TAURUS AND MOLCH

CINEMA BOOTH

In the nineties, once again everything was mixed up, or rather turned upside down, in the “House of Romanov”. The former crowned bloodsucker turned into an unresponsive lamb. “Agony,” which Elem Klimov harshly diagnosed, began to be rethought as...

In the nineties, once again everything was mixed up, or rather turned upside down, in the “House of Romanov”. The former crowned bloodsucker turned into an unresponsive lamb. “Agony,” which Elem Klimov harshly diagnosed, began to be rethought as martyrdom, which evoked outright pity among Gleb Panfilov, the author of “The Crowned Family.”

“It’s a pity for the Romanovs.”

- Don’t you feel sorry for others?! — an inevitable reciprocal feeling stirred in me.

It was necessary to break out of this dilemma into a new dimension.

Alexander Sokurov broke out: with his two defiant films - about Hitler and about Lenin, that is, about those very rulers who entered the historical field immediately after the elimination of the old-fashioned Romanovs.

Sokurov does not evoke any old-fashioned feelings in us. No class hatred, no Christian compassion. Not even patriotic hatred (towards Hitler). The author of “Taurus” and “Moloch” does not at all want us to accept his paintings as a reproduced reality. He deliberately builds versions. Models. Antimyths.

He removes a historical personality from a historical situation not in order to show what kind of personality he is, for a personality removed in this way certainly turns out to be empty. He presents this emptiness to us so that we can feel what situation has devastated this person.

And since personalities are unique, and situations are repeated in history with stupefying frequency, I think that Sokurov’s film diptych acquires special value in our heritage of the 90s (and not only the 90s).

Moloch taking a break from devouring victims

If we remove Hitler from the historical situation, then we must remove him from the war, which inscribed him in the memory of mankind. The Moloch of war remains behind the scenes: for the whole day the Fuhrer, accompanied by Dr. Goebbels and Parteigenosse Bormann, finds himself within the framework of the “eternal” landscape of the Nibelungs - in the romantic Kehlsteinhaus castle. With Eva Braun and Magda Goebbels, the leaders of the Reich spent time in social table chatter or dancing to a gramophone in the lap of nature. The war is only in the newsreels that they watch, and there is nothing alarming for them yet: German tanks are clanking, dusting triumphantly along the roads of Europe, Soviet prisoners in frayed greatcoats obediently go where they are told... The Moloch of war has not yet turned his teeth to Germany, and For another whole summer the Wehrmacht will be cutting up the Russian steppe; he will still cut up living space all the way to the Volga until his time strikes.

In the meantime - here - Eva Braun can coquettishly declare that she “doesn’t know who the war is with,” and the Fuhrer, causing the reverent surroundings to freeze, drops the phrase that in the end he will have to deal with the Italian Duce. The leaders are joking. Goebbels teases Bormann as a goat, Bormann somersaults from his chair; everything is accompanied by laughter, conversations revolve around trifles: how to fish in Bavaria... how to plant nettles in Ukraine... how to get rid of woodlice...

The silent officer records these banalities in a large notebook in order to immortalize them for history (and the careful Germans preserved all this, which, presumably, helped screenwriter Yuri Arabov reproduce the flow of the above-described revelations with due reliability).

However, any banality is banality only in “its own”, banal situation. In the situation of the end of worlds, meanings begin to turn around. When Moloch looms, every stupidity has a sinister meaning. Even the Fuhrer’s witticisms, sickening in their repetition: “Who likes corpse tea here?” (he, a vegetarian, calls the meat broth that way) - every time everyone admires his wit, while the smell of a corpse clouds the cinema space.

In this stream of idle talk, one phrase from Hitler pierces with seriousness:

“If I win, they will deify me, and if I lose, then every nonentity will wipe their feet on me.”

This sounds like a warning to the filmmakers themselves. In the context of great events, a great participant in them can evoke great respect or great indignation, but when he is taken out of context, it is easiest to imagine him as an ordinary scoundrel, impotent, empty-headed, pathetic guy.

Alexander Sokurov almost everywhere resists such temptation. Almost. In the erotic scene, I think he goes beyond the limits of screen restraint... however, for the characterization of Eva Braun this is probably justified. A beauty with a standard, chiseled face and the body of a trained Brünnhilde, in essence, holds the picture: E. Rufanova, playing the leader’s concubine, “weighs” in the film’s cinematography, perhaps, no less than L. Mozgovoy, who plays the Fuhrer.

The fact is that Eve is a healthy female, languishing in loneliness from idleness and from the forces bursting at her - this is the “pole of unattainability” amazingly sensed by the director in the film, the atmosphere of which is marked by weakness, dreaming of power.

The naked female figure, launched either into the deserted interiors of the old German castle or onto the battlements of its walls shrouded in fog, is both the apotheosis of the grandiose “Teutonic” luxury of life and a concentrated sense of empty space. The same female figure, amazing in its bestial perfection, seen through the slit of military binoculars, brings us back to the reality of 1942: the guards do not sleep. Having put on a record with a march on the radio and leaned back in a chair in the middle of a huge empty hall, the namesake of the progenitor of humanity “conducts” her luxurious bare legs to the beat of the music.

Sokurov is an artist.

The golden-brown, fawn coloring of the film, as if undermined by decay, makes the viewer constantly oscillate between admiration and disgust.

The predominant angle is general plans: from somewhere under the ceiling. Small flat figures against a backdrop of giant empty spaces.

The frail, limping Goebbels - a head shorter than the tall, bony Magda - carries with him some kind of smuggled femininity, strange in the masculinized world of Nazism. Round Borman, with a half-cut haircut, is combed so that his hair looks like fake hair. Hitler... the textbook mustache and lock of hair seem to be glued on.

Mummers' world? Not at all.

If we still do not understand what this cinematic genius of infirmity is “crying out” about and what it is “leaning against”, then the clever Doctor Goebbels suggests, revealing an intellectual paradox:

- The kingdom of the future is white-toothed fools...

Now is the time to notice and comprehend the true heroes of the cinematic kingdom, in the center of which the leaders of the “Thousand Year Reich” flutter, stumble, stumble and limp. Then the wordless food server will flash a white-toothed smile. Then a strong guard in black will peek out from around the corner. Large, smooth individuals layer this lumpy society, and so it becomes finally clear to whom, in essence, the “message” written in the air by the luxurious legs of Eva Braun, who has tipped over in her chair, is addressed.

Alexander Sokurov removes the Fuhrer from the historical situation for a whole day, exposing him as Adam, who has found himself in the company of Eve (“Adi,” Eve affectionately addresses him), but the historical situation returns and strikes like lightning, throwing up the fawn dust of decay.

Taurus sacrificing himself

Lenin is removed from reality, locked in Gorki, separated from Moscow, from Russia, from the world revolution. Separated by the lack of telephone communication, the Latvian accent of the guards, and a fatal disease.

The disease is the main shock element of the film, which seemed almost blasphemous to me, especially when our television advertising began to savor the out-of-context footage of the languid, paralyzed leader. Then I thought: since glasnost published the once banned photographs of Lenin in a wheelchair, any modern artist must still take this new point of reference into account.

The crazy leader is perceived as a caricature only against the backdrop of past deification; against the backdrop of how for a whole decade the written feuilletonists of our freed press have been mocking Lenin, with any nonentity casually wiping their feet on him and in this way “declaring themselves” - against such a backdrop, Sokurov’s “Taurus” is still a statement of a serious artist. The shock of pathology that hits you in the first frames gradually passes. Understanding begins, which almost nowhere strays into caricature.

I think it is not necessary to force Lenin to offer the walker a mocking candy. It is not necessary to force him to destroy the “lordly” dinner table setting with a stick. The fact is that Sokurov’s film genius works without these outbursts of eccentricity. He works precisely in the sphere in which Lenin is great: in the sphere of selfless reason. His gobbledygook is not boring to us, because it contains mental reflections of the historical situation from which Lenin was artificially (and skillfully) removed. Moreover, these speculative reflections are well supported by both the echoes of the dramaturgy and the plasticity of the acting: the way the doctor thoughtfully asks whether he will be shot if the patient dies or will only be deprived of his rights... by how rude the security is to the servants... by how shameless the servants themselves are . And here’s a hint line: “Everyone here is so angry... Nobody loves you.” The situation “appears” like on a photographic plate. Service is more important than people.

Quiet Hills exchange glances with the distant, secretive Kehlsteinhaus, shrouded in a brown haze. And again a hint: the doctor is perplexed why Lenin switches to German with him from time to time? Yes, so that we, the viewers of “Taurus,” do not lose sight of the film genius of “Moloch”!

And it seems like the director’s style is the same. Yes, it's spelled differently.

There are picturesque nonsense speeches flying from joker to joker. Here - mooing, muttering, swallowed remarks, abracadabra of arrogance, bogged down in insanity.

There are long shots with spinning puppets. There are close-ups, super-close-ups, eyes, foreheads, ears. The emptiness there will not be filled in any way, it will not be embraced. Here everything is squeezed out of the frame by bodies and souls that cannot “fit in” in any way.

Finally, the color. It's golden brown. Stone rocks and walls. Here it is silver-green. Damp earth that will swallow everyone.

Oh, how film genius works! No hints! Like in the episode with Stalin’s arrival in Gorki. The duet between texture and texture has the strongest effect on me: Lenin’s “wooden” angularity in contrast to Stalin’s “tiger” flexibility. A plastic dialogue between logic, confident that it subjugates life, and life, which is more cunning than any logic.

And an amazing plastic dialogue: Lenin - Krupskaya. The critics, skimming the psychological foam from the dish presented to them, declared: she loves him, and he tolerates her out of a sense of duty. Yes, it doesn’t reach normal psychology here! This is Panfilov’s - “they love” and “tolerate”! And with Sokurov, they are preparing a sacrifice. Taurus - Moloch.

So the most significant plastic dialogue is between films. Or rather, between the main characters. Between Eva Braun and Krupskaya. The confident “bestial” beauty is opposed by the Russian “nechesa”, disheveled, disheveled, and confused.

And don't tell me that this was "objective reality." If you have seen photographic portraits of the young Krupskaya, you might have noticed how much natural charm she had. And I stopped looking after myself because I didn’t want to look after myself.

In general, “objective reality” for Sokurov and Arabov is only a fulcrum: to turn empirics into cinematic reality. And in cinematic reality, it is Maria Kuznetsova who “holds” the picture. Because it is in her heroine, honest, helpless, dejected, gullible, doomed, that Lenin’s thought about real Russia is subconsciously embodied. Like in Eva Braun - Hitler's dream of a real Germany.

The fact that both this and this leader are played by the same artist, Leonid Mozgovoy, imparts to the characters some vague sense of kinship, and it is realized in contrast. This kinship is an emptiness that is revealed in a historical person, torn from the historical situation, and the contrast is from the situation. And Eve and Nadezhda dictate this contrast. Moloch is self-confident, he attacks life like a tank, imposes himself on it. Taurus is doomed, he knows that he is doomed, he is ready to sacrifice himself. Hint: “He who hesitates to kill another must kill himself.”

The point is that Russia is a country of savages. Where men sow, they will trample down. Oh, if only the country were without men! And in general: a person would be born immediately adult and smart, without this childish idiocy! How to teach a person to live like a human being? Always stroking a Russian tit on the head? You have to hit him, hit him on the head! If a dead tree lies on the path, then don’t wait a hundred years for it to rot and crumble! We need to drag him out of the way!

A hint from a wonderful Georgian: it’s more rational to chop it into small pieces... Formulates it well.

I will also risk formulating Sokurov’s thought about the historical situation from which he removed the leader.

-Are you going to live after me? - the leader asks his wife named Nadezhda. -You have no idea what awaits you after me...

At the first moment it seems that this is a pick-up of Hitler’s dialogue with Eva, when she says: do not think that death is something that can be returned. That is, the Fuhrer imagines that Germany, which failed to pass his test, must perish...

It seems to be the same here (I die - you all die), but not the same. The universe resists, does not give in. And like lightning - thought through madness: and it will not give in! And then everything will collapse.

This apocalypticism is the solar plexus of the film.

But the way out, the way out? - I, the viewer, ask the artist who is modeling a historical situation for me.

There is a way out, he believes. Dismiss everyone. Through the lips of Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova-Blank, who from the other world gives her son advice:

- Let people live the way they want.

Then - my last question to the authors of the film: do people want the Second World War to cover them after the First World War? That is: for an unknown force to ruin and ruin them in tens of millions?

Once upon a time this force was called: Moloch.