Scheherazada in the forest of Apollo

Each film Rustam Khamdamov has a dramatic biography. His new painting "Saging without a bottom" participated in the competition of the Moscow festival and is released on January 18.

Rustam Hamdamov

I would compare the cinema of Rustam Khamdamov with an echo - the echo of the Silver Age. Despite the emphasized centonity, and even the name of the new film, borrowed from “Tales of a thousand and one night”, is a metaphor for the inexhaustibility of world culture, the cinema of the famous artist inherits the “Russian Seasons”. The “SPEC FOR THE BOD” continues the “Jewelry” cycle, which was started by the picture of the kidnapping of diamonds with Diana Vishneva in the title role. Here we must recall the glorious postscript of the Diaghilev reprise - the ballet trilogy of Balanchin: he put the ballet "Rubin" to the music of Stravinsky. Khamdamov’s film also has a hidden subtitle of “rubies”, and the wonderful costumes of the prince and princesses hint at the Russian direction in the work of the composer (“parsley”, “Firebird”). You can recall the incomplete opera of Ponomarkov and Mikhuzmin "Sister Alyonushka and Brother Ivanushka", which the authors wrote in the hungry years of military communism. Therefore, small miracles in the film are so natural: mushrooms-gymnasts, a bear in the lunar forest, children who float in coffin, a forest witch (Alla Demidova), who can revive a dead man. The symbolism of the bottomless bag enhances the battery of empty bottles metaphorically compared with the three Chekhov sisters and Katerina from the “thunderstorm” (the author reports that he subtracted this idea in Morandi).

The frame of the fairy-tale story of the "bag" was created in the scenery of the Russian Empire, the backbone of which is about to crack

The essence of this is the highest degree of feature film by the words of Evgeny Kharitonov, who collaborated with Khamdamov in his work on the deceased painting “Unexpected Joy” (1972): “The blood of the king spilled on the carpet. And so the pattern says, the weavers later dismantled: once blood on me, then a hundred years of love, blood love, blood - love love.

The framing of the fairy-tale story of the "bag" was created in the scenery of the Russian Empire, the backbone of which is about to crack. A certain court lady (the beautiful role of Svetlana Nemolyaeva), not alien to occultism (hint of Vyrubova), hires the environment of one of the great princes - a widower, whose wife was destroyed by the revolutionaries. Perhaps the traverse version of the history of Sergei Alexandrovich and Elizabeth Fedorovna, in any case, the habits of the adjutants of the fictitious Romanov hint at the addictions of this Moscow governor, in which the city stood "on seven hills and one buggar." The Grand Duke fell into European melancholy and the Russian binge: the lady was invited in order to dispel the sadness of the weaving of entertaining stories.

The storyteller and the listener are enthusiastically arguing, the princess will be drowned or not drowned, and agree that he will not drown

The heroine of Nemolyaeva tells the fairy tale on the Akutagawa canvas, previously placed by the glorified Kurosava ("Rasomon"). A mysterious crime is being investigated in the Japanese novel: murder and rape; The author provides the opportunity to state his version to each participant in the drama: to the deceased, his wife and robber. In the version of Khamdamov, a married couple is called the prince and princess; The latter is played by an amazingly beautiful in a stylized Russian dress Elena Morozova. The investigation, in general, is not necessary for anyone, is conducted by a student, a student, performed by the best actor of a generation-Evgeny Tkachuk. Iconographically, the image of the prince, tied to a tree and killed by an arrow, correlates with St. Sebastian. And here again it is worth recalling the history of "Russian Seasons" - the production of "martyrdom of St. Sebastian", drama d'annunzio to the music of Debussy, set by Rubinstein, Bakst with the participation of Diaghilev. Part of the action of this drama occurs just in the forest - "the sacred forest of Apollo."

But the connection of two plot lines is not only mechanical. It seems that the free retelling of the novels of Akutagawa symbolically predicts the death of the Russian monarchy. The Japanese plot is a reminder of the lost Russian-Japanese war, and the love triangle of the robber, the princess and prince transfers to the conditional decorations the fatal relations of the last imperial couple and Rasputin. Moreover, closer to the finale of the picture, the princess becomes almost the embodiment of Russia. The storyteller and the listener are enthusiastically arguing, the princess will drown or not drown out, and agree that he will not drown. Indeed, the princess Russia does not think to end with itself, but exclaims: "Leave me - wherever you want!"

“A bag without a bottom”, director Rustam Hamdamov. - Production: studio Rustam Khamdamov, Production Center of Andrei Konchalovsky. - Russia, 2017.