Translated material
Brokeback time
Coming out on September 11, the film "The Captive" by master Alexei Uchitel based on the story "Prisoner of the Caucasus" by master Vladimir Makanin was dubbed the Russian "Humpback Mountain" in absentia. And extreme. Announcement from the Internet: ""Prisoner" is about the love of a Russian soldier and a Chechen youth militant." As a result, the Teacher in his heart promised at a press conference during the Kinotavr to sue every critic who sees homoerotic motives in the film. And indeed: to look for and even more so to find them in this film - unlike, by the way, from the story - is absolutely ridiculous.
In "Prisoner", which won a prize for directing at the main Eastern European film festival in Karlovy Vary, two soldiers of the Russian army, an experienced - older - and a young, ruffy, lead a prisoner - an amazingly handsome Chechen youth (played, by the way, by a Georgian with an unpronounceable surname Irakli Mskhalaia). Why they lead is not so important for the plot. In addition, he sometimes leads them: they use him as a guide. For the time being, the young man shows pride: he does not utter a word (only with time he will be able to find out his name), does not take food from enemies, tries to escape. But then the escorts and he somehow suddenly reconcile. They are united not only by the road, which often unites those who would never unite in off-road life. Unites care from the eldest of the soldiers - the same, experienced. Yes, he was subdued by the beauty of the young man and his, sorry for the oil, youth. But - no homosexual reasons, although in the course of the film it turns out that the experienced, unlike his partner-womanizer, has been without a woman for half a year.
He suddenly begins to feel like a kind of older brother in relation to the young man - not in the sense of the film "12", in which Nikita Sergeevich Mikhalkov explained that we are older brothers in relation to unreasonable Chechens. Big brother - in real human understanding. He wounded during the capture of this Chechen. The Chechen turned out to be a boy. Really beautiful, as far as I personally can interpret male beauty. The only homoerotic claim to the Teacher: he himself admitted in one of the interviews that he was looking for a boy for filming, comparable in terms of inviting attractiveness to the one who played in Death in Venice.
The younger one would have got rid of this prisoner, whom he refers to only as Trophy, long ago (he, for example, remaining face-to-face with the prisoner, forces him to turn over the found corpse, which can be mined). And the elder - suddenly - begins to feel sorry for this Chechen. She unties his hands when she shouldn't. She gives him woolen socks. In critical situations, even wears it on his hands. The devil knows what exactly is in the head of this experienced soldier. But definitely not sex. Care, love, tenderness, but of a different type. He wants to protect the young man - as an adult responsible man of his younger relative.
This perception of the film is set by its well-developed detail. The further, the more obvious that the director Uchitel, making feature films, retains a passion for concreteness and documentary, being, at first recognition, a documentary filmmaker, the author, for example, of the famous perestroika film Rock.
"Prisoner" initially captivates with incredibly beautiful landscapes shot by another master, this time of camera art, Yuri Klimenko (films by Parajanov, Solovyov, as well as "It's hard to be a god" by Herman Sr., which is anticipated by many as the best film of all times and peoples) . But the main thing is the very documentary details that you believe in one hundred percent. How bullets pierce the tarpaulin of a truck, opening holes for additional illumination of the body and the soldiers stationed there. How (a look through the sight of a sniper rifle - also hello to Klimenko) a bearded Chechen with a plastered hand does exercises-squats, putting the machine gun on the balcony railing and (the funny thing!) Without letting go of a cigarette from his lips. How a preschooler hits a dog is a completely documentary and scary frame for any viewer. As an experienced soldier from the main trio of the film, he eats a home-made hodgepodge presented to him. Well, manage to show the food in the cinema so that it immediately becomes clear: delicious! Wildly, sizzling delicious! The teacher knows how to do it. Documentary and both main actors. The characters of Vyacheslav Krikunov and Pyotr Logachev, who played the first roles in the cinema, seem to have been stolen from reality - in feature films they did not come up with any other way to give the film naturalness, except for inviting unknown debutants to act in films, giving a sense of authenticity.
Against the backdrop of this documentary, you try especially hard to read the message of the film, which, in my opinion, is obvious. "Prisoner" is one of the most pleasantly intelligible films of modern, not even domestic, but European cinema in general. I will not emphasize the obvious point that everyone notices in this film: that beauty will not save the world (this conclusion is made based on the contrast between the mentioned beauty of the film and its plot). I will not focus on the relevance of the 90s: in the film, our officers sell to Chechen intermediaries weapons recaptured from Chechen fighters for food for the soldiers (and, of course, delicacies for themselves). The cycle of weapons - and at the same time Russian deaths - in nature.
The main meaning, if I understand it correctly, is different. That is, there are actually two of them - meanings - and they contradict each other, which also determines the content of the film.
The first meaning: even in war, some people are able to remain people.
The meaning of the second: it (about being human) is an illusion. People cannot remain people in war, because war provokes them to forced actions. Forced - in the name of the side, the idea, the truth, for which you are fighting. But, above all, in the name of yourself, in the name of survival. The problem - and the catastrophe - is not in contradiction even of such actions to universal human nature. And the fact that such actions are contrary to the nature of the personal. Your own sympathies, beliefs, aspirations. You are good. You - true. And then you wake up in horror, finally realizing that war (alas, any war, even the so-called fair one) is not your violence against others, but your violence against yourself. Are you being forced to kill a pet, and you always loved them, or are you forcing yourself to kill something you love. Then you finally and suddenly realize that war is anti-God's business. That war is a true sin. That's what the movie is about in my opinion.
It seems to me important to fix two more circumstances.
First. "Prisoner" is by no means a standard politically correct picture. However, politically correct, but in a modern way. The concept of political correctness finally changes its tone and meaning. In the 2000s, it lost its former fundamentalist (Umberto Eco's wording) frenzy of the American 90s. Today, this is not the ideology of preoccupied one-legged black lesbians, but the ideology of normal, sincerely tolerant of other views of people, to which I consider myself.
Second. I am glad that our cinema, among the shortcomings of which is a terrible fear of relevance (which Hollywood does not fear, making films even about the nightmare of September 11), has finally ceased to shy away from at least one important topic - the Chechen war. We still don’t have films about all the affairs of 1991 (from the defense of the White House to the Belovezhskaya Pact), about the crisis and battles of 1993, about the default of 1998, about the explosions of houses in 1999. But we dare to shoot about Chechnya - and long live such courage. Moreover, the theme of Chechnya has been studied from a variety of points of view: "Prisoner of the Caucasus" - "Checkpoint" - "Time of the Dancer" - "War" - "My Brother Frankenstein" - "Alive" - "12" - "Alexandra" - "Prisoner".
This is very correct. This is a rare sign in our country that we are, after all, an independently thinking, reflective, civilized society.