KIRA'S Feast

KINOBODKA

After last year's triumph of Russian cinema in Venice, the attention to our films from both the press and the public is special. Three Russian films in various programs of the Venice Film Festival Director of the Venice Film Festival...

After last year's triumph of Russian cinema in Venice, the attention to our films from both the press and the public is special. Three Russian films - in various programs of the Venice Film Festival

Director of the Venice Film Festival Marco Muller said one strange thing: we wanted to remind the audience about the history of Russian cinema and therefore we considered the best presentation of the new film by Kira Muratova out of competition, in the proper company of the classics (Chabrol and others). Vaguely, he also hinted that next year one of the Russian masters - "I will not reveal to you his (or her) name" - will receive the honorary "Golden Lion".

Some believe that Muratova herself could refuse to participate in the competition, "so as not to risk it." Is that Kira? Smear yourself with silver, like a clown depicting a sculpture on the street, in order to suddenly shy away in the direction of a lonely passerby?

A classic without a single international award. Never passed the road of the triumphant. What the hell are "honorary" "Lions"? Kira Georgievna Muratova is that “living classic”, where the emphasis is, of course, on the first word. Not just alive, but the embodiment of modernity, stuffed with such a powerful pulse that the black and white, but rather the light gray fabric of her latest film, The Adjuster, literally trembles and shimmers with all the colors of the rainbow. What a "story"! Product of the very first freshness, milk of evening milking. She returned to black and white, as a sophisticated Chinese calligrapher goes back to a single hieroglyph, in which there is a mountain, and a cloud, and a spirit, and a mess of flesh. The director extinguishes the sensory oversaturation of his picture. The impossible luxury of sound, intonation, light, smell, taste. Everything subordinates the unprecedented subtlety and accuracy of the game. That is, Games. Togo, partly even painful overexcitation, to which she gave and gives her life. And in this sense, she is really out of competition - because in fact she never competes with anyone, but only plays. It plays richer, more fun, wiser, more difficult and, of course, easier, as it should be for the Master, the guru, having gone through earthly life exactly to half. Not more. But no less.

Everyone already knows the plot of The Adjuster. A crooked musician (Georgy Deliev from the Mask Show), instigated by his beauty (Renata Litvinova), rubs himself under the guise of a tuner on an aging lady (Alla Demidova) and her confidante (Nina Ruslanova), as simple as a felt boot, and then cheats the aunts that your Celentano. Simple? More than. I don't even remember the writer's name. Chetvertkov or Koshkin, something like that.

Toulouse-Lautrec was inspired by prostitutes, Dostoevsky - by the court chronicle. And then the game began. The art of calligraphy reduced to a polished hieroglyph that encapsulates shining abysses.

The clown nature of the "Mask Show", Litvinova, Jean Daniel reacts with the cultivated tragedy of Alla Demidova, with the picturesque power of Ruslanova, in order to turn the picture of life in the most wild angle before the blurred eye of the viewer, break the stereotype of a simple comedy scam and show high clowning, where each gesture is at the same time comical and crushes the heart with the nearness of death, and therefore is understandable to everyone.

Kira Muratova came to clowning in the middle of the way, at one fine moment to the question of Chaplin and Fellini: “Will you be the third?” answering: "I will." I think that The Adjuster will be written about as her best film by those who are ready to see in it not a melodrama and not even a comedy, but that ancient street action, denoted by the Greek word “tragos”, which means “goat”. Great risk of merging the ugly with the beautiful. As it was already in "Three Stories" - a fatal destiny embedded in each of the masks. Therefore, here is Alla Demidova with her trick of rock, Litvinova with her "hookedness", Ruslanova, who surprisingly feels the inner comedy of tragedy as a common grain of life. That's why the clowns are here. Therefore, here is a crazy homeless glutton, over whom a beauty has temporarily gained power: not in order to feed, and not in order to show off in front of her, and not in order to compose and wonderfully play a wonderfully funny scene. And in order to bring the focus of the convex-concave mirror lenses even more clearly, set fire to the goat's tail, push the tragedy off the coturnes and knock it into a triple somersault.

We know from the very beginning how everything will end. That Andryushenka will terribly deceive Anna Sergeevna. That the next groom will deceive the overripe Lyuba. That the unfortunate aunts will forgive the "poor boy" because he punished the reptile groom and became their joy, and - "what a soft touch!"

But we do not know the main thing: Kira Muratova is not only an accomplice, she is the ideologist of deception. It was she who quietly replaced rock with improvisation, and masks with painted, but full of personal life, wayward faces. Because the magic of the clowning hieroglyph is that it is mobile. I remember how Lenya Leikin, a superclass clown, staged a "clown" act of "Don Quixote" at the Theater of a New Play and taught, kid, honored dramatic artists: don't be afraid of anything! Everything is possible: to pour a sack of sand into the stalls, to sit on someone's knees, to ski up the wall. Everything is possible here. If it's clear why.

Kira Muratova understands why the beautiful Litvinova in high heels (view from below) clumsily descends the fire escape. It is clear why, in the amazing scene on the shore, Andryusha smears Lina's lips and immediately kisses. It is clear why the elephant-like bespectacled homeless woman rummages through the garbage, and then demonstrates the “beautiful” blue stripes on her flaw. It is clear why the mannered esthete Jean Daniel works in a public toilet. It is clear that Alla Demidova is a wonderful clown, and Georgy Deliev is an excellent dramatic actor.

And in carnival Venice this should be understood, as nowhere else. They don't get it, that's their problem. And Muratova, surrounded by flutes and drums, is already clinking glasses for victory with those two who invited her to the best of the tables without any competition.