Igor Mantsov. Witness

Witness
Igor Mantsov

Publication date: March 14, 2004

Half an hour of fanatical love for Alexander Blok. By misunderstanding, in high school, a long time ago. For some reason, I was poking around in the “Note of a conversation with the troupe of the Art Theater” (1916), fixed my eyes on the schematic representation of the drama “Rose and Cross”, and did not believe the notorious eyes: “Izora - Aliskan - Bertrand - Alice with the Chaplain - The Giant with the Dolphin ” .

, published in Russian, had already been enthusiastically read Peter Jackson's blockbuster The Lord of the Rings had not yet been filmed and won an Oscar, but The Hobbit . I wanted a miracle, I dreamed of combining distant concepts, of what would later be frivolously called postmodernism. Blok's Giant with a Dolphin amazed the child on the spot.

How is this, how?! Dolphin - chained, on a leash and cat's paws, a faithful friend and protector? Or a tame, baby, future “amphibian man” ?! And the Giant, what is he like, a Giant? A good master or an evil tyrant? Fantasy promised the most incredible twists and pleasures. Half an hour later, the author brought me back to earth, struck me on the spot: “I, however, saw the knights myself: that giant with a dolphin on his shield ... - Whom Bertrand knocked to the ground? - Yes, I am a witness to that . ” I almost burst into tears. Blok, the worthless symbolist, the murderer of my poetic dreams, has still not been forgiven.

However, today the Block will come in handy. The incident with Blok demonstrates the difference between poetry and prose more clearly than Lotman and Borges. The prose of modern times is organized according to the law of psychological authenticity, and every event in this prose needs historical time and requires a witness . On the contrary, poetry is the overcoming of authenticity, rationality, History, brutal violence against the witness, up to his physical elimination. Poetry is a myth given to us in sensation. Poetry combines the material with the ideal. Today, when the old History has ended and the new one has not yet begun, when the old man is indecently clear, the new one has not yet been born, and the witnesses are corrupt and deceitful, one must rely on music and poetry, otherwise - on will and rhythm. should be cultivated The impossible .

For example a comic. In Russia, where the psychological method is recognized as the only legitimate one, comics are not considered a person. That is, for full-fledged art. Moreover, what is taken for a comic is something completely different from what it actually is. Comics are a type of poetry. As legitimate as syllabonic verse. Comic book technology provides for total externalization . A person turns inside out, psychology seems to fall out into a world that naturally takes on an “all too human” dimension.

But now, when Euclidean space becomes anthropomorphic, the mythopoetic lineage of the comic strip reveals itself. It becomes obvious: comics are everything that was before psychological prose. Deep archaic: Homer and Satyricon, Dante and Tristan.

It is precisely in comic book technology that the absolute masterpiece of the Frenchman Philippe Garel “Tristan” (2003) with the amazing Mathilde Seigner in the title role was made. I'm afraid this picture will not find any understanding in Russia. Pretending to be a pretentious intellectual detective, "Tristan" requires a special lens of perception. "Tristan" appeals to cultural memory and, paradoxical as it may sound in the light of the above, historical consciousness. Meanwhile, the Russian soul manages to combine deliberate respect for Western antiquities with unfounded contempt for the modern “Western”. “But no one except us will mourn for other people’s sacred stones,” I respect in the words of a domestic poet . It’s not true, Westerners are selectively sane. However, like ours: selectively .

Garel's painting actualizes the legend of Tristan and Isolde, but the author is not a postmodernist funnyman, not a glass bead player, but an artist, even a thinker. Moreover, his thinking is not abstract, but real, concrete. At the very beginning, the heroine, a young woman, Police Commissioner Emmanuel Barca (the same M. Seigner ), accepts a cup of coffee from the hands of an assistant. Be careful: this is not only coffee, but - at the same time - the same love drink that drove the sweet couple crazy. Why do I immediately suspect ambivalence? Because I am an attentive and grateful viewer. Within a minute, the heroine unmotivatedly says to another devoted assistant: “It would be nice to put a coffee machine here at the commissariat!” A large, strong actress plays carnal greed and aggressive search for a partner: the drink works. Of course, you can cultivate intellectual distrust and not care about crude comic book tips. But then you are doomed to total misunderstanding. This is exactly how our wise guys watch movies: they self-confidently read narrative patterns into the picture, blocking their vision and hearing. They deceive themselves, and then wrongfully swear at the cunning Western director: they say, he is simple-minded.

Meanwhile, the girls die one after another. Not the slightest trace of violence. Extremely emaciated, trembling: sedative pills in the stomach, a volume of “ Tristan and Isolde ” on the book table. The Barça commissioner suspects the man. Of course, the burning lover, “Tristan,” preoccupied with finding his ideal, abandons one beauty after another. He stuffs him with sleeping pills and moves on, leaving no trace. “Are you sure this is a crime ? - Absolutely sure!”

The intonation with which Garel narrates is incomparable. A combination of skepticism and sarcasm, on the one hand, and total involvement in the myth, on the other. The simplicity of this film is deceptive. His poetics are the fruit of thousands of years of work in French culture, from Chrétien de Troyes to Eric Rohmer and Alain Resnais . Each element of the picture is instantly included in a sophisticated system of correspondences. Reckless, unaccountable romantic passion, first presented in the legend of Tristan and Blonde Isolde, is rightly classified by the commissioner as a crime. Look, the world of the comic book is anthropomorphic, that is, it is permeated through and through, as if by lines of force, with human intentions and passions. Meanwhile, a self-sufficient person, according to the hint of the classical myth, himself gives birth, he himself bears within himself a crime: let us still not take a cup of coffee or sleeping pills too seriously.

This means that we are presented with a plot that puts the most sophisticated detective masters to shame: in Garel, the crime is literally in the air, concentrated in every remark, action, turn of the head, glance. All relevant issues, from Nietzsche and Dostoevsky to Hitchcock and Frisch, flicker like a background, like stage decoration. And all this, mind you, was achieved in an extremely ascetic manner, for one and a half kopecks: technological precision, discipline, a head on your shoulders. And, of course, the great legends that lie at the foundation of Western culture. We, the viewers, are not in last place: by poking around inside the text, we ourselves bring the meanings intended by the author into the picture. Like a virus.

The heroine will simultaneously turn out to be Tristan, Isolde, and a preoccupied bitch. The whole, as expected in myth, will be clearly isomorphic to each of the episodes. The painting will be given special energy by the tension of form, caused by the contradiction between the cyclical nature of the myth and the linear development of the comic book chain.

As for the romantic strategy, no one has been able to expose it as furiously as the surrealist Luis Buñuel did. In 1953, in Mexico, he turned Wuthering Heights Emilia Brontë's into The Abyss of Passion , where, to the sumptuous music of Wagner, he mocked the independent romantic personality and the accompanying passions. Many, however, mistake Buñuel’s brilliant parody for a harmless film adaptation. In Russia, Buñuel was lucky only once: Tarkov’s “Stalker” owes all the best in itself to the brilliant Spaniard. Did you think Strugatsky?

Vladimir Khotinenko , the author of the latest Russian blockbuster "72 Meters", has repeatedly sworn his love for Buñuel. In the film "SV", trying to soar above the bustle, he dissected frogs, but, of course, he did not deceive anyone. “A giant with a dolphin on his shield...”, pitiful prose, infantilism instead of Buñuel’s trademark cruelty.

"72 meters" is another attempt at cruelty . A legend from three years ago (“Kursk”), elevated to the level of a social order. What is this for our dead? For what - alive, sea and land? The producers - Nikita Mikhalkov's studio and Channel One - steal poor Soviet poetics again and again. Another "Crew", only with blood.

But the main thing: again, as in the ever-memorable “Cuckoo”, a session of masochism. It turns out that the submarine "Slavyanka" suffers a disaster, having been blown up by... its own mine from the time of the Patriotic War. Navigator Pyotr Orlov (act. M. Basharov) guessed that in this way his dead grandfather, a miner, had taken revenge on him, from whom a certain submariner had once stolen a girl. They say, don’t go, granddaughter, to become a submariner: I’ll tear you apart and drown you! In paintings of this extreme genre, there are no random phrases. " Our dead " won't leave us alone? The plot is too strong for inept post-Soviet filmmakers. The dead grandfather is named and forgotten. The bomb destroyed the submarine, and again no one is to blame. More precisely, the Russians themselves are fools! Previously, our history began in the 17th year, now in the 91st.

Quasi-psychologism turned into comic couplets. The story of screenwriter Zalotukha and director Khotinenko seems to be playing out in the head of a child, dreaming of exploits, but not yet able to imagine horror and limits. Listen to how and what the characters in the picture are talking about. A snotty child is an unreliable witness.

To begin with, it would be good to master everyday life. Learn the simplest thing: “Mom washed the frame.” Or “Mom Got Married,” it was such a competent, stagnant movie . And only then: Death, Feat, accompanying poetic paths, alien sacred stones.

Finally, don't despise the comic. It will come in handy.