| The “Golden Calf” is cursed far and wide I don’t remember a single television event that the media booed with such unanimity. Everyone attacked Ulyana Shilkina’s series; This is exactly how Ostap himself was torn to shreds by the Romanian border guards at the end of the novel (Chapter XXXVI). The only difference is that the “damned Siguranza” eventually received tangible benefits.
“The picture is absolutely untalented in all its components,” writes Valery Kichin in an article wittily titled “Ostap Moved.” “...We can already talk about the style of the film. I would describe this very style with the word “cool,” argues Leonid Pavlyuchik in the article “Where is the Wildebeest Rushing?” “What do we have with the goose? One party-going, glamorous cutie-protagonist, whose backup dancers are a bunch of semi-famous actors, intimidated by the radiance of the main character...,” Igor Kamirov (“Gilded Menshikov”) fires buckshot at the performers. Here Irina Petrovskaya joins the chorus of detractors, whose judgments and, just as importantly, whose intonations I am accustomed to trust. “And with such and such an “oak” (that’s the name of the series “In the First Circle” on the Russia channel - A.S.) a “calf” - albeit a “golden one” - decided to fight. Almost from the very first frames of Ulyana Shilkina’s television work, it became clear: this “animal” is in principle incapable of butting heads - as they say, God did not give horns to a lively cow.” Well, you know, Panfilov, did he do something stupid or even give a damn? I'm sorry, I think I've caught your virus, it's time to get treatment...
I can think of only three reasons why “The Golden Calf” is being so reviled. First: the director and artists get everything that should have gone to the head of Channel One, Konstantin Ernst, who, in the fight for the viewer, behaved both shamelessly and not very smartly. The comic romance of Ilf and Petrov had to give way to the heroics of Solzhenitsyn. We are talking here not about a competition among television companies or about the rules of good manners, but about cultural priorities: “In the first circle” is more important.
There are many things to dislike about Panfilov’s work, most notably its general tone. The style of the series inexorably adapts Solzhenitsyn’s novel to Rybakov’s “Children of the Arbat”; If it weren't for the author's voice-over, the difference might not have been noticed. Panfilov’s air of time turned out to be somehow artificially clean and air-conditioned. Alas, in movies he almost always turns out this way; I think only Yuri German managed to understand its composition, its saturation with asphyxiating substances in the film “Khrustalev, the car!” But this has nothing to do with the matter. To impose a false choice on the TV viewer - suffer with Nerzhin or have fun with Bender - is humanly not good: critics could not help but react to this.
Reason two: this is our critical kitchen. “The Golden Calf” is so aggressively scolded already because at one time they weakly scolded the previous series of Channel One, the disgusting “Yesenin”. Of course, there is no logic in this, but there is something that is stronger than logic, a habit: if you don’t pepper enough in one article, you will definitely pepper it in another.
Reason three: it is possible that Shilkina’s series is really no good, and I’m the only one who doesn’t understand this. I see, if not in the director’s moves, then in the acting works of Menshikov, Devotchenko, Nazarov, Tatarenkov (as well as Badalov, Efremov, Svetin) logic, charm, and a certain novelty: well, then you need to realize the nature of your own mistake.
Apparently, I need to start with the fact that I always saw the thirty-three-year-old hero of “The Golden Calf” as a man very tired of life and only imitating his former gaiety. There is little left of the former charming swindler, a seeker not so much for diamonds as for adventure in his own seat (remember how tirelessly he jumped from scam to scam). Just enough to do the last thing and disappear completely: in Svidrigailov’s style, go to America, even to the South. And this, it seems to me, is quite close to what Oleg Menshikov played already in the initial episodes.
Perhaps this is close to his acting nature, at least to the upper layers. None of the actors declared as often as Menshikov their professional laziness, habit of sybarism, and reluctance to spend money: “I love rest and feel most beautiful when people don’t bother me” (from a November interview in MK). Of course, part of it is the pose, but it’s not just the pose. The image of the sybarite actor is deliberately contrasted with the image of the hard worker actor (say, Yevgeny Mironov), and the image of the martyr actor, a hostage of his own gift (say, the late Oleg Dahl), and any of the images of the democratic actor, implying a spiritual kinship with the public. Go away, what does a peaceful artist care about you...
Menshikov, like Bender in The Golden Calf, doesn’t really want to get down to business. Even if this is his favorite (at least very pleasant) thing.
Those moments of the series in which Menshikov’s character makes the wrong bet and understands: I missed are very dear to me. For example, an excellent acting duet with Alexey Devotchenko at the beginning of the fourth episode, when Bender tries to return a tin of money to Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko: how wonderfully mutual hatred flares up towards the end of the conversation! Of course, the duet of Yursky and Evstigneev was just as excellent, but this open hatred was not played in the old “Golden Calf”. There the tournament began, here we have a duel, Bender, who missed, receives a serious wound, and Koreiko-Devotchenko inflicts it with gloomy pleasure. The character, generally speaking, was invented in a very interesting way: a whitish fanatic, almost a maniac, in the future most likely a city madman with the habits of a Stingy Knight - this could only be invented when the power of money returned in all its tangibility.
If the director came up with such a Koreiko, bravo to Ulyana Shilkina; However, I don’t really believe this. She could suggest something to the actor, but it’s unlikely that she could come up with something on her own. I don't think she's untalented at all. She turned out to be weak-willed, indulgent in all kinds of nonsense (unsightly animation, curly-haired Polykhaev and his secretary in Hercules, extras in Voronya Slobodka, etc. in the same spirit), but this is a different matter. The mediocrities that rise to the top, as a rule, are distinguished by an iron will and the energy of a jackhammer: precisely the energy, the director’s command, is not felt at all in Shilkina. However, does the debutante Shilkina have much more mistakes than the imperious master Bortko in “The Master and Margarita”?
Not by much. And, in my opinion, there are no less acting successes: a whole scattering of them. The giant child Kozlevich performed by Dmitry Nazarov is a generous, witty work, rich in invention: how sweetly he, for example, reads out a list of crimes against humanity committed by the Catholic Church, how he unfolds a crumpled piece of paper, what intonation he finds: he drives away the priests, how novice - demons. Nikita Tatarenkov with his clear-eyed Balaganov could even be called the discovery of the year, if you don’t remember how accurately and seriously he, while still a student, played Kolenka Ivolgin in Sergei Zhenovach’s “The Idiot” (this was eleven years ago on the stage of Malaya Bronnaya). Mikhail Efremov very effectively invented a pseudo-Chekhov: a beard, pince-nez, completely empty eyes under the glasses and wild complacency: “The pain in the stomach has already begun!” - how wonderfully Lokhankin savors these newly invented “sores.” I could continue the list of successes for a long time, and even for the rejected Panikovsky-Okunev I would find a kind word. At other moments, his character is very similar to the ragged chieftain Burnash from “The Elusive Avengers”; he has a suppressed anger that Gerdt did not have at all, and this is, perhaps, closer to the novel by Ilf and Petrov. But still, it was not in vain that it was said: placer.
Gems that need to be examined individually, without paying attention to the bad, who can argue, frame. To appreciate them, you need to take a closer look and work hard: that’s why it took me a long time to talk about why “The Golden Calf” is so dear to me, and I’m afraid it’s boring. It was possible to get out much faster and more effectively, but others had already done it. Alexander SOKOLYANSKY |
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