Stumbling Tetris
[ad_1]
John S. Baird’s “Tetris” was released on Apple TV+ streaming – based on a real, but heavily embellished story, the story of acquiring the rights to the famous computer game. Tells Yulia Shagelman.
At a time when children’s toys like Barbie dolls are becoming full-fledged movie characters, the idea of filming Tetris – a game in which you have to line up colored blocks to a cheerful music – does not even seem so crazy. In addition, the picture of the Scottish serial director John S. Baird is not even dedicated to Tetris itself, but to a very niche topic: competition for its licensing and distribution. For Western viewers, the film fits more into the subgenre of “movies about brilliant entrepreneurs” (from earlier examples, one can recall, for example, David Fincher’s The Social Network, from very recent ones, Ben Affleck’s Air: The Big Jump about how Nike signed a contract with Michael Jordan).
But Russian viewers, of course, will first of all pay attention to how the late USSR is shown in Tetris – after all, the game, as you know, was developed by the Soviet programmer Alexei Pajitnov, played here by Nikita Efremov. Other domestic actors appear on the screen with him, so that the Russian language sounds pure for once, and no one even says “Na zdorovie!”, Which, however, does not negate the hefty dose of cranberries in the depiction of Moscow “realities” in 1988.
It is this year that game designer Henk Rogers (Taron Egerton), who was born in Holland but lives in Tokyo with a Japanese wife (Ayane Nakabuchi) and a bunch of kids, is trying to sell at least someone a game of his invention. Sales are tight, but at a professional show in Las Vegas, Hank sees Tetris, invented in the Soviet Union but already distributed all over the world except Japan, and realizes that it is a gold mine. He borrows from the bank he owes another loan to buy the rights to distribute Tetris in Japan, and even agrees with the legendary company Nintendo that they put the game on their new product – the Game Boy handheld system. However, it turns out that not everything is so simple: Henk finds himself literally between the Scylla of soulless capitalism (he himself embodies spiritual capitalism, with a human face) and Charybdis of the socialist system, which is on its last legs.
What is interesting about the music from “Tetris”
The song “Pedlars”, which has become the main musical theme of the game “Tetris”, contrary to popular belief, is not a folk song. The author of the text (“Oh, the box is full, full …”) is Nikolai Nekrasov. Music by Yakov Prigozhy. He owns the most popular arrangement, but there were three more, not so famous.
The melody of “Peddlers” first sounded in “Tetris” when versions for Apple IIgs and Spectrum Holobyte appeared. In 1989, Japanese composer Hirokazu Tanaga created an arrangement that was used in the Nintendo Game Boy version of the game. This version became one of the engines of the plot of the film “Tetris”.
On the same day as the film, an album with music from it was released. It has many versions of the game’s main theme. And the biggest revelation was the song “Hold On Tight” by the South Korean band aespa based on this melody. They are one of the most popular k-pop groups in the world. The melody of a popular Russian song formed the basis of the single, about which more than 10 million users – aespa subscribers – learned about it on Instagram alone (owned by Meta, which is recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation).
In different episodes of the film, two disco hits translated into Russian are heard behind the scenes. These are “Holding Out For A Hero” by Bonnie Tyler and “Heart Of Glass” by Blondie. These songs could well sound at the same disco where the heroes of Nikita Efremov and Edgerton come off under “The Final Countdown” Europe. A certain Polina is indicated as a performer. This is the daughter of the famous singer Natalia Stupishina, who performed under the pseudonym Anka, in the 1990s for the hit “And you are not a pilot”. Polina’s surname is Gudieva, in the 2010s she became one of the most popular artists of Russian origin, recording vocals as a guest performer in the tracks of DJs of the first row and releasing her own singles.
Finally, towards the end of the film, the Pet Shop Boys’ song “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots Of Money)” from their debut album Please (1986) is played. This is another jewel of the 1980s discotheques. At the same time, Pet Shop Boys are big fans of Russian culture, often visited Russia, both on tour and as tourists, composed a kind of “anthem” for Russian reforms “Go West”, and once even came up with a soundtrack for “Battleship Potemkin” » Sergei Eisenstein.
John S. Baird’s Tetris is sure to spark a flurry of Shazam searches as viewers want to learn more not only about the game, but also about its soundtrack. It does not at all look like the abolition of Russian culture, rather, it looks like a transition to a new level.
On one side are the unscrupulous British media mogul Robert Maxwell (Roger Allam), his worthless son Kevin (Anthony Boyle) and the slippery entrepreneur Robert Stein (Toby Jones), who are also interested in the rights to Tetris. On the other hand, the Soviet system does not want to let these rights out of its hands so easily. However, it looks far from monolithic in the film: the bad KGB officers, led by a certain comrade Trifonov (Igor Garbuzov), will put any supervillain in the belt with their cunning and cruelty, but there are also decent, honest people in it, primarily Pajitnov himself, as well as his boss at the state-owned company Electronorgtekhnika Nikolai Belikov (Oleg Shtefanko).
The picture is stylized as an 8-bit game: in order to achieve his goal, the player, that is, Rogers, must go through all its levels. One of them is the gloomy perestroika Moscow with queues, ubiquitous employees of the “organs” and an indispensable parade on Red Square, decorated with signs “CPSU” and “It is forbidden to play football.” However, it is strange to be offended by this not very attractive picture – it is possible that the capital of our country seemed exactly like this to a naive foreigner of the late 1980s (remember, for example, Red Heat, released just in 1988 with the unforgettable Arnold Schwarzenegger in the role of the Soviet policeman). And most importantly, we are not talking about any realism: all this is the same comic convention as the Utkin prison in the Daredevil series.
Despite all the funny mistakes, the authors manage to convey their message quite clearly: people under any political and economic system are able to remain people, help each other, and no matter what walls separate us, we still have more in common. And in the end, simple pleasures like stacking colored cubes, jeans, Coca-Cola, and the choral performance of “The Final Countdown” turn out to be stronger than slogans and doctrines.
[ad_2]
Source link
