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Director Konchalovsky made a children's film that even adults should watch with caution
On the first day of the New Year, the film “The Nutcracker and the Rat King” directed by Andrei Konchalovsky will be released in Russia. But it is not the Christmas leafiness of Petipa’s famous ballet or even the hypnotizing horror of Hoffmann that greets the New Year’s viewer with this movie. Konchalovsky, having looked, as American film critics aptly wrote, “into the darkest corner of his soul,” found in it not an old fairy tale, but fragments of Dr. Freud’s lectures and memories of the Holocaust.The film is based on a truly free retelling of Hoffmann's plot. Brilliant Vienna after the First World War. In a rich mansion, the dreamy girl Mary, her hyperdynamic brother Max and their parents, too keen on psychoanalysis, are tossing around in anticipation of a Christmas fairy tale. The fairy tale comes with half-crazed Uncle Albert, who, relying on Tchaikovsky's music, explains the theory of relativity to the children. After this, the New Year's tree grows higher than the ceiling, New Year's toys come to life, and the wooden nutcracker boy turns out to be an enchanted prince who urgently needs to save his distant homeland.
From a high spruce tree you can see the Kingdom of the Nutcracker, lying in the smoke: it was captured by militarized rats in fascist overcoats. The pests have turned the parallel Vienna (this is, of course, it) into a gloomy ghetto, where rat soldiers take away children's toys (the dirty piles of which are strongly reminiscent of anti-Hitler themed museums). The teddy bears are then sent into a giant factory oven, where they burn with acrid smoke. Everyone is sad, but the rats are happy.
About twenty minutes into this film, the child needs to be taken away. I myself want to escape even earlier - when the first of the singing heroes opens his mouth. Then, when the main villain starts singing in the voice of Philip Kirkorov. And when the rats start speaking in deliberately teenage language (the film is for children): tinny, sucks, cool, stupid music. Not two good jokes in the entire film can save you: one about Freud, the other about the artist Damien Hirst. Neither Tchaikovsky's music arranged by Eduard Artemyev, nor Rustam Khamdamov's costumes, nor the good actor John Turturro (The Rat King). Not even $90 million of the budget, which, by God, could have been better used.
Until recently, Konchalovsky claimed that some foreigners gave him money. Quite recently, a new version was officially announced: millions went to “The Nutcracker” from Vnesheconombank, and not in the form of a loan or investment, but just like that. That is, the leaders of VEB (a state organization, by the way) do not expect a return of money from Konchalovsky, but rather act as sponsors.
On the one hand, of course, it’s great when big capital supports creative people. Nowadays, all new Russian films are actually made only at the expense of such “sponsorship” money, which is rarely returned to investors. Failure to understand this leads to conflicts, such as the recent quarrel between Sergei Solovyov and the investor of his film Odnoklassniki, the construction company Niscom. (Shortly after the film's release, the builders suddenly realized that the money would not be returned, and began demanding reparations from the director.) The problem with The Nutcracker is not only that it was actually made with public money and that most of this money was spent abroad . The studio, the actors, the electricity, the stagehands - all this is either American, or English, or even Hungarian. This means that even indirectly, in the form of taxes, nothing will return to Russia. In this sense, Konchalovsky’s film is even worse than Burnt by the Sun 2, which was shot for $60 million, but at least at home.
The problem with The Nutcracker is the author’s absolute lack of understanding of his audience. In the States, the film failed - critics not only tore it to rags, they split The Nutcracker into atoms. The author calmly asserts that yes - this is his miscalculation, America is a soulless country incapable of empathy. They'll appreciate it at home.
But Konchalovsky’s ideas about the Russian families for whom the film was made are also not very adequate. An ideal trip to see Konchalovsky’s “The Nutcracker” should look like this: the beginning of the film, when they show a festive tree and a funny uncle, is watched by children. Then, during the period of fascist atrocities, they fall into a coma, and their parents quickly rise in spirit. Then everyone looks together at the good fairy Yulia Vysotskaya. Then the parents get bored, and the children get tired of the very bad 3D, and everyone goes for a walk. As the credits roll, everyone returns to clap.
Who needs this expensive movie and why, when there will be a lot of excellent films during the New Year holidays, is a question for VEB shareholders. However, Konchalovsky assures that his offspring watched the film five times and each time with wild delight. So maybe we just need some special children.