Director of the Great Breaking

Valeria Novodvorskaya about Alexei German. Outstanding film director died 5 years ago, February 21, 2013

Russian cinema has lost one of the cohort of masters. Alexey German fought even when there was no victory

Alexey German on the set of the film "History of the Arcanar Revenue" ("It is difficult to be God"), 2006 photo: ITAR-TASS

Alexei German is a great and extraordinary director who poured his personal rejection of the forever military reality on the screens and pages of scripts. Because there was no rear, the Stalinist peace life appears to be a war without rules, where there is no his own, and the meaning of the era - the father of his native, the king of the earth - lies in agony, all more afraid. This is an episode from a fierce, rebellious film "Khrustalev, car!"

The artist left the generation of sons, from our generation, mortally wounded by the great era with his villains, who did not believe in anything other than good, and did not inherit the naive and fiery faith of the fathers, which was inherent in the writer to Yuri German.

These fathers and their children were burned in such a fire that no thaw, no restructuring could heal their wounds.

Yuri German with his trilogy (“The matter to which you serve”, “My dear man” and “I am responsible for everything”) created images of bright and strong people, heroes and ascetics. Volodya Ustimenko, his aunt Aglaya, Varya and her father Admiral ... Yuri German was the first to show how the heroes of the war were tortured in the NKVD. But Germanic heroes believed not only in Stalin, but also in revolution and communism. Having lost Stalin, they did not lose faith. And the generation of children already knew the truth, they did not have an ideal ... And the generation of grandchildren (the youngest German) does not even seek this ideal.

The generation of Alexei German, born in 1938, ceased to believe even in the "sacred" war. And his “road test” (by the way, according to the story of his father), shot in 1971, was not for nothing on the shelf until 1985. The unfortunate peasants, who interfere with the survivors of both partisans and the invaders; ruthless, like German punishers, commissar of a detachment who is ready to bring the bridge on the heads of our prisoners of war (there was nothing to give up); The repentant policeman Lazarev, who was simply unlucky, brought by this commissar to a loop ... A test is like an inquisitorial ceremony: if a poor woman thrown into the water bursts, she is a witch, and she is burned at the stake; If she drowns, then everything is in order, she is innocent. Well, Lazarev proved that he was clean: he drowned, that is, he was killed when he performed a hopeless task. All is better than a fire, that is, the Stalinist Gulag.

“Twenty days without war” (1976), shot from the story of Konstantin Simonov, is also about the military generation. But “My Friend Ivan Lapshin” (1984) is a tribute to believers in his illusion to significant people, father and his comrades, this is even envy, but with all respect - and misunderstanding of the meanings and visions of the world with these epic characters.

The most important thing is "Khrustalev, car!" (1998). The film is like a shell that spits the Stalinist era in shreds. Two girls, daughters sent as “Jews-cosmopolitans” of relatives of the Medical General Glinsky, living in his closet; The little son, who beats the Jewish friends and receives from his peers the medal "For the victory over Abram." By order of the Encavedeshnikov, after the arrest, on the way to prison, the general is raped by the criminals, and then, somehow washing and dressing, they drag him to treat the dying Stalin. Stalinism is huge black varnished cars with tank engines, traveling from the “near summer cottage”. And Beria is crying, who has already decided to remove an extra witness, this very medical general ...

“The history of the Arkanar massacre” (with the Strugatsky - “It is difficult to be God”) we have not seen yet, although we have already read the script. On the screen, Rumata-Anton makes the wrong choice that is in the novel. He will not fly to the ground. He will fight and die on this damned planet, although victory is not expected. This is the main thing that Alexei German came to, what he wanted to teach us: to fight to the last, without the hope of victory, to stand in the way of evil.

First published in NT No. 6 of February 25, 2013