Chechnya without department

Snow, forest, snowy mountains and gray clouds. Somewhere in the forest, a wolf is hiding, which got used to tearing sheep. In the February snow, two shepherds run. The senior is the name of the Zeli, the younger - mamley. They have guns in their hands. In a snowdrift lies a sheep killed by a wolf. On the calendar, the end of February 1944.

In February, there are few sunny days, but the better. The gray sky gives the picture some kind of graphic severity, and when the heroes run through the white fields or make their way through the rows of black, broken trees, it seems that you have a book illustration.

A short (only 26 minutes) film Ruslan Magomadov “February” as if challenging everything that we know about Chechen cinema. And we know a little about him.

It seems that in Chechnya he loves to act with Depardieu. It seems that a fantastic film with Ramzan Kadyrov in the title role will also be released soon-something about time travel. Finally, someone heard about the picture of Hussein Erkenov "ordered to forget" About the deportation of Chechens and Ingush, which the Ministry of Culture forbade extremism. That's all.

Like Erkenov’s film, “February” is dedicated to the deportation of Chechens in 1944, but it copes with its topic invariably thinner. Erkenov created several heavy and quite traditional serial structure. Over the general level of similar naive paintings “ordered to forget” only the use of folklore, primarily a song tradition, raised. Songs, as well as the types of old Chechnya, made the film some real, as if hinted that behind the portraits of Putin and Kadyrov on the entrance arches, behind the external gloss of recent years and disputes around the “Symbol of Russia” hiding a kind of living tradition.

Not that February. Where Erkenov only shot, Magomades shoots, and even hits exactly. Its story is simple and extremely concise: two people, winter, forest. Other people, if they appear, are somewhere very far. But the whole narrative is imbued with that genuine spirit, which is very difficult to designate in words. People’s ... national ... all this gives too much a clearing, a label, which, denoting everything, does not really mean anything.

The action is intertwined not so much from the actions of heroes as from the types of mountains, forests and streams. And when a quiet song on Chechen is heard over the forest plunging into darkness, where the warming light of the fire is heard, it seems that in all these landscapes there is something that distinguishes them from all other mountain landscapes in the world.

In general, in the expressiveness, in the picturesqueness with which nature is captured in “February”, a living tradition of poetic cinema is felt. And this is not formalist searches of Alexander Cotta. Zelim and Mamli are precisely what the living people in whom you believe, and not the conventions necessary for the author to work out any reception.

Having abandoned all the superfluous (primarily from the epic scale of the narrative), Magomades gives the history of the people a very personal dimension, and from this the story suddenly comes to life. Everything is simple, extremely simple and looks like a strange, alarming dream, but all the visions of the “February” are hidden from reality. For the accumulation of general facts, which is for us every historical event (especially with us almost not connected), suddenly some very understandable horror is visible.

Following how mamlia and zelas walk around the abandoned village, among medieval towers and walls folded of rude stone, you can no longer experience the arrogant pity of the ethnographer, with some curiosity observing the exotic drama of the people. In despair, with whom a teenager, almost a boy, runs through the field, constantly stumbling and clutching with his bare hands by the snow, something really universal is read. This is the universal human that distinguishes art in general from ethnography. The pain shown in the film, being the pain of the Chechen people, is also transmitted to the viewer, becoming his personal pain. But at the same time, rising to the universal level, the events of the picture have a specific temporary and geographical binding.

The Magomadov film is a Chechen film, but in this case, Chechens must be pronounced without inappropriate condescension to a small national school. This film does not require discounts. He just eats. And its availability indicates that there is something large and important, something real, something real and important, something real, behind the jokes about the jokes about the multi-kilometer apartment of Depardieu in Grozny, Kadyrov Instagram and public networks. It is, although it is so difficult to see it from Moscow or St. Petersburg. It is lively. And it deserves respect.

Like a mountain eagle, born at large,
We will overcome all difficulties.
Our sisters will heal with songs,
And the eyes of the loved ones call the exploits.