Quench my beigudi sorrows

David O. Russell began as a director of abides. In "Do not Wake a Sleeping Dog" ( " Flirting with Disaster ” , 1996) Ben Stiller plays Mela Koplin, a Jew from New York, the son of adoptive parents, who, after the birth of his son, decided to find out his own real identity-because since the Mela himself does not have a father, he is not able to give a child’s name. Reception parents-a couple of New York neurasthenians: a tactless mother and father with a bunch of phobia-only shrug. Together with his wife (Patricia Arkett) and the unlucky employee of the Adjusting Agency, Mel goes on a trip to see his real mother in California.

But in California, the story does not end (naturally, everything was mixed up in the agency)-then the company goes to Michigan, then to New Mexico. Potential parents of the chalk are sequentially Aryan type of basketball blonde, an elderly gopnik-diulchik from Michigan, and finally, a bohemian couple who spoke for LSD (Lily Tomlin and Alan Alda). The farther, the more chalk, carrying out the infantile fantasy that he is not the son of his parents, entangles himself and confuses others. Now he finds his wife with a former classmate, now a homosexual, who licks her armpit. Here is his completely respectable foster parents behind bars after the police find a suitcase with LSD marks in the trunk of their car. Here is the boyfriend of a classmate, an officer of the agency for combating drugs, mistakenly accepting this very substance, runs without pants. Only Mel himself can restore the cosmic order in the world that flew off the coils, if he stops the search and admits that his parents, albeit adoptive, and therefore random, are his parents. Sliding the chain of the signifiers must be stopped by an arbitrary volitional act. And finally give the child a name - any, even in honor of Jerry Garcia, whom neither chalk nor his wife never listened to.

The next film is Russell 's Three Kings ( Three Kings ” , 1999) begins as a reckless military comedy, something like“ adventures of Americans in Iraq ”. Religious Negro Chif Elgin (Ice Kube), a simple muscular guy from Detroit Troi Troi (Mark Walberg), Salag Conrad Vig (Spike Jones) and Captain Archie Gates (George Clooney), a playboy and hedonist, in which, however, the figure of his father-commander, served in Iraq, which was not in the part that was not in the units of which was not in the part battles. On the first day after the end of the “storm in the desert” they get involved in a cheerful adventure, begun with a map, received literally with a scatologically way. War is a complete absurdity. Iraq - a space consisting of sand, dust and ruins from above and endlessly branching catacombs from below, in which everything can be from refugees and dissidents to warehouses littered with household appliances, and a garage with luxurious cars. The stylistic of the self-supplier resembles “Fear and Hatred in Las Vegas”, but since it reminds, it should steadily turn into a nightmare by law.

The theory of the great sheet still wins.

On the other hand, the “Three Kings” are classic cinema, akin to Westerna, more precisely, to Ister, or Soviet adventure films. What begins as a purely individualistic adventure leads to the awakening of a moral subject, even three subjects (the fourth, dead Salag, according to the law of the genre should be sacrificed). The hero Clooney is the first to be the first - just at the moment when the booty (the mythical gold of Kuwait, stolen by Saddam) is in the heroes in their hands, but it is impossible to evade moral duty. At this moment, the farce grows into a drama, even almost a tragedy. The hero of George Clooney, who has long occupied about the same cultural niche that Carey Grant once occupied, is the right playboy that cannot be an anti -hero - of course, he is not able to abandon the Iraqi resistance to faithful death. Later it is included in the hopeless operation to save from Iraqi captivity of Barlow. And finally, he decides to accompany the column of refugees during the crossing of the Iranian border. Gold, which embodies purely selfish interest, he constantly puts on the end to save people. As a result, the whole company finds himself in a dramatic clinch with military leadership and, wider, with the state. In the Three Kings, Russell shows the ability not so much to convince the viewer of the psychological possibility of such a transition as to convincingly move from one genre to another and return back. The credits say that after demobilization, the life of the heroes got a job as well as possible.

The next “psychoanalytic” comedy Russell “Brokes of Hearts” ( “ I Heart Huckabees ” , 2004) turned out to be even more crazy and eccentric than his first things. The film still looks like a poorly identified flying object. In “Do not Wake a Sleeping Dog”, the director’s violent fantasy restrained and designed the Road Muy genre. “Hasters of hearts” would help, if it were a cartoon or a comic book, at worst, a television seat on the NVO of the season for three: there is a threshold of tolerance for other people's quirks and idiosyncrazes above. The eco -activist and poet, fighting for the preservation of forests and boulders, Albert (Jason Schwarzman) turns to existential detectives Bernard (Dustin Hoffman) and Vivian (Lily Tomlin). He just wants to understand the meaning of a petty coincidence - an African comes across his eyes everywhere. But the initiated process of searches for identity is again uncontrolled. Further, the film turns into a visualization of metaphors of the therapeutic process. Existential detectives that prefer material evidence with verbal blunders and real garbage to the “remnants of the day” and dreams require complete access to Albert's life. It is worth pulling for one random thread, as his entire biography and personality begins to crumble.

Those who surround Albert are also drawn into the analysis orbit. His successful opponent, a successful Sails manager of Brad (Jud Law), is in psychological closetes a brother who is ashamed and therefore tells the idiotic stories about the food distinguishes between the singer Shenay, the symbol of the Khakabiz advertising company. His girlfriend, the face of the company (Naomi Watts), a radiant blonde in a bikini, actually wants to be a chubby lunch in the overalls and caps to be sure that she is loved not for her appearance. But if the analysis is total, then no one will remain aside. So the detectives themselves also have an unprofitable injury - the student Katrin Voban (Isabelle Jupper), written off with Julia Kristeva, who escaped from them and became a competitor. Unlike Hoffman's hero with his theory of the Great Sheet (Maya's therapeutic bedspread), connecting everything with everything, Voban teaches that the world does not make sense and its truth - in cruelty and manipulation. This theory likes the former patient of existential detectives, a fireman-non-talist Tommy Korn (Mark Walberg). Negativism reigns in the frame: from time to time it crumbles into pixels. But in the end, the theory of the great sheet still wins. Albert finds himself, Brad loses his job, home and girlfriend, Brad's girlfriend finds Tommy, and all three detectives establish existential partnership. The studios of this pop philosophical bacchanalia Russell with producers sold as the second “family of tenenbaum”-and after the “crackers”, Russell did not take anything away for six years.

In 2010 , he was called to work on the Fighter . The project had a long story. The scriptwriters dreamed of making Bayopic Dicky Eclund, a boxer from the American Lowell (who fell into decay during the Great Depression), who stood against Sugar Ray Leonard. Darren Aronofsky was going to shoot the film, then carried away by the Brothers Dardenn. Matt Damon was planned for the role of Dicky, and later Brad Pitt himself. But the project gradually collapsed. Aronofski took off his Dardennovsky "wrestler." Mark Walberg, who from the very beginning was to play the younger brother of Dicky Mickey, called Christian Bale to the role of an older brother, and then resettled the directors. And this work on someone else's project turned out to be for the last turning point, not only brought success and money, but also saved from directorial complexes and neurotic ticks.

Russell said: “No Dardennov” - and made a classic sports film not about bodily, but about how victory is given through overcoming personal problems. “Fighter” is a kind of novel of education about the right guy who, in order to achieve something, needs to get out of the tenacious tentacles of the family, from a thick, viscous sociality. The mother and manager of the Brothers Brothers (Melissa Leo) perceives Mickey only as a springboard for Dicca and closes his eyes on the narcotic dependence of the eldest son. Dicky is a peppy, charming demagogue, sincerely deceiving himself and others. But each act of Mickey is accompanied by the judgment of the Greek choir of the seven great-age gabblers with combs of varying degrees of splendor. Charlene (Amy Adams), the girl Mickey with the character of the iron button, tries to tear him out of the family. In “Fighter” everything is as it should be in exemplary Hollywood scenarios: crisis, gap, reunion and victory at the end. And this is probably the best film of Russell, although the least author.

After the "fighter", Russell took off his very commercially successful Romkom "My Boy - Crazy" ( " Silver Lining PlayBooks ” , 2012). The film, smoothly divided in half into the excellent first half and the weak and unconvincing second - as if Russell was tired of everything. The first half is that normal people do not exist and everyone will have any mental deviation, not only the protagonist of Pat (Bradley Cooper), who served eight months in a psychiatric hospital and who is prohibited from approaching the ex-wife in court. The second half is that everything can be overcome by signing up for dancing competitions where Pat becomes a partner of the young widow of Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence).

The kinship of the three main characters is emphasized by the fetish of the film - hair.

About the American Aferer ( " American Hustle ” , 2013) Russell immediately makes it clear: this is the history of survival. This is evidenced by the voice of Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale). But the discourse of survival immediately conflicts with the effects in the frame - a party at the pool, music, installation, rapids. You can’t survive just like that, you can survive only through excess, redundancy, special vision, and not the mimesis of existing reality. It is impossible to survive, remaining yourself, it is necessary to re -resume your life and biography, like Sidney Proser (Amy Adams). You do not need to look for your true identity, as the heroes did “do not wake a sleeping dog” and “crackers of hearts”. It is necessary to escape from her as far as possible and spectacular. At the same time, the means for rebirth can turn out to be the most cheap and improvised: a wardrobe for a fake English aristocrat can be selected from things forgotten from Rosenfeld in dry cleaning. There is no simple, flat survival, everything should be played and done with some kind of twist. Even on the offer of Irving, to become his partner in Sydney's scams, he cannot immediately agree, but must first leave, without answering, so that Lady Grinley later returned in the image of Lady. Because the main principle of the scam is first to say no to hook the victim. Irving and Sydney are admiring themselves, each other, play for each other.

However, Irving cannot escape from himself, and all these dancing horses-circuits in the exposition of the film are his self-deception. He has a tough execution to reality - the wife of Rosalin (Jennifer Lawrence), a luxurious and vulgar diva, who is not going to give him a divorce, and her child. There is one fraudster, even the best, is found - according to the law of the genre - another. And here they are the FBI agent Richie Di Mazio (Bradley Cooper), who will quickly calculate this point of the fastener to put pressure on it. But he is the same as Irving and Sydney, and he also needs to escape from himself and from the wretched world breathing in the back: from a miserable apartment on the outskirts, from an authoritarian mother, a nondescript bride, sitting at the work of a boss, deprived of imagination and scope. The kinship of the three main characters is emphasized by the fetish of the film - hair. Richie winds the hair on the papilloks. Edith walks in huge curlers. Irving seals the bald head with overhead hair and grinds them densely. In the American scam, in his love of the era of the late 70s, something unexpectedly resembles a super-sterilized franchise about TV presenter Ron Burgundy, in the producing of which Russell participates.

Films about scammers are always a genre with sparkles, with effects, most preoccupied with pure virtuosity, dust in the eyes. It must certainly have, as they say, mise En Ab î me : The deceiver is deceiving a deceiver, a deceiving deceiver. In the American scam is full of drive, but it seems to be completely not interested in the “potency of false”, if you use the Deleuzov term, the games into the indistinguishability of the true and false at the systematic level. Despite the fact that this is Abscam (“Arabic scam”) is a completely fantastic material, the real story of 1978, as a result of which the mayor of Camden and several senators flew from their posts, the deception in the film of Russell is, so to speak, humanity. This is a postotergate story, but in the film there is no motive for all -pervasive decomposition and corruption. Russell does not show any symptoms of megalomania, and this is the main difference between the “scams”, for example, from the Wall Street Wolf. There are no heroes in the film who would be more than life, there is no person with a thousand people. There are just people - the director admires them, and they admire themselves. This human size can be called sentimentality. Well, let.