A horror movie with an idea

Kirill Serebrennikov staged Martin McDonagh’s play “The Pillowman” at the Moscow Art Theater

White tiles on the walls and floor; A man is sitting at the table with a small bag on his head. This is the main character, his name is Katurian Katurian (the role went to Anatoly Bely), and the play begins with an interrogation conducted by two investigators, Tupolsky (Sergei Sosnovsky) and Ariel (Yuri Chursin). The story takes place in a certain totalitarian country - but it is totalitarian only for the convenience of the author. In Ireland, where Martin McDonagh's heroes usually live and die, the justice machine works the same way as throughout the civilized world, that is, with mistakes, of course, but strictly following the procedure. The accused murderer will not only be interrogated, but also shown to a psychiatrist, and a jury will decide his fate. Here, in the play “The Pillow Man,” staged by Kirill Serebrennikov at the Moscow Art Theater, investigators only need to achieve a confession, and the person will be shot.

For the first fifteen minutes it seems that some variations on the theme of Kafka’s “The Trial” are being played out on stage. The hero does not understand what he is accused of, and he is expected to make his own assumptions on this topic. (At the same time they beat him, so much so that his whole face is covered with blood.) Katurian is a writer and, seeing a folder with his manuscripts on the table, he assumes that they found something “political” in his writings; He immediately assures that he has never written anything “like that” and if someone thought something was wrong, he is ready to correct it immediately. He was never interested in politics - all four hundred of his stories tell of how adults torture and kill children.

Then the investigators thrust under his nose a box with material evidence found in the defendant’s house, and it turns out that three children were killed in the city, the scenarios of sadistic murders completely coincide with the plots of Katurian’s stories, and in the box is what is left of the children (in in particular, severed fingers).

Ugh. You know, I don’t even want to retell this anymore. Without details: in fact, the children were killed by the mentally ill brother of the writer, to whom he had the imprudence to read his stories. In the finale, the hero is still shot, and he himself does not want leniency, it is only important to him that the police do not destroy the manuscripts. That is, this is a story about the author’s responsibility for the world he creates and at the same time about the author’s pride.

The linear story of interrogation and discovery of the truth (by both the investigators and the hero himself) includes dramatizations of Katurian’s stories. About a child who was tortured for seven years by his own parents, for example. A little boy in a white shirt walks along the white-white tiles; adults are bending over his white-white crib with concentrated, sadistic faces. (Pa and Ma are played by Vasily Nemirovich-Danchenko and Anzhelika Nemirovich-Danchenko. An accident? Or, when choosing actors, Serebrennikov imagined one of the founders of the theater as a tormenting “parent”? Unknown.) The baby pours a pot of “ blood": red spots look good on white. There is also a story about a girl who considered herself Jesus - her parents, who were tired of her, first crucified her and then buried her alive. (The girl smiles, spreading her arms on the cross, and red ribbons flow through her fingers.)

In “The Pillow Man” (the play is named after one of the stories of the hero-writer, this is a character who persuaded children to commit suicide so as not to suffer further in life), the actors work diligently, Anatoly Bely and Alexey Kravchenko are especially good. The latter got the role of the sick brother, and he is frighteningly, physiologically accurate. But the Moscow Art Theater education clearly interferes: the artists are embarrassed to swear on stage, that is, the corresponding words do not turn into natural interjections, they stick out from the text, the performers seem to push them out of themselves. The director still has to work hard to ensure that the artists fit into his reality.

Narratives in the style of pioneer camp horror films seem incredibly witty to Serebrennikov - and one can simply imagine how happy he was when composing yet another “bloody” scene. But a four-hour show doesn’t match Scary Movie, because the American film had no other goal than an honest desire to make you laugh. Serebrennikov conveys a certain message - the story is recognized as having a happy ending, because the writer’s creations were not destroyed after all, but were put away in the archive for fifty years. One hope is that if this is an archive of criminal cases, then in fifty years the sadistic writings will be sent to a waste paper plant for recycling. As Dmitry Bykov said in one of his poems, “You’re lying, saying you have ideas, but you just like to beat children.”

Anna GORDEEVA