitarist of Korol i Shuta. In his opinion, the pot was by nature an artist and, in order to create, he did not need stimulants.

But the film clearly shows that in the framework offered by everyday life, he was cramped. No wonder the film repeatedly pops up the theme of space. The pot wanted to push the boundaries both in art and in space. And there was no restraining force that would not let him finally “fly away”. She, by the way, was not his wife. One shared a love of heroin with him and eventually died from the consequences of abuse. Another gave birth to his daughter, but in the last year of his life, as follows from the interview of his friends in the film, he was completely alone. “The intrusion of women into the male team is one of the reasons for the collapse of the King and the Jester,” says the Prince.

The line “It’s too tight for me to be locked up” from the song “The King and the Jester” “The Cursed Old House” seemed to define the entire biography of Pot. He was cramped even when the group began touring the world, even at Niagara Falls he was immersed in his thoughts and far from enjoying the views. By the way, the film contains a fragment of the song “Don’t Crucify Me”, which Gorshok recorded together with the Red Elvises, and even from this fragment you can hear that if he tried to make music in the West, he would not be hopeless. As a showman, he was the equal of Marilyn Manson, and as a rock hero, maybe even more serious – in his own country, of course. Maybe he was the only musician in it with a biography typical of a rock legend – with big hits, popular adoration, family trauma, difficult relationships with women and substances, and, finally, with a sad ending.