Airbags

The incredible happened: Alexey Balabanov’s film “Cargo 200” was shown on our television. The discussion during the “Closed Screening” (at “First”) was no less shocking than the film itself. To hear how the President of the Guild of Film Critics Viktor Matizen and film critic Leonid Pavlyuchik, together with the communist Savitskaya and singer Loza, defend Soviet power from the attacks of Alexander Mitta, Andrei Smirnov, Andrei Plakhov, Daniil Dondurei and Alexei Balabanov, is truly akin to shock! The compositions and arguments of the teams “for” and “against” were striking in their unpredictability. Who would have thought that the author of the brightest Soviet films, the absolutely Soviet director Alexander Mitta, with such genuine pain, with such sincerity, would support the difficult, painful film of Alexei Balabanov! “Cargo 200” could not leave anyone indifferent, even the presenter Gordon defiantly stepped out of his role as a presenter, calling the film “crap” (however, the presenter Alexander Gordon was never known for his impartiality, which is what makes him interesting).

“Cargo 200” has already become a part of our cultural history, but even though it excited, outraged, and shook up the thinking part of society, it did not change anything in our consciousness. The period of “return” turned out to be stormy, but short. At one time, intellectuals had high hopes for the film “Repentance” by Tengiz Abuladze. The effect was the same: shock, heated debate and silence. This is how the airbag deploys in the event of an accident.

Another television event of the month is also related to cinema: the series “Apostol” (“The First”) attracted the attention of the audience with its vibrant cast, detective intrigue and military-historical background. “The Apostle” left a strange impression: a mixture of bewilderment and admiration at the impudence of the scriptwriters and directors (at least two scriptwriters, and at least three directors). The authors, zombified by Soviet box-office detectives, crammed into their creation everything that their childhood subcortex had preserved - from “The Exploit of a Scout” to “Gentlemen of Fortune.” At some point, this whole explosive mixture exploded in my mind, and I began to watch “The Apostle” as a black comedy. Then everything fell into place: Fomenko-Khramov, generously smeared with raspberry jam, and the messenger Karl Ivanovich, mending “something” at the open window, and the scout’s shouts “I’m off to Moscow!” What will I say in Moscow!”, and the German “shepherd” Hilda, raped by a Soviet illegal immigrant, and dad, a resident of German intelligence in Paris, who suddenly appears either in Berlin or in Iran, and a former criminal who gives advice to the head of the German intelligence school, in which the cadets don’t know German, don’t know how to jump with a parachute or shoot a pistol... If this is banter, then bravo! If this is serious, then... who seriously watched this?!

Ksenia LARINA, Echo of Moscow