The series "The King and the Jester" quarreled the fans of the group and provoked a protest from the widow of Mikhail Gorshenev

The series "The King and the Jester" quarreled the fans of the group and provoked a protest from the widow of Mikhail Gorshenev



The series about the group "The King and the Jester" was largely unexpected. Here, in an amazing way, many cliches of biopic films and storylines that can be called atypical for this genre have come together. It seems that a punk band is an understandable and even a little routine phenomenon. But it turns out that there is room for imagination here.

“It looks like a parody”, “it looks unusual”, “failure of failures”, “I haven’t looked at the screen with such attention for a long time” ... Reviews about the series were quite expectedly divided, as, indeed, the attitude towards the group itself. Fanaticism about The King and the Fool is often not limited to adolescence, and adults who are very much on the subject are not at all uncommon. And all this audience is extremely sensitive to different retellings of what is connected with their favorite team.

Probably, the majority of the viewer would benefit from a brief educational without how to properly relate to biopics, especially musical ones. It is a big mistake to try to see in such films a detailed account of historical events. In most cases, everything quickly slides into a melodrama, and the lives of wonderful people are presented like a tabloid article.

Something similar happens in the famous film by Oliver Stone about The Doors, and in the recent "Bohemian Rhapsody" about The Queen and "Rocketman" about Elton John. In a similar way, adjusted for staging talent, scenery and context, of course, local series about Alexander Vertinsky, Muslim Magomayev and Fyodor Chaliapin were created. The producers, apparently, are sure that the public likes this approach, so the experiments here are superfluous.

The King and the Fool has many of the hallmarks of contemporary biopics. The historical immersion is, to put it mildly, indistinct, as if for the authors the style of the nineties and eighties is about the same thing. When developing the characters, they clearly decided to do without halftones and nuances. Rockers are real heroes who fight against the hated pop. The cops are terrible people who don't consider fans to be people. Snobs and unprincipled rednecks settled on the country's main rock radio station. Bikers, skinheads and gangsters are ridiculously sketchy, especially for those who remember informals and brothers of that time.

Perhaps the main audience problem in this case is the initial confidence of the authors that everyone knows who the "King and the Jester" are, are guided in their songs and are aware of the main stages of the group's history. The action of the series begins in 1999, with the group's triumphant concert by punk-rocker standards in St. Petersburg's Yubileiny. In the midst of a noisy drinking bout after the show, the main star of The King and the Jester, Andrei Gorshenev (Konstantin Plotnikov), climbs onto the roof of the building, where he is hallucinated in the form of the Jester.

A kind of alter ego of the rocker is trying to convince him that now, at the peak of fame, is the most opportune moment to commit suicide, because it will be very rocker. Another key member of the team, Andrey Knyazev (Vlad Konoplev), having found a comrade-in-arms on the edge of the roof, tries to save him. From this moment, a series of jumps in time starts, turning the biography of The King and the Jester into a set of confusing episodes.

However, very soon the biopic passes the baton to horror. In the series, a second reality appears, where the Pot and the Prince are medieval musicians and everything around is the characters come to life and the scenery of their eerie fairy-tale songs. There is certainly some logic to this plot twist. The compositions of The King and the Jester are clearly created for fantasy, and it is in this visualization that the lines of these songs turn out to be where they belong. Thus, in addition to time jumps, movements in different universes are added, which, of course, contributes to the natural removal of the brain in casual viewers.

An unexpected rescue in this chaos is the hits of the King and the Jester, presented in the form of concert numbers. Thundering punk rock, crowds of fans, cop clubs, specially filmed scenes and a chronicle - all together add up to a dizzying attraction, which nevertheless becomes the foundation of the series.

The question "Is it really so" in this case remains unanswered. Andrey Knyazev is directly related to the series, as well as Alexei Gorshenev, brother of the late Mikhail Gorshenev, and it can be assumed that people so close to the group know more than what is written in the press. However, many fans of The King and the Jester consider the proposed script to be a lie. According to Olga Gorsheneva, Mikhail's widow, the series defames the memory of her husband and gives a wrong idea about the late musician. Between Gorshk and Knyaz, as between the two leaders of the group, of course, there was some confrontation. In the series, it is shown quite clearly. The pot is waste and trouble, the Prince is creativity and the voice of reason.

The truth in its absolute form remains on the conscience of the participants in the events, but within the framework of the cinema, everything looks, if not super-convincing, then at least spectacular. Plotnikov and Konoplev turned into real rockers. From time to time they have to play out lines to the best of their ability, written as if with the last of their strength. However, banality and tongue-tied bravado is very welcome here. Any music journalist can attest to the fact that behind the scenes, rock heroes often turn out to be characters that are not seven spans in the forehead, and in verse they are much stronger than in the ability to carry on a normal conversation.

In addition, the series is about people who, due to their age and occupation, clearly did not strive to look like witty intellectuals stuffed with good manners. "The King and the Jester" is loved for something else. For Russian folk punk, for demonism, for sex, drugs and rock and roll. The main thing in the history of this group comes down to the fact that music can be an incredible adventure for a group of friends and an activity that is hard to imagine more exciting. Unfortunately, in such an adventure no one guarantees a happy ending.

Published in the newspaper "Moskovsky Komsomolets" No. 28999 dated March 29, 2023

Newspaper headline:
Russian folk punk



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