Translated material
A lesson to good fellows
"Stardust" on Moscow screens
By all indications, the main fantasy of this summer should have been (and indeed it was, judging primarily by box office receipts and general excitement) the new “Harry Potter”. But if you don’t succumb to planetary psychosis and approach the fairy-tale business with all seriousness, then you have to admit that the new school year at Hogwarts School of Wizardry doesn’t look so exciting compared to the adventures of a young man named Tristran (that’s right, with seemingly additional and an unnecessary “r”), who left his home village and walked through the wall surrounding it into a magical land, where a star had just fallen literally before everyone’s eyes.Tristran (Charlie Cox) plans to find a celestial body and give it to his beloved Victoria (Sienna Miller). But, having reached the place of the fall, the fairy-tale hero discovers that the star, of course, fell, but turned into a charming girl Yvaine (Claire Danes), whom Tristran must now protect and protect. And there is someone to protect and protect her from - at least, the evil sorceress Lamia (Michelle Pfeiffer) is showing increased attention to the shooting star, who wants to use it to find the secret of eternal youth. And the many sons - living and dead - of Lord Stormhold (Peter O'Toole) are going to use Yvaine in the battle for the throne...
"Stardust" is a film adaptation without further ado of the magnificent book by Neil Gaiman - today's main creator of strange and magical stories ("American Gods", "Anansi Children", "Carolina", "Smoke and Mirrors"), an excellent English writer , whose books have become a real gift for those who have already memorized all of Stephen King and all of Clive Barker, but have not lost interest in high-quality fantasy prose. Despite the maelstrom of amazing adventures, Stardust is a very earthly fantasy in which the characters' personalities play no less a role than their inherent magical properties, and manifestations of feelings go far beyond the long-awaited Harry Potter kiss. Western critics in their reviews liken “Stardust” to “a Steven Spielberg film, based on a script that was intended for Terry Gilliam,” but, perhaps, neither Spielberg nor Gilliam has stood up to this level for a long time.
Fortunately, all the merits of Gaiman’s book were transferred to the screen intact - an incredible number of very good actors (in addition to those mentioned above, Rupert Everett, Jason Flemyng, Sir Ian McKellan, Ricky Gervais, Dexter Fletcher shine in the film - you can’t remember them all ) revel in the opportunity to spend some time in a wonderfully imagined, exciting and truly magical world, the likes of which have not been seen perhaps since The Lord of the Rings. Director Matthew Vaughn (who recently made his debut with the wonderful Layer Cake, perhaps the best British crime film since the classic opuses of Guy Ritchie) has made a movie just for the whole family, where kids will be delighted with the magic perfectly embodied in special effects, teenagers will be able to identify with the main characters, who very convincingly learn about love and responsibility, and adults...
Adults will not be left out either. If only because at some point a flying ship, staffed by a crew of air pirates, is flying across the sky of a parallel world, led by Captain Shakespeare (that’s right, no more, no less), played by Robert De Niro. And this is what is called a deadly number. The most striking character in the film, a filibuster without fear or reproach, a beetle “on his own mind”, noble and majestic in his own way, he not only pulls the hypothetical blanket of the audience’s attention towards himself, but pulls it off in one second, turns into it, as if imagining he pretends to be a patrician patient of a mental hospital, and at the same time makes such a face that, having seen it, no more or less self-possessed person is able to sleep normally for at least another week. Even the most eccentric and uncontrollable pirate of recent times - Captain Jack Sparrow - seems compared to De Niro as a cold-blooded Terminator with a frozen face-mask - it is absolutely impossible to resist Denirov’s theater of facial expressions and gestures, and one does not want to. And the fact that in one of the episodes De Niro dances in a skirt need not be mentioned at all - it needs to be seen. And preferably more than once. One can only envy those for whom Stardust turns out to be their favorite childhood film.