Salute Kinomil

In October 2017, during the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the first satellite of the Earth, the feature film “Salyut-7”, dedicated to the events of 1985, was released on Russian screens. We publish two reviews - “physics” and “lyrics” - for this film production. As far as the editorial office is known, one of the prototypes of the film is twice Hero of the Soviet Union, a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Viktor Savin is not very pleased with the film. At the general collection of RAS, he sadly told his colleagues: “I am an optics by education. And imagine that I am in the film with a sledgehammer on an optical device! ”

Alexander Khokhlov, member of the North-West Organization of the Cosmonautics Federation of Russia

Today, young people often ask why we need space.
I have no answer to this question. Decide for yourself. We left you everything as it is.

Vladimir Dzhanibekov

After the modest celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the beginning of the space era, counted from the day the first artificial satellite of the Earth from the Tyur-Tem training ground on October 4, 1957, the feature film of Klim Shipenko “Salyut-7”, telling about the feat of Soviet cosmonauts to save the rescue of the orbital station, was released in Russia.

After watching, many people's popularizers spoke out in the spirit that the film did not correspond to the historical reality at all, to which they got an answer: what do you want, this is an artistic, not a documentary.

“It is based on real events,” the filmmakers said. This will convince the gullible viewer, unfamiliar with the history of Russian and world cosmonautics, which was something like this. It is good if someone after watching the film reads books [1, 2], but most will continue to be in an illusory world, with a distorted idea of ​​space flights, about physics in space.

Unfortunately, Salyut-7 continued the tradition of American films “Gravity”, “Interstellar” (“Interstellar”) and others,-having copied not only visual moves, but also a mediocre attitude to realism.

Modern artistic or fiction often sins simplifications and stamps; In this case, we will pay attention to two components: historical reliability and compliance with the physical picture of the world and ordinary logic.

First : the creators of the film prudently replaced the names of the main characters - astronauts, thereby conditionally disowned from the real history of the flight of Vladimir Dzhanibekov and Viktor Savin. But then the film had to be called not “Sali-7”, but, for example, “Firewerk-8”, it would be more honest.

Almost no scene of preparation on Earth and flight itself corresponds to how it really was: even the Salyut-7 station is shown on the screen in a later configuration. It can be seen that the scriptwriters were guided by Viktor Savin’s book “Notes from the Dead Station”, but at the same time they missed many moments and fantasized - and guided by movie stamps, for example, from “gravity”.

There are problems with the reliability of the scenery: for example, on the remote control of one of the spacesuits of Orlan-DM, in which the heroes were outside the station, a green LCD display is clearly visible, which appeared only a few years ago on the Orlan-MK spaces. The shuttle "Challenger" flew past the station in the landing/ starting configuration, and not in the orbital: without the opened wings of the cargo compartment for the work of the ship thermoregulation system.

About the shuttle-a separate conversation: the Americans had no plans to capture “saluta-7”. This line in the film, along with the desire of the military, to knock the station with a rocket, does not fully correspond to the spirit of time and reality, creates a dangerous illusion - it is enough to recall that a huge number of crazy conspiracy theories have roots, including in the cinema.

In reality, the Challenger (the STS-51-B mission) flew in the spring of 1985 with the European Scientific Laboratory of Spacelab in the cargo compartment. And at the time when Vladimir Dzhanibekov and Viktor Savin began to work, the shuttle of Discovery (STS-51-G) flew into space for launching several satellites into various orbit. Among others, on board the shuttle was the first astronaut of Saudi Arabia Sultan Ibn Salman Al Saud.

Interestingly, the film group was also mistaken with the size of the Challenger cargo compartment: in reality it was noticeably larger.

Second: if the discrepancy of the film can still be justified by “artistry”, then in matters of physics and logic this does not work. The film “Salyut-7” is not fantasy or cinema about dreams, so it must correspond to the physical picture of the world: that is, the Sun must be entered in the East, and sit down in the West, the fire should burn only if there is an oxidizing agent, and the rules of logic and causal relations should be fundamental to the script.

The fire shown in Salute-7 was not only not, it could not be in this form-this is tracing paper from “gravity”. On the network you can see how the fire looks in zero gravity (now there are many pictures - American experiments on the ISS and Cygnus freight ships); It is also known that the most reliable way to extinguish the fire at the station is the disconnection of ventilation: then oxygen quickly ends at the fire site.

India and a huge amount of water inside the station were simply mixed up. The previous crew left the “salute” in a regular state, there were no water leaks from the spring system (it just froze). Yes, a small amount of water from the atmosphere was condensed on the panels before the crew arrived, and then, in the days when it worked on the restoration of the station’s power supply, humidity increased in the air due to the release of water with exhausted air and semi. The air conditioning system that collects water from the atmosphere did not work without electricity, so behind the panels - where it was cold, the water accumulated.

The final episode with an optical sensor and a hammer outraged Victor Savin. In reality, of course, there was no such situation: the station’s body was made of a thin “waffle” sheet made of aluminum alloy, and optical devices are too light to withstand the blows shown in the film - watching all this was very amazing!

The psychological component, coupled with logic, is completely incredibly shown in the film. Of course, real astronauts are not celestials, they have their weaknesses: someone smokes, someone is not averse to drinking, there were quarrels in orbit. But in the film this was unnaturally exaggerated, completely forgetting that the astronauts undergo not only thorough medical selection, but also psychological.

Yes, there were punctures-the same situation with the commander of the next Salute-7 crew Vladimir Vasyutin, due to the state of health, the flight was premature. Nevertheless, in the relationship between the crews and the flight control center there was much more calm and professionalism than this is shown in the film.

The real heroes who saved the station were friends and professionals - so they ended up in the same crew. They perfectly understood each other at a glance, because their life depended on this.

And these are far from all the mistakes that we were able to see in the film “Salyut-7”.

Because of all these punctures of the movie group, it is difficult for me to agree that the film is useful for young people. How? Creating a stable illusion of flights into space and the history of your country?

My opinion: for cinema, an informal institution of scientific consultants is simply necessary. This should not be some formal rule or law for a movie financed by the state. Attracting consultants should carry a reputation shade, because this improves the quality of the cinema. If the film affects complex scientific or technical topics, then several consultants may be required. Recall that in the film “Interssection” Kip Thorne, the Nobel Physics Prize in 2017, the Laureate of the 2017 Physics, advised only the astrophysical part, and the issues of astronautics were missed and turned out to be largely inaccurate and illogical.

It seems to me that the fears of film production about the fact that strict scientific consultants will make the movie boring, unfounded: on the contrary, the restrictions imposed by the physical picture of the world should stimulate the fantasy of the scriptwriters in order to make the movie interesting and high -quality, so that then it is not ashamed to work.

The author of the article already had the experience of advising a feature film about astronautics; When he is released, it will be possible to discuss in more detail the difficulties of the interaction of a scientific consultant and the film crew.

1. World piloted cosmonautics. Story. Technique. People. / Ed. Yu. M. Baturina. M.: RTSOFT, 2005.

2. Savini V.P. Notes from the dead station / Lit. Ed.: S. Lukina. M.: Publishing House of the Alice system, 1999.

Alexey Ustinov, cand. Filol. Sciences, specialist in Russian historical novelism of the XIX century:

The first thing that the viewer has to overcome in an attempt to comprehend the artistic plan of the domestic director Klim Shipenko, embodied in the film “Salyut-7” (2017), is a powerful alloy of ideological cliches and visual cliches. After the American Apollo 13 (Apollo 13; dir. R. Hovard, 1995) and “gravity” (Gravity; dir. A. Koaron, 2013) The plot seems secondary. The authors of the script clearly began to play to Nostalgia for the USSR and openly overdone with the squeezing of pride from the audience for Soviet cosmonautics.

The director did not even try to call the heroes to the heroes: what sympathy can we talk about if the characters are ready to sacrifice themselves in order to ensure that the Americans could not pack the Soviet orbital station and, like the Gogolian feature, steal the Moon Station.

But not a single bad word cannot be said to the actors Vladimir Vdovichenkov and Pavel Derevyanko. They managed to make a decent stage duet without frank fake in this fake, secondary and tasteless film. I would compare it with the “white tiger” of Shakhnazarov, but even such a comparison I can’t consider it appropriate.

The climax, in which Soviet pilots with a sledgehammer for several hours are trying to recapture the sensor from the station’s body, resembles an old (and also Soviet) joke, in which the main character is necessarily Russian-with the help of a sledgehammer and such and such a mother, a complex device, which his foreign colleagues could not cope with.

The basis of the Soviet concept of humanism was the ideas of enlightenment. And the ignoring the very value of human life, misunderstanding and inattention to the secret of life, reducing this to quoting and cliches cannot but be alarming (the wife’s motive of the wife of one of the heroes in his staging realization is clearly borrowed from the picture about the fate of the “72 meters” of the director Vladimir Khotinenko).

Death for ideological dogmas is a norm that the authors of the picture would like to approve. Death as a official act, as part of the instruction-this is how the death of Soviet pilots, sailors, astronauts in the performance of official duties seems to be the creators of “saluta-7”. And the fact that there must be criminal negligence behind any feat in peacetime is a creative team, apparently, does not even suspect.

At the same time, excessive effort to make the Cold War soldiers from the astronauts is also noticeable: it is not accidental and the recoil scene between the military honor between the American astronauts flying on the shuttle and the station distressing on the corps, as on the bump of the roser, Soviet pilots.

But is nostalgia so adequate to the Soviet - everyday life, art, art? In this case, there is an obvious substitution and even falsification of ideals. The Soviet was any disgusting, but not dehumanizing. In Soviet art, the insignificance of life was never affirmed.

On the contrary, her greatness was in readiness to sacrifice himself for the sake of others. In Soviet art, the hero sacrificed not in the name of an abstract ideal, but to help and save others - underground comrades, civilians, fellow soldiers. Behind every heroic death there was a practical meaning, and he was in gaining a new life.

In the film “Salyut-7” the hero must die only because the “Americans” are already on the approach: Soviet astronauts observe the start of the NASA ship from the open space, it makes a decisive impression-the orbital station should never go to the enemy in the cold war, which is mentioned more than once.