Steppe Regiment

The scripts of Lutsyk and Samoryadov have been republished - the lost treasure of literature of the 90s

Petr Lutsyk, Alexey Samoryadov. Collected works. Orenburg: Orenburg Book, 2016.

Petr Lutsyk and Alexey Samoryadov - in 2016, these names already require a biographical certificate; So, Lutsyk and Samoryadov are the most successful and sought-after screenwriters of the 90s, the authors of the texts on which “Dyuba-Dyuba”, “Gongofer”, “Limit”, “Savoy” and “Children of the Cast Iron Gods” were filmed, owners of “Nika” "and the Kinotavr special prize, the unfulfilled future of Russian cinema. Samoryadov died at the age of 31, climbing from balcony to balcony in a Yalta hotel. Lutsyk made a film based on their joint script “Outskirts” - by all accounts, the only movie at least somewhat equal to their texts - and died in his sleep at 40 years old. Five years ago, their collection was published by the Ekaterinburg publishing house “Gonzo”; now their collected works (the same texts plus the script “Quiet” written at VGIK) have been published in Orenburg, Samoryadov’s homeland. From the books it is clear that these two were good screenwriters, but remained completely unnoticed as great Russian writers.

It is also common to say that films based on their scripts did not live up to the original source; Lutsyk and Samoryadov themselves did not go out of their way to talk to the directors, and even removed their names from the credits. Lutsyk was indignant that we were writing about heroes, but we were filming some freaks. In the early 90s, texture - both life and script - pushed people to show the “leaden abominations of life” on screen; a typical setting in their texts is a dorm, an abandoned house, an apartment with only a mattress as furniture; the world where everything was taken from. And the action in this place also seems to be absent, it moves and does not move: someone is constantly running somewhere, bumping into strangers, fighting, drinking vodka, mining and immediately losing a lot of money. Here it is not always possible to identify a coherent plot, with a plot and a climax; events unfold according to the logic of a drunken spree, when at any moment you can break loose and rush off to God knows where in a taxi, getting into unpredictable troubles along the way, just like that, for no reason. The heroes of the first scripts by Lutsyk and Samoryadov seem to be dragged by an unknown force, and along the way something happens to them that makes them different - and this transformation is quite difficult to catch on film.

Lutsyk was indignant that we were writing about heroes, but they were filming some freaks

In the first and best scripts by Lutsyk and Samoryadov (“Dyuba-Dyuba” and “Locust Festival”), at some point the walls disappear, from the recognizable dark interiors of the early 90s - booze bars, train stations, dorms - the action is transferred to a place where there is no no time, no interiors: river, steppe, desert. The screenwriting student in “Dyuba-Dyube” goes to buy a random acquaintance from his hometown out of prison - and goes on the run with her, into the wilderness, to the outskirts where no one has set foot. The hero of “The Locust Festival” goes on a business trip by train, gets out to take a breath at a stop, gets hit on the head - and ends up somewhere in the Eurasian expanses, where it is almost impossible to find a sip of water or a person who understands Russian, and at any moment he can anything can happen. Both eventually return to the city, to civilization, and both find themselves physically unable to survive there: they are deprived of some important part of their humanity, turning partly into animals, partly into heroes. The characters of Lutsyk and Samoryadov always stand in the face of death, and with each new scenario this standing moves from the genre of existential drama into the space of epic, from “Breathless” to “Northern Odyssey” - and the heroes at the same time lose their professions and everyday signs, and turn out to be people in general. Russians in general.

Lutsyk and Samoryadov managed to create their own complete world and their own myth; this myth largely inherits Soviet style and iconography; it is no coincidence that the only adequate embodiment of these texts on the screen was “Outskirts” - with a title from Barnet, stylized after Dovzhenko. But this is not the Soviet world with cozy evenings over tea in front of the TV, which is now customary to remember nostalgically and to the creation of which the authors had a hand in the “Russian Project” on ORT (Samoryadov, for example, came up with the phrase “Dima, wave your hand to mom”) - this is the world coming from Andrei Platonov, interior Russia, hidden, washed in blood, so similar and different from Russia of the 90s. This is the world after the disaster; it could be one of the spaces of Sorokin’s “Telluria”, in it “hearths of civilization” have been destroyed and “moral norms” have been lost, in it the same “collapse into archaism” that we now fear has already occurred, but it did not happen through patriotic rhetoric on TV, but because there is nothing left in this world except the original archaic elements. It is painted with simple strokes: earth, bread, weapons; there are no details of clothing or names of dishes - it is always just “put on a clean shirt” or “take vodka and meat.” Another non-obvious association is Bashlachev; the dream that the Russian soul will come out from under oppression and unfold in the open - however, Lutsyk and Samoryadov are much more restrained in their pochvennichestvo. They are not only about how “the soul walks,” but also about how the soul loses its human traits, their world is bewitching and scary, and they look at it with a sly squint: thus, “Children of the Cast Iron Gods” is formally an epic story about super-bogatyrs moving steel shafts at the factory - in places a very funny text, written with almost Sorokinsky irony.

The world is painted with simple strokes: land, bread, weapons; there are no details of clothing or names of dishes - it’s always just “put on a clean shirt” or “take vodka and meat”

There is a great temptation to deduce from these texts the current renaissance of the “Russian World”. From Lutsykov’s “dashing people” to Kiselev’s evening broadcast, very tangible threads can be stretched: these epic heroes can also sometimes dream of a big war, with America, and with Italy, and certainly with Switzerland, “otherwise they are sitting on the sidelines.” Apparently, the impulses that force people to go as volunteers to the Donbass are really caught here, but this is not “imperial consciousness” and, God forbid, not a craving for the reunification of Russian lands - this is the will to death: “I look around: if only everything would burn down quickly and die “Everything so that not a single scumbag remains alive, and so I feel joyful and bright, as if on a holy holiday!” The only openly “positive program” of Lutsyk-Samoryadov, the story “Good People”, begins as the embodiment of the fantasies of perestroika publicists Strelyany and Chernichenko - all district committees and party committees are expelled from the Cossack farm and they begin to build a stanitsa people’s republic, with their own business projects, a proto-parliament and counterintelligence, and in the finale it breaks off mid-sentence and ends with a scene of mass execution. The heroes of Lutsyk-Samoryadov do not believe in ideological phantoms and are always ready to step over the threshold of conventional morality - and to pay for this they will be left alone with the dark pagan elements that rule the world, because there is nothing left in it except the elements. “He drove out to the square, and near the church there were people, all with dark faces and silently digging the ground with knives. And next to him a boy, about ten years old, sits on a bench and looks at him. He drove closer, and the boy stood up and said: go home, Konnov. God has turned away from the Russians, I am your last angel left. Go and live as you are, it won’t get better. Then Konnov leaned over from the saddle and grabbed him in the throat with a knife. Since he turned away, then we don’t need the last angel, we will find another God. And he galloped away."

And one last thing. I understand that this is against the rules of the genre, but something needs to be done. Dear publishers, please take these texts and publish them so that everyone can buy them. Yekaterinburg and Orenburg are great, but, by God, this book deserves more than to decorate the libraries in the author’s homeland. It is not necessary to cover such a huge volume - there are scripts here about which it is clear that “money was needed” or “the time was such”, but “Dyuba-Dyuba”, “Locust Festival”, “Children of the Cast Iron Gods”, “Wind”, “ Good People”, “Wild Field” - this is something that should stand on the same shelf with Platonov, Trifonov, Astafiev, name any name from the first row of Soviet literature. Do not think that I am doing this for ideological reasons: only very damaged eyesight can see in these texts the same blood, soil and rhymes with Kiselyov. This world is not only scary and visceral, it is amazingly beautiful. The scenes where the heroes of "Dyuba-Dyuba" are caught up by a red-bearded man on a motorboat and silently rides parallel with them, where Ignat from "Cast Iron Gods" robs a train, cutting the roof with a welding machine as he goes, where the heroes of "The Wind" stifle a giant catfish with a spear - this some kind of magic, it is impossible to forget. Publish and read this, this is our great, without exaggeration, literature, it was written by people who lived nearby and just seemed to be successful and in demand - and we don’t even really know anything about their texts. What kind of people are they?