Citadel called Oscar

Fedor Bondarchuk is released in mass rental

The circulation of 2 thousand copies in the mass rental is released by “Stalingrad” by Fedor Bondarchuk - a film about the great battle on the Volga. The New Times sorted out who won and who lost from the release of the tape in the light

Fight for Stalingrad in IMAX technology

So, on the third attempt, it seems, finally created the “Great Film of the Great War”*. The one that must arrange everyone: power, producers, spectators.

The premiere passed with chic and brilliance. Not only all famous Russian directors and artists, but also Ramzan Kadyrov, Pavel Astakhov, Vladislav Surkov, passed along the red carpet.

Minister Medinsky is happy: here he is, our film worthy of Oscar.

The ordinary viewer rejoices on Facebook: “This is not a retro for 45+ and not a lawlessness a la Tarantino. This is not the “salvation of ordinary Ryan” and not “hot snow”. But the elements of each handwriting are present. The episode of the greatest and tragic event of the Great Patriotic War is described by the language understandable, high -tech, with elements of the grotesque. Bourgeois will never be removed. ”

War in 3D

The tires of the public “Present” and “Citadel” by Nikita Mikhalkov failed at the box office. For the first “tired of the sun”, Mikhalkov received an Oscar in 1994, further attempts to advance military films to advanced the preserved prize. Neither the continuation of the “Burnt by the Sun-2: Present, nor the“ White Tiger ”Karen Shakhnazarov, nor the“ region ”of Alexei Teacher, which Russia proposed to consider the American film academy, did not even fall into the long list.

“Stalingrad” in IMAX 3D format should compensate for the losses - moral and material. Director Fedor Bondarchuk and his experienced producers Alexander Rodnyansky, Dmitry Rudovsky, Anton Zlatopol, Sergey Melkumov decided to conquer the Russian and world rental, and most importantly, a citadel called Oscar for the first time in the world they made a film about real military tragedy in a format intended for completely different genres and goals. A special advanced technology was invented for fantasy, space travels to distant planets, adventures of different mutants like Spider-Man and Star Wars.

3D technology makes items voluminous and brings them closer to the viewer. This effect is created using special movie cameras with inclined mirrors attached to them and subsequent image programming, tells us a detailed and truly voluminous press release. One camera removes directly, the other through a mirror reflection. Similar equipment was used for the filming of the new Spider-Man and the same popular film “Hobbit: Unexpected Journey”.

As Greg Foster, president of IMAX Entertainment, who releases the film in Russian rental in IMAX 3D cinemas, explains, “The format is designed specifically so that the audience can make a trip where they do not dream of visiting.” The producer from the Russian side Sergei Melkumov recalls that it is not customary to say “look” about this format, they offer differently - “experience the film”.

The test is difficult. It is unlikely that anyone seriously dreams of being in reality in a terrible mess of the Battle of Stalingrad, when only three hundred fighting survived from only one rifle brigade of eight thousand people survived no more than three hundred. But today you can’t force today's viewers to read the memories of eyewitnesses of the battle for Stalingrad. As well as to study the Chronicle of the events of 1942 or at least the chapters from the novel by Vasily Grossman “Life and Fate”, on the basis of which Ilya Tilkin and Sergey Snezhkin composed their script. This requires serious expenditures of time, heart and mind. So, it is necessary to take a large -scale fairy tale, a magnificent canvas, an elevated legend - so, apparently, the authors decided in the course of the creation of the film.

Against the background of Grossman

The scriptwriters took the description of the Battle of Stalingrad in the novel by Grossman as the basis of their fantasies, like the love line of the German captain Peter Kan and the girl Masha, played by the American actor from Germany Thomas Krechmann and Yana Studilina. Five heroes guarding the invasion of the house, behind whom the Volga, and the 19-year-old Katya was invented specifically for the film. They were played by Pyotr Fedorov, Andrei Smolyakov, Dmitry Lysenkov, Sergey Bondarchuk, Alexey Barabash and Maria Smolnikova.

Frame from the film. Masha - Yana Studilina, Peter Kan - Thomas Kretschmann

In terms of majesty, the film, with the image of IMAX size to the very house that our soldiers protected, of course, will defeat competitors in the box office. No wonder. All the action in the film, the simulation of fire and smoke, imitation of destruction, three -dimensional animatics, computer graphics are made enthusiastically, spectacularly and on a large scale, the budget was worked out for fame. For the sample, the historical fantasies of Zach Snyder “300 Spartans” and “Forbidden Reception” were taken.

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"New mythology is simple: it is necessary to debug" spiritual bonds "to complete gloss"

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The crossing scene through the Volga, when Stalingrad is blazing on the opposite shore, does not lose anything with multimillion -dollar blockbuster.

Perhaps that is why, when the “Stalingrad” appeared in the list of films proposed by the Russian Oscar Committee for discussion at the last moment, the champion of the Russian rental “Legend No. 17”, the winner of many festivals “Major” Yuri Bykov, the animated “Ku! Kin-dza-dza "George Danelia, who was proposed to send to the Oscar the head of the Union of Cinematographists of Russia Nikita Mikhalkov. True, as some members of the Russian Oscar Film Academy admit, not everyone managed to watch Stalingrad before the discussion. Someone was away, but the decision had to be made urgently, and I had to vote on the phone without looking. “Well, what’s the kind of it,” one famous actress told me, “he was put forward anyway, what's the difference.”

And she is right: today only the grandiose of the latest era, the virtual monument of the Great Patriotic War, on which the obligation to unite our long -suffering country is still hanging, the road to competitions for the main world film aid can be opened.

And here it doesn’t matter that the heroes of Stalingrad do not say and do not act like living, warm -blooded people, but they are completely affected by hackneyed maxims and vulgar aphorisms that they are like characters in an opera performance. It is not without reason that among the ruins of the unfortunate, tortured city is heard by Anna Netrebko's angelic voice, her vocalizes to the music of the world famous composer Angelo Badalamenti. And the shell -shocked, who lost the voice of a soldier, who was a famous tenor before the war, suddenly sang. The fighters have a beautifully smeared blood on the wounds, on the face of a hungry and cold Katya, a miracle of surviving alone in a dilapidated house, a pleasant tonal cream, and another Russian girl Masha, who was in love with a German officer, pleases with well -stove and carefully laid her hair. Better even better her snow-white body, when Masha lies beautifully, raped by the German, here she looks like a danai.

Technology and mythology

Why these nit -picks do not agree to fans of the film, because this is a movie for those who know almost nothing about the war, and also “it’s interesting to think about how it is technologically and ideologically”.

Technologically, the Stalingrad device can be considered ideal.

A rare profession of stereographs in our cinema has been fully mastered. Special effects, voluminous image, scenery, on which 400 specialists, explosions, tanks, an unprecedented for the world screen have worked, the number of simultaneously burning people in the frame is all amazingly qualitatively and professionally. The famous supervisor Matthew Blue, one of the creators of the magnificent image of the “Uprising of the Planet Monkeys”, delighted with the Russian film group.

If at first Fedor Bondarchuk had, according to him, the desire to bring closer to the audience the distant past and to give the opportunity to feel that the Soviet people survived, fighting for their homeland, now he argues that his task was to create a new mythology.

Is it not a myth that the final phrase of the ordered storyteller is that “thanks to the fathers who won the most bloody battle in the history of mankind, we live without knowing the war”? This is about Russia, which survived new wars in Chechnya and South Ossetia.

The new mythology is simple: it is necessary to debug “spiritual scrapers” to complete gloss. The victory in the Great Patriotic War is our everything. Just do not plunge deeply into her horrors, atrocities, unsightness, do not need an unpleasant truth. Everything should be spectacular. Stereo effect. In the latest format.