Cognitive stop

Subjective review of Arseny Gonchukov’s film “The Final Stop”

I consider it my duty to say in advance: the topics of rallies, the ideas of social-nationalists, life around football and the migration policy of our state are not within the scope of my interests. I don’t go to rallies, I don’t take part in the struggle for ideas, I don’t even play or watch football. But, despite all of the above, the film “The Final Stop” by the young Moscow director Arseny Gonchukov did not leave me indifferent. I will say more - I devoured the short film in one sitting, watched it from beginning to end in one breath (even the credits). And I couldn’t get rid of what I saw for the rest of the day.

I am a slow person by nature, especially when it comes to trying to comprehend something that requires serious analysis. And, like many, I perceive the information received through the prism of feelings: if new knowledge spontaneously leaves the operative memory of the brain, that’s where it belongs. I had completely different feelings from “The Final Stop.” The emotions left after watching the tape made me think - what struck me so much? Violence? But there is plenty of violence - and of varying degrees of relevance and naturalism - in everyday life. We are reliably accustomed to it both by the media and by the surrounding reality. Disagreements based on ethnic hatred? This formulation generally smacks of mothballs, and in principle cannot cause anything other than yawning. Then what?

While still a student, among other things, I firmly grasped one simple truth: fiction is not a lie. Thanks to Dainel Pennac. So, for example, fantastic literature - be it silent fiction or the notorious fantasy - is not an escape from reality, but on the contrary: a way to convey worn-out images and circumstances of real life, taken out of their usual context. Finding themselves in an unfamiliar environment, they become prominent, tangible, and easily noticeable. The same thing happens to a person who finds himself in a critical situation: in the whirlwind of events, his true face appears.

Suddenly it dawned on me. After all, the film “The Final Destination” is not an attempt to tell a random story from someone’s life, but a serious, philosophical analysis of human existence. A rebellion against inert, habitual, cliched thinking. I will try to explain my idea in more detail. The path from point A to point B on a dirty bus for each passenger is nothing more than a symbol of travel through the reality around us. For the main character of the film - a shaven-headed guy with a swastika tattoo on his neck - this journey could have ended (the author will forgive me for the subjunctive mood, which neither history nor cinema knows) with no more or less change in worldview. An “unplanned” accident almost became a new milestone in his life...

The psychologism of the film narrative is also not accidental - the characters seem to confront each other throughout most of the film: one sits in a chair, the other hangs over him, their faces are directed at each other, they are in active confrontation. What happens in the finale? The director puts both actors on the same line, shoulder to shoulder. I can imagine what must have been going on in the head of the shaven-headed hero. Experts call this feeling cognitive dissonance - this is a state when a pattern of behavior formed in the head is torn to pieces. The question is most acute: what will you do with the opportunity given to you to change your inner world? The solution to this problem in the vast majority of cases turns out to be as simple as possible - you need to return everything to its place, return to the usual order. This is exactly the decision our hero makes. I won't spoil it, see for yourself. The film, which had been on the festival shelf for 2.5 years, can now be viewed in the public domain.

Now let's go back to the beginning of the story. A story that precedes the main theme of the picture. The first stroke on a blank canvas, a detail to which the author does not assign the main role, but without it cognitive dissonance is impossible in the brain of not a fictional character, but a completely real viewer. Art for art’s sake may have a right to exist, but without an active, social, and sometimes protest component, sooner or later it will cease to influence people and will be erased from our lives. As one philosopher (Russian writer Alexander Zinoviev) said, “solved problems become a thing of the past, but posed problems give birth to the future.” Our task is to look into this future with eyes wide open. And remember that evolution requires us to be able to change. At least in the smallest way.