Translated material
Herman always deceived expectations
The word "genius" seems to be forbidden, but it is unconditional for me that Herman is one of the real geniuses of modern world cinema. It is strange after death to compare it with the living, but in the modern post-Soviet cinema there are three truly large figures-Kira Muratov, Alexander Sokurov and Alexei German, no matter how offensive to the others.
At the same time, it is clear that Herman was a person of a very complex character, an incredible person, sometimes even painful exactingness in relation to himself and to others. The exactingness for himself was manifested, in particular, that all his films were made very difficult. Except for the relative work in the film “The Seventh Sputnik” (1967), then Herman has only five paintings, including the latter, “The History of the Arkanar Revenue”, which will still not work. Work on the last two paintings - "Khrustalev, car!" And “History ...” - was a real nightmare for both Herman and others. We know how long he made these pictures, how he tormented himself and others. There are directors with whom it is a pleasure to work - such, for example, Tarantino (although it is hardly possible to compare them with Herman, since they are completely different approaches to cinema): all actors adore it, he comes to the set with new ideas, he is joyful, optimistic. Herman is always heavy, tense, with nerves, with dislike for himself. Herman even once said that the director is obliged to hate his works. Nevertheless, I really hope that we will see his last film. Honestly, I am sure that he has long been completed, but, probably, out of this creative anger, directed, including, and against himself, Herman was simply afraid to let him out of his hands.
He was a man who constantly defended high human qualities, so he was always in conflict. In the conflict with the authorities of those in power, with those who rule the ball. The flip side of this was that Herman, again, always came into conflict with himself and those who surrounded him. Therefore, no matter how sad, he began to quarrel, for example, with young directors who were his students and idolized him - this ended his wonderful non -zhiser project, “The Studio of the First and Experimental Film”. We know how heavily his relationship with Leonid Yarmolnik was developing during the filming of the History of the Arcanar Revenue. But all this, of course, is the features of a genius.
Herman was able to unusually reveal the actor. And Bykov, and Mironov, and Petrenko, and Gurchenko, and Nikulin - they are all special in his films. It was Herman that discovered Andrei Boltnev and Yuri Tsurilo and created their greatest roles. I remember nervously Herman reacted to the fact that after the film “My Friend Ivan Lapshin”, Boltnev played a criminal in some kind of picture. Herman was so akin to the image of Lapshin, which he created for this actor, which was offensive to him that he was now playing a villain.
Herman’s paintings almost always deceived expectations. The film "My Friend Ivan Lapshin" once made a revolution, because it had reliability and even meticulousness in the transmission of the era. Everyone expected the same from Khrustalev, and Herman in all the interview promised that in this film there would be a reconstruction of 1953, which no one has ever seen him. Everyone went to this picture as a repetition of Lapshin. And suddenly it turned out that Khrustalev was an absolutely surreal picture, unexpectedly nonlinear. Another thing is that in Khrustalev there are two terrible and completely naturalistic scenes - a scene of rape with the convicts of the protagonist and a scene with a certain half -age old man, in which you immediately recognize Stalin. Therefore, it makes sense to talk not so much about the veracity of German paintings, but about some kind of artistic superpuracy-let it sound trite, but in the case of Herman more accurately.