Igor Mantsov. Traitor

Traitor
Igor Mantsov

Publication date: March 31, 2004

Vladimir Khotinenko’s film “72 Meters” still had the only chance. Nothing surprising: even the most hopeless, most resentful losers are given a chance by fate. So, the only promising line of the picture is the Garmash line . Of course, not God knows what, not Mannerheim’s line, but a real prospect of saving the film some kind of life. It was necessary to gain a foothold, hold the bridgehead with teeth, and then go on the offensive, cultivating in the character of Sergei Garmash the best and the worst that was inadvertently embedded. Okay, let Garmash be useful to me. I will use it as a live bait to catch big, big fish, Ridley Scott . At our box office they called the latter’s film “The Magnificent Scam,” apparently believing that post-Soviet people are only sold on the idea of ​​“theft,” only on the concept of “fraud.” The movie is actually called Matchstick Men . As they say, feel the difference.

And yet Garmash. His character is remembered for his reluctance to let three comrades from the sunken compartments into the first surviving compartment of the submarine. Garmash convincingly referred to the instructions, insisted that it was prohibited, it was dangerous, that not only three unfortunate people could die, but also ten lucky ones from compartment number one. I believed in Garmash’s psychological viability . His cowardly protest is the only sane dramatic move. Garmash, of course, is wrong; the meanness itself spoke through Garmash’s lips. As they say, perish and save your comrade, no doubt about it. On the other hand, where “you can’t argue”, art ends. Propaganda begins.

Even better is a sailor's land story. On earth he has a wife, a daughter of marriageable age and a meager salary. The authors emphasize social contradictions: the wife has absolutely no respect for her poor relative and cheats on him with an effective manager from a food stall. Either the wife or the daughter, I don’t remember, refuses the gold earrings that the sailor bought as a gift with borrowed money. The officer, completely destroyed by his women, did not fulfill his official duty: he did not check the combat readiness of the rescue suits. Because of this, the survivors are about to die a second time...

In essence, Ridley Scott's two-hour masterpiece follows the same plot, which was condensed by Vladimir Khotinenko into three or four lines in passing. Where ours parasitize on social issues, Ridley Scott rightly emphasizes the anthropological difference: age and gender . I myself am for social justice. But there is, as they say, a higher court, that is, an irrevocable difference and insurmountable contradictions.

Magnificent Nicolas Cage plays a midlife crisis. His hero has been divorced for a long time. At the time of separation, the wife was two months pregnant. Cage gave her a black eye and she naturally left. "It could have been anyone's baby!" - he now makes excuses and secretly dreams of a new quality of life. Well, yes, deep down, Cage wants to be a Father. “Are you thinking about her ? ” asks the psychologist . “ Are you thinking about what could happen next?” - “Sometimes. When I look at a school bus...” Actually, the entire film is a sophisticated phantasm of the hero, as if rehearsing the role of his father, trying on his guise. The so-called “scam” is just a trick, a packaging of a genuine, anthropological plot.

So, what happens in the picture is a projection of the inner world of a hysterical middle-aged man. All the characters, except for the ex-wife and the current wife, who, in essence, are the same person, deceive the hero, lead him by the nose, set him up and thus “teach life.” Full of irony and sarcasm, Ridley Scott's opus is a kind of novel of the Father's upbringing .

Of course, the authors directly relate the plot to Hitchcock's. The best film of all time, "Vertigo" , here is the password and starting point for the reporting picture. In essence, Cage's character is a version of James Stewart's character from Hitchcock's film. Ridley Scott and his screenwriters do not hide the secondary nature of their opus. They are not shy about the secondary, because the plot is not the main thing here. Stewart's hero was afraid of heights, Cage's hero was afraid of open space and dirt. The difference is that Stewart is a former police officer, now a private detective, and Cage is a con man and a swindler. Essentially a thief.

Cage stubbornly clings to his philosophy of fraud, defending it both from his psychologist and his new teenage daughter . In essence, this position is something between the ideology of a playboy and Robin Hood. "I cheated, but I never took too much!" - “So, are you a role model?” - "Yes!"

However, no one is completely confident in himself, especially a rapidly aging single man. All his doubts, fears and complexes are rooted in the plot and personified. Ridley Scott's film is a successful attempt, unlike Tarkov's "Mirror", to visualize the internal monologue!

Apparently, Cage is tormented by his conscience. And then consciousness resorts to autotherapy, to that very “magnificent scam” of taking away a lot of money, which is carried out against Cage by his accomplice, young, aspiring Frank ( actor Sam Rockwell ).

Cage wants to take care of someone, that is, to grow up himself. And then he begins to pull back his daughter who appeared out of nowhere: “You did everything wrong!” As if he, a fraudster, knows how to do it right! "That's not how girls behave! And - shame on you, shame on you!" - In some places the dialogues are wonderfully good.

At the same time, the hero is not confident in his right to be a Father, in his human capabilities. And then, with a genius roll of his eyes, Cage mutters something like: “She hates me. It’s all my fault. I lost my daughter!” Or: "I'm a bad father. I know it. I can't even sort out my problems." He persuades not the psychologist, but himself: “I’m not afraid to be a father. You see, I’m not afraid!”

It seems to him that his daughter might get into trouble: “You are fourteen years old, and you have already been to the police!” - “He started grabbing my chest, what should I do?” - Indeed, the world is merciless towards 14-year-old girls. It seems to him that she doesn’t fully appreciate him: “You’re not bad, you’re just not very good!”

Finally, the main danger. It seems to Cage that the growing daughter only needs money from her Father. Her participation in a grandiose scam to take away his money on the side of his enemy is the personification of precisely this Fear, turning into Horror.

Ridley Scott masterfully carries this theme through the entire film. Here the daughter (by the way, the infinitely charming Alison Lohman) persistently follows her father into the bank, insidiously approaching his personal safe deposit box: “How much, tell me, how much?! Three hundred thousand, five hundred, a million?!” As irresistible as her spontaneity is, the sincerity of her love for the Father is just as problematic. And, mind you, this was done not through didactic chatter, but through sophisticated dramaturgy and impeccable acting. Gradually, unobtrusively. And whoever wants can, of course, read from the screen a meaningless plot “from the life of swindlers.” This is the so-called “healthy market”.

So, the Father is afraid that his daughter only wants money from him, while he can give her much more: his love and care. And these fears are completely justified. From a certain point on, the daughter really doesn't need his love and really only needs his money. There comes a time when the Father must be replaced by the Husband, when the Father becomes unnecessary and therefore feels deceived . That's what this amazing, almost great picture by Ridley Scott is really about!

When, a year later, by chance, Cage meets his "daughter", his liar , with some young bastard, the so-called "scam" is deciphered. Its true meaning becomes obvious. The authors present the anthropological equivalent of a seemingly meaningless crime story “from the lives of swindlers.”

However, that's not all. If Vladimir Khotinenko declared both the main enemy and the traitor of a middle-aged man to be his wife, then Ridley Scott rightly challenged this point of view. He leads the hero to understand the fact that his wife is still not a traitor, but at least an ally. It is no coincidence that the saleswoman from the supermarket, who throughout the film was “looking closely” at Cage, turns out to be strikingly similar to his former enemy, his ex-wife. Cage also takes a closer look and gradually recognizes this woman of the same age as his wife .

Final shot: the wife is pregnant, Cage leans over her belly, listening to the child. History has come full circle and closed in on itself. This is an eternal story without options: the one who is born, abandons, betrays, rejects her father’s love and will be right.