Again about Gogol

As you already know, the mystical detective “Gogol. The beginning ”on the first weekend weekend raised 220 million rubles in Russia and the CIS. This is a very good result (though Gogol failed to break the Wii 3D record, which in 2014 earned even more fantastic 605 million rubles after the first weekend).

But more recently it seemed: classical Russian literature, and even with a portrait of a person from a school textbook on a movie Afisha, should completely scare away young spectators. The conservative audience of Facebook was predictably indignant on the eve of the premiere: how can I abuse the classic?! It is good that Gogol’s work was beyond the interests of the deputy of Poklonskaya.

You are unlikely to seriously think that the reason for success is exclusively in the phenomenal popularity of the writer Gogol among young people visiting cinemas. Let's try to understand why and how Gogol stopped being a boring uncle from school anthology and has every chance of becoming a cult.

The most interesting thing is that the release of the film “Gogol. Start ”is a promotion of the subsequent etheric premiere of the series on TV-3. That the promotion will be self -sufficient and profitable, for me personally became a great revelation. And although the producers of the TV-3 channel Valery Fedorovich and Evgeny Nikishov in their interviews have repeatedly emphasized that they really aimed to earn and recapture the money spent on production (the cost of one Gogol series, according to open sources, is 29 million rubles), it seems to me that they would not suspect that the project would shoot like that.

You can imagine how the idea of ​​the series was born: “And let's give us everything that is in the book, is true. And it happened to him personally. ”

Of course, we can explain the success of the coverage advertising campaign (28 million Russians aged 14-44, according to Mediascope , learned about the premiere). It really was like shelling the audience with heavy artillery. Gazprom-Media used all its sites under the promotion of Gogol-TV-3, TNT television channels, TNT-4, 2x2, NTV, Match TV, Energy radio stations, Rutube.ru online resources, TNT-OM2.ru , DOM2.ru , Caravan magazines, magazines stories ”and“ seven days ”. Of course, not a single honest rental film, shot without support for federal media holding, which operates according to the cross-propemon system (that is, without living money), such an advertising coverage simply cannot afford.

But the point is not only in the coverage. The correctly chosen intonation of promo, which gives a signal to the potential viewer: Gogol is not another (meaningless and merciless) Russian remake such as Sherlock Holmes (sorry, who touched), when the old story with the predictable finale is simply played out in new decorations.

The bar was set by a small promotional industry, where actor Alexander Petrov, the performer of the role of Gogol, in the image of his hero appeared in the popular show of the Chernobyl channel “Chernobyl: Alienation Zone”, “Island” and “Deffchonki” - and even met with himself on the set of the next season of the “Police from Rublevka” series. Even then, it became clear: something that breaks the template is started, it will not be boring.

Thanks to the creators of the film - it was not boring. But we know that promo can deceive. I watched Gogol in the cinema. When the final credits went, a large uncle with empty plastic glasses from under the beer hung over me.

- Here you say: did you like the movie?
- I liked it.
- Did you like it very much?
- Well, enough.
- And on a scale from 1 to 5?
- Well, four with a plus.
- So x*Did you sit in VKontakte the whole film?!

The uncle waved at me as a hopeless creature and slowly went to the exit, reading the credits. I did not explain that all this time I recorded my favorite quotes from the film. Moreover, I really liked the uncle’s reaction. He sincerely worried either for a film that deserves more respect for himself, or in general, because of ungrateful humanity, so stupidly depriving himself of a few pleasures. I have not watched a movie with such a living hall for a long time, which correctly reacted to all the heroes’s replicas prepared by the scriptwriters. Hitting into the viewer occurred not only at the level of promo. The film itself turned out to be what he promised.

In general, Gogol was conceived as a mystical drama about the youth of the judicial clerk Nikolai Gogol, who becomes an assistant to the legendary detective Guro (Oleg Menshikov) and, with the help of his paranormal abilities, helps to reveal a series of mysterious crimes on a farm near Dikanka. And at the same time he throws unsuccessful poetic experiments under the name of V. Alova and begins to write a prose Little Russian cycle, thanks to which we now know and love the writer Gogol.

Self -irony saves the story from reproaches in secondary. The film itself ripens the flesh and demonstrates what is cut from.

You can imagine how the idea of ​​the series was born: “And let's give us everything that is in the book, is true. And it happened to him personally. ” But, while the script was written, the concept changed, like the composition of the authors,-and in the end it appeared that film critics are defined as a retroopank, a thrash-chapito, “childhood of Tarantino” and “sleepy hollow” for small ”(c). In my understanding, this is all - rather, praise.

The synergy effect probably worked: to the producer of the Gogol project. The beginning ”to Alexander Tsekalo, who loves high concepts with a gloomy core (“ Klim ”,“ method ”,“ back side of the moon ”,“ locust ”, etc.), joined colleagues with TNT, who know how to tell non -banal stories for an audience, accustomed to ironically relate to the most serious things. The combination of the macabar attorney of Tsecala and the Taenteshnikov humor gave us Gogol - the film genre is quite difficult to determine.

Before us is two hours of dense filmmaker happiness. While one half of the brain is watching a mystical retro -detective and trying to guess who the mysterious horseman in black will come for a minute, who ran here for a minute from the series with Johnny Depp, and who is this mysterious married couple living in the castle either baserville, or King Stakha (isn't vampires?), The second half of the brain is desperately having fun, learning the next, learning quote. Here you have one into one reproduced horse and a tree from a “sleepy hollow”, and Pushkin in a pig's mask (“saw”?), And the tentacles of an octopus, suddenly and completely impoverished on the head of a random heroine, “Pirates of the Caribbean”. Why Pirates? And to the NOT. Just because we can. Because it is both scary and fun.

While the film industry in Russia is tediously masters other people's findings, the creators of Gogol make the borrowing process indecently visual, frankly mounting their film from dozens of strangers, loved ones and recognizable.

Yes, it would be funny if something similar in 2017 was done in all seriousness (“Sleepy hollow”? No, they didn’t hear! We have an original product ”). Self -irony saves the story from reproaches in secondary. The film itself ripens the flesh and demonstrates what is cut from. But what is important - the irony does not lower the plot degree in any way, there are enough detective and Sassens, for which a separate respect to the creators.

Yes, this is not a revolution in the cinema, this is an old attraction created according to the testaments of Tarantino and its apostles. But it works. And there is a feeling that such a path to the viewer is more direct and honest than the next serious adaptation of the next Korean drama to the Russian viewer in the hidden hope that no one will notice. Moreover, they do not really notice.

"Gogol" in the right sense is two -layer. If you skipped literature lessons, smoking with hooligans in the court of school, and you don’t understand what kind of a strange St. Petersburg registrar on the screen will gut people on the streets with the subsequent eating of their organs (poor Akaki Akakievich turned into a lecturer's doctor), you can just laugh at the dialogues of the heroes. The spectacle itself is quite enough, it is not necessary to solve the movie puzzles.

And they just do not quote the filmmakers of the expanse: from Gogol-from the canonical replica of Kostik from the Pokrovsky Gate (“But are we slamming the glass?”) To the less obvious “Grimm Brothers”, “American Horror Story”, “From the Feum of Dickens”, “Dogs of the Basket”, “Hunting the King of the Stakha”, not about the same "Ghoul" A.K. Tolstoy and Akuninsky cycle about Fandorin. And this is only the top of the iceberg. The name itself refers to the Nolanovsky “beginning” with its theme of conscious dreams - a rhyme with the constant exits of Hero Petrov, Gogol, a trance and parallel reality. The next season may well be called Pushkin. First blood ", for example.

Here I recall an unsuccessful attempt by the producer of Alexander Rodnyansky to make a detective for a young audience, in which the action took place during the adolescence of Pushkin. The film “18-14” (2007, was based on the novel of the same name by Dmitry Miropolsky, who became the screenwriter) was the story of a maniac who killed beautiful girls in the Park of the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, Pushkin conducted the investigation with classmates. It sounds intriguing - but in fact, Rodnyansky did all this very seriously, in the spirit of Soviet historical cinema, not allowing himself to dispose of the hero as freely as the creators of Gogol do. And, it turns out, you just need to be able to blow off dust from sacred objects.

In general, the experiment “Gogol. The beginning ”looks like an extremely convincing beginning of a new page in our serial industry.

There are, however, alarming moments - in the second part of the first film (“Red Burka”): a deliberately cheap make -up in the Trama studio and cheap tricks with heroes flying in the air in the best traditions of Bollywood studios. It is not yet clear what this means - either the producers ended the money for special effects, or that part of the creators of the project that drowned for thrash and fumes won.

It is also incomprehensible (and interesting) how the authors will get out of the genre Fuzhen. What is happening in the first part of the film has an obviously mystical nature, in the second everything finds a completely rational explanation. How will events develop and what will win - mysticism or strict naturalism?

Separately, I would like to note the amazing soundtrack written by our Russian guy hiding under the pseudonym Ryan Otter . Only one thing is officially known about him - that he writes music to the projects of the company "Wednesday". By sound, this is such a confident Hollywood.

So, we summarize what Gogol made an event that cannot be missed.
1. The audience demand for “strange” stories, when the hero and events do not quite fit into the framework of the usual reality.
2. Reliable postmodern - and reliable quality of production.
3. Large -scale promotion with non -banal creative.
Well, a miracle, of course.

This fall, three more films will be released: “Gogol. Enchanted place "," Gogol. Wii ”and“ Gogol. Terrible revenge. " We wish the authors to keep the balance between a real mystical detective when it should be scary, and all this postmodern fun.