Tsar's noose

The film "Tsar" by Pavel Lungin is completed to the highest standard. Kokoshniks, bears, sleighs, racks, domes, crosses, miracles - everything that a European viewer, a constant connoisseur of Arbat nesting dolls, could wish for. An excellent export product. I am sure: the West will swallow it with great enthusiasm and will give out a bunch of bonuses for... yes, for everything, including any contribution to the cause of peace. Well, the Russian viewer can simply be quietly proud that we also have films that can match the historical films of Hollywood. The scope and richness of texture is truly impressive. And here, perhaps, the director hit the bull’s eye. Lungin generally senses the situation very well, and that’s what he stands for.

Technically everything is great too. Two hours of unrelenting tension, not a single sagging frame: natural beauty alternates in optimal rhythm with luxurious pictures of royal life and sadistic scenes of torture. If anyone needs pure drive, this is the place for you.

Well, in essence... I didn’t see this essence in the film. I dare to even say that she is not there. There is, as always, a brilliant performance by Mamonov, who, no matter how hard he tries, cannot hide his kind eyes and gentle disposition. There is some inarticulate character of Yankovsky, helplessly muttering about mercy and forgiveness. Neither the “soul-saving” conversations that the real Philip resorted to, trying to reason with the king, nor his passionate accusatory speeches from the pulpit, by the way, recorded by contemporaries, so there were no difficulties in reflecting them in the film - none of this is in the film. The director has his own idea.

In his own words, the Metropolitan in his film is a “silent man,” a kind of silent miracle-working saint. What is Christianity without miracles, really! For Lungin, it seems, these concepts are identical. If you were called a saint, be kind enough to heal, cast out demons, foresee the future and all that. And personality is the tenth thing, it’s not about personality. Therefore, the Metropolitan, who has gone down in history as one of the most courageous first hierarchs, in the film mostly looks puzzled at the royal outrages, not knowing what to say. After every close-up of Yankovsky, you expect - now, now he will stand up, straighten his shoulders and begin what, in fact, should begin - a great confrontation, a duel of personalities. By the middle of the film you realize that there is nothing to wait for. There will be neither an internal spiritual struggle, which, undoubtedly, a real metropolitan experienced when encountering God’s anointed one, nor an external struggle.

Those who are expecting to see the theme of the relationship between the Church and the state in the film need not wait - this theme is not there either. There is one and only Philip, immersed in some mysterious social vacuum. Not a single clergyman around! The Church as an institution appears only at the very end of the film in the form of the brethren of the Otroch Monastery, who voluntarily burned along with the body of the murdered Metropolitan, so as not to hand him over to the guardsmen. By the way, this is absolutely untrue. The saint’s relics did not burn, but were buried in this very monastery, and now rest in the Moscow Kremlin. Historians generally have many complaints about the film - there are too many historical lies in it. But that's not even the point.

For me, as an ordinary film consumer, historical inconsistencies are not so important. In the end, Foreman also made his own “Amadeus,” which had nothing in common with the prototype. That's what art is for, to distort facts for the sake of making a catchphrase. The only question is - why? In this case, the goal is unclear, and therefore the pathos of artistic fiction is perceived as a banal lie and manipulation of the viewer.

The film, which began as a revived canvas by Surikov, in the second half turns into simply a popular film, albeit bloody, but no less primitive for this. However, Lungin himself believes that he made the film not for export, but for “internal use.” The viewer, leaving the cinema, must finally understand that the Russian myth about the need for a “strong hand” is harmful and very dangerous, that there is no need to dream of a dictatorship and vilify democrats. For some reason, the West is convinced that in Russia they idolize insane despots. Ask a foreigner which Russian politician he sees as the greatest danger to humanity, and the overwhelming majority, like 20 years ago, will name Zhirinovsky, who threatens to put the country under his thumb. It’s even useless to argue here: Zhirinovsky has become for Europeans the same stable symbol of Russia as hats with earflaps. So here, too, the film’s export advantages are obvious. Why do we need it?

Don't know, Perhaps someone will find how to adapt cinema to their native reality. I left the cinema with some heavy feeling of either deception or simply gloomy hopelessness. I wanted to quickly interrupt this aftertaste with something pleasant, warm and real. When I got home, I took the first disc I came across from the shelf without looking. It turned out to be a French film "Paris". He became that breath of natural European oxygen that returned my normal breathing after the pseudo-Russian gas chamber.

Photos by RIA Novosti