Translated material
Passion for the master
Anna Narinskaya and Alexander Etkind: Why is the authorities fight again with Bulgakov?
Sergey Medvedev: Messir Woland returned to Russia with his retinue. Around the new film by Mikhail Lokshin "Master and Margarita" a devilish scandal unfolds. The Z-publicity accuses the film of non-poatriotism, anti-state and even anti-war sentiments: they demand to ban its rental and punish the authors. Why is the Bulgakov Roman and the film on this novel every time is so objectionable to the authorities?
Correspondent: the Russian Z-publicity and propaganda did not like the picture of totalitarian Moscow, foreign actors, that the director lives in the United States and openly opposes the war , as well as the anti-Soviet film discovered in the film. The patriots turned to the FSB with a request to check Lokshin for involvement in the so -called "fakes about the army" and recognize him with a terrorist and extremist. It is worth noting that the tape was supported by the Film Foundation and the Ministry of Culture. The film generally began as an international project, but the war isolated it and did not allow him to leave Russia.
Sergey Medvedev: Anna Narinskaya , a journalist, curator of exhibitions. Why such a stir? It would seem that the "Master and Margarita" will be filmed once ...
Z-channels and official Russian television are scolding this film
Anna Narinskaya: There are three directions of hype. One is a Z-hap, because the film is really anti-Totalitarian. It may not like it, it may not like it, it is not thin and very comic, but it disapprovingly shows totalitarianism, and also contains many hints that the 30s, when the masters killed, and then ruined Bulgakov, and our time-these times will rhyme, and in general, little has changed since that time. Paid and sincere Z-channels, and official Russian television is being scolded by this film.
The second direction of hype is exactly with the opposite sign. People are so happy to see in the official cinema something protest (and the film is unequivocally read as a protest) that they are ready to praise the film. You come to the cinema, take the bucket of popcorn, and they say to you from the screen: "Censorship is bad!" And people are already delighted.
And the third, more subtle and interesting thing is a great saying: "The book is better." This novel is very loved by people.
Anna Narinskaya
Sergey Medvedev: This is really a fifth film. Boris Nadezhdin came out in parallel: he seems to be a rather systemic person, but this protest potential is invested in him, who is looking for a way out, like steam under pressure. In my opinion, in the same way, the protest potential found an exit to the film-you are sitting in the hall, and it seems like they say uncomfortable about Stalinism. In 2024, this is already a protest!
Anna Narinskaya: Still, not only about Stalinism. I would like to act in defense of the film in this regard. I read your post that a thin polyphonic romance was turned into a comic book - I completely agree with this.
Sergey Medvedev: I do not compare the film and the novel: these are different genres. I just feel sorry for that they pulled out the only line that is unloved and not the main thing for me - love. Suddenly they turned this into such a rather romantic story - the confrontation of love and totalitarianism. And much that I expected from this film was overboard.
Anna Narinskaya: Yes, there are things that have not taken into the script, but there are things that are not beaten, not felt. The most important point is how Stalinism and totalitarianism fall into everyday life, in speech and the behavior of people. This is what Bulgakov converges with such high -dead and important observers behind the time of repression: Olga Freidenberg and Lydia Ginzburg . For example, Freudenberg wrote the words "Hitler" and "Stalin" in one sentence. She then - during the war and the blockade! - I realized that this is one and the same.
The most important point is how Stalinism and totalitarianism fall into everyday life
But Bulgakov, at a much easier level, also sees it. He sees how Swara from the house in the village of Perelygino (parody of Peredelkino) is a continuation of this Stalinism, how a denunciation becomes an instrument. And this is very rhyming with today. And all this was thrown there. At the same time, they designated in large strokes that totalitarian power is bad that people, out of fear and herd feeling, very quickly begin to support this totalitarian power.
Sergey Medvedev: Such hooks in the present. For example, there is a trial of Yeshua Ga-Notskri, and they say that he was convicted (such prosecutor's jargon).
Anna Narinskaya: There is this construction, of course, a hint of Moscow from Sobyanin.
Sergey Medvedev: A lot of fascism is read here: giant Moscow was not built according to the spring, but rather by Speer . This is such a gigantic Reich Scan.
Anna Narinskaya: Yes, but still, let's not forget that Gotham City in Batman was also built according to Speer. Of course, Lokshin is a huge number of quotes from Hollywood films. The film has many parallels with Hollywood comics, including cinematic. So this is a reference not only specifically to the Speerov plan of Berlin. But still, this part of the film, in my opinion, is impeccable. I first learned that, it turns out, a psychiatric hospital in which the master sits is an unfulfilled project of the constructivist Leonidov, the Ministry of Heavy Industry, an even greater sign of totalitarianism than the Palace of Soviets with Lenin at the top, which was also built in this film. This is a great idea: we did not see the implemented Stalin General Plan, but here we suddenly show it.
Sergey Medvedev: I am disappointed with the film, but I begin to understand a little that this film is a conceptual gesture.
Anna Narinskaya: Totalitarianism is really very shown through plastic, architecture, darkening and so on. There is this suffocating atmosphere. But still we will not hide: the guys in Master and Margarita drew everything on the computer.
Sergey Medvedev: Anna, you on Facebook called "Masters and Margarita" at the same time as the most reassessed and most underestimated novel. Why?
Totalitarianism is very shown through plastic, architecture, darkening
Anna Narinskaya: He was written with a claim to a great novel. He, as it were, is trying to talk about the most important thing - of Christ, about the future life, about the possibility of atonement. They tell us that the master writes a great romance, and then pieces of this novel are given. And then this is a certain game, that is, you must either agree that this is a great romance, which is very seductive, since, indeed, there is such a fashionable topic of processed Christianity for smart people, there is all the polyphony of good and evil, whether they differ from each other ... These are such spiritual issues, but which is on the shoulder. And all this together is the machine that makes and very massively love this novel, and relate to it fragrantly enough. I visited both camps.
An additional thing is also: the Roman prohibited in Soviet times also, of course, fueled this status.
Sergei Medvedev: I am always amazed at how strong the romance is: these storylines, attracted from different eras, written in different styles. Probably, this gave Lokshin the opportunity to get such an unexpected scenario move that after the defeat of the mass of Bulgakov (Master) decides to write a novel.
Anna Narinskaya: My dad, Anatoly Nayman , was sure that the master was taken from the dialogue of Stalin and Pasternak about Mandelstam. When Pasternak called Stalin to protect Mandelstam (and the first time he succeeded), he said that Mandelstam needed Russian literature. Stalin asked: "But he is a master?" This is an incredibly interesting topic - spellbound both Bulgakov and the entire intelligentsia of that time by Stalin, an absolute fad in this place. And many people will tell you that the novel "Master and Margarita" is anti -Soviet, but Prostalinsky.
Sergey Medvedev: Even so?!
Anna Narinskaya: You know that there is this comparison of Woland and Stalin.
Sergey Medvedev: Marietta Chudakova wrote about this.
Anna Narinskaya: In the novel there is a certain force that presses everything, but people themselves are ready to become this shit. This novel is about how people are ready to become shit. The scene in the theater is simply presented on a saucer. And this power is a kind of verbal. She, as it were, says that this great person himself acts from some goals that we may not understand. We know what letter Bulgakov wrote to Stalin, and not only him. People, of course, wanted to somehow rationalize the then all this horror, the collapse of repression and the absolute change of life, to assume that this happens at least for the sake of something. And Stalin is not just a bloody killer who is at the head of all this, but still a person who understands something and leads to something. Of course, there were such views. In any case, this novel also gives the possibility of such an interpretation.
Sergey Medvedev: Who is the heir to Bulgakov in modern Russian literature? Pelevin can be considered a successor? Fantastic invasion of reality, a social satire, carried out through a fantastic ...
This novel is about how people are ready to become shit
Anna Narinskaya: The second most important thing that unites them is that fantasticity makes their description of time even more believable. All the horror that took place during the time of the "master and Margarita" is easier to describe through the intervention of otherworldly forces than to rationalize what is happening. Pelevin uses this wonderful. It is much more believable to explain what happened in the 90s, the kingdom of the goddess Ishtar, than the change of economic formations, as we were told.
Sergey Medvedev: Alexander Etkind, cultural historian, professor of Central European University in Vienna join us.
Alexander Etkind
The film has a very strong emphasis on Woland, played by the German actor August Dil, who played fascists in many films, including Tarantino in “inglorious bastards”. Who is Woland? There is a hypothesis that Woland is Stalin. But you have a whole book about another person who is the prototype of Woland.
Alexander Etkind: That prototype was William Bullit . The first book that I published is Eros impossible. There was a chapter, which was called: "Bullit and Bulgakov." Bullit was related to this book, because among his other classes he wrote a book in collaboration with Sigmund Freud. This book was the psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson , the American president, with whom Bullit was well acquainted, worked for him, was his assistant during the Parisian peace conference . When Bullit was an American ambassador in Moscow, he founded the embassy (he has not been since revolutionary times). They wanted to build a huge palace for the American embassy in the very place where Moscow State University is now standing. There they were supposed to build an enlarged copy of Tomas Jefferson's estate, such a famous neoclassical building.
Sergey Medvedev: There is now a Chinese embassy in this place.
Alexander Etkind: Yes. Stalin and the Moscow authorities promised to highlight this site, but then a big policy changed, this is already at the level of geopolitics: an agreement with Japan, with America and so on. The severity of the moment disappeared, and this embassy has never been built there. They occupied the Spaso House and a few more premises in Moscow. Bulgakov and Bullit became very friends. Bullit, by the way, was also a writer. According to the documents, it is clear that at some moments they communicated as close friends. George Kennan , who was the right hand of Bullita and his student, also participated in all this.
Sergey Medvedev: Is it true that Kennan is Koroviev’s prototype?
Alexander Etkind: There are much fewer grounds for this. In fact, it doesn’t matter. Bullita had a retinue that followed him, translated. Further - more. In addition to the fact that they became close friends, Bulgakov and his wife at that very moment filed an application for departure to France. Bullit introduced them to the French ambassador in Moscow, with the Turkish ambassador just in case. Imagine, on the one hand, he was famous, on the other hand, already in disgrace: his plays were prohibited for production at the Moscow Art Theater. Bullit visited "days of turbines" five times!
Imagine an American ambassador in Moscow and a disgraced writer - real friendship!
Sergey Medvedev: This was one of Stalin's favorite performances!
Alexander Etkind: Bullit was sitting on "days of turbines" with English translation in his hands, because he did not understand Russian. Imagine an American ambassador in Moscow and a disgraced writer - real friendship! And in these months, Bulgakov refused to leave. It was a drama, tragedy, health problems ...
Sergey Medvedev: As I understand it, there was a prototype with Bal Satan. At the end of April 1935, a completely fantastic reception was held with Bullit in a Spaso House, where the entire Soviet elite was present, with the exception of Stalin.
Alexander Etkind: The event was grandiose, called the "Festival of Spring". All sorts of miracles took place there. For example, there was a Czech jazz-organ. There was some kind of gypsy orchestra, and then it all ended in a lezgin.
Sergey Medvedev: Flowers were brought from Helsinki, a wall of roses was built there-something unheard of for Moscow!
Alexander Etkind: Durov trainers with seals; Among the dancers, cubs ran. One of the cubs torn to the uniform of the Soviet marshal, and there was a scandal. The American waiters around him fussed, cleaned, and he shouted that it was an abuse of foundations (or scrapers). The atmosphere is very similar to the novel, but the idea of the prototype should not be understood so that Bulgakov came home and wrote a report. He wrote a fictional, fantastic story, combining real impressions with all sorts of read reference books.
Sergey Medvedev: Woland in the novel is a negative or positive character? He is very ambivalent. It seems to me that he destroys what has already been destroyed, pulls out evil from evil people.
Alexander Etkind: He is the most positive character of this novel after the master and Margarita. Woland is a really acting face, he, as it were, sets in motion a novel, his plot. This, by the way, is well shown in the film.
Any anti -utopia shows the monstrous social power and love connection that defeats it
I rather liked this film. I read a lot of critical assessments, they are also fair. Some moments just freeze, for example, Satan’s same ball is simply bored. The film gives completely new motives and values to the plot of Bulgakov. I would say that they are anti -utopian. On the one hand, the utopian crazy Moscow is shown, the Palace of Soviets, which was never built, but was completely designed. It is shown in a completely new interpretation, more like a hippo than Leviathan, how the Palace of Soviets with Lenin and Stalin’s cabinet in Lenin's index finger was conceived.
Sergey Medvedev: The final fire of Moscow in the era of arrival of Ukrainian drones is a rather dangerous analogy.
Alexander Etkind: Any anti -utopia shows the monstrous social power, cruel, suppressing a person, and a love connection that defeats this power. Usually in anti -utopias it is not a revolution, but love.
Sergey Medvedev: In this regard, the film is embedded in a very powerful mythology of world literature. All these discussions, all this fascinity of the film is another evidence of the devilish power that the text of Mikhail Bulgakov has.