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- "The Ferryman" as a miracle: the film combined Kusturica, "Love and Doves" and "The Wedding in Malinovka"
"The Ferryman" as a miracle: the film combined Kusturica, "Love and Doves" and "The Wedding in Malinovka"
The premiere of Fyodor Popov's new film "The Ferryman" took place in Moscow, and this is a film that simultaneously refers to the classics, and at the same time, due to the genre mix, is quite original. Fyodor Popov's eccentric fantasy comedy melodrama puts the fighting in the Zaporizhia region, mass emigration and a change of order on the back burner. The first one shows the adventures of a quirky ferry inventor, his funny fellow villagers and a visiting American journalist, a beauty in love with Russian culture. Izvestia tells us why this film is worth paying attention to — it will be released nationally on October 30.
I wish I could tell Gogol
One of the sad things about modern art is that it surprises us less and less. From the first pages, everything becomes clear to us with the book, from the first seconds of sound — with the music album. People barely sit in the theater until the intermission, and they're used to turning off movies with TV series right after the prologue. All the more valuable are authors who remain unpredictable where there seems to be practically no way to do so.
A shot from the movie "The Ferryman"
When "The Ferryman" begins, everything in it gives only what the scriptwriters call "false trails." For example, the main character. We know about him that his name is Vasya and that he works on a ferry in a remote village in the Zaporozhye region. The time of action is the warm months of 2022. In one of the first scenes, Vasya shows that he knows how to handle mines. He wears a vest, the man is obviously strong, and it is immediately clear to us where the action will take us next: Russian military units are on the way, and Vasya will either prepare their meeting or join them. In general, we all saw it in Renat Davletyarov's film "Donbass. The Outskirts" in 2018, where a Russian soldier at the epicenter of the civil war in Ukraine performed feats and saved even those who could formally be considered an enemy to him.
But the ferryman Vasya will deceive our expectations. This is not John Rambo and Danila Bagrov, he will not run with a machine gun at the ready and demonstrate the wonders of hand-to-hand combat. For that matter, he's a puppet theater artist and an inventor who secretly builds a time machine that looks like a moonshine still. To go to Gogol and find out from him personally how the "Dead Souls" ended. Ideally, to prevent them from being burned. Have you been waiting for such a turn? And no one could have waited, and this is far from all about this mysterious character, but you will already learn about it from the film. And no, he's not a Soviet Shurik at all, although you can look for similarities.
A shot from the movie "The Ferryman"
The surprises don't end there. We get to know Vasya's family, and it seems that this family was "transported" directly from Teriberka: the wife is played by Anna Ukolova, who has exactly the same role as in Leviathan. For that iconic image of a deceptively simple "little man," she was nominated for a Nickname, and it's still her calling card. We think that arguing with my wife about how to bring prosperity into the house will become an important part of the plot, but this is not the case either: in search of a better life, the characters already want to go abroad and live there on benefits as refugees from Ukraine, but it is not so easy to leave this enchanted place. Here, too, you will have to be surprised, although an attentive viewer will already suspect something when he sees that the TV box here does not play news, shows and advertisements, but shows specific films about underwater depths (the author's rhyme with "Leviathan", by the way). Oh, it's not an easy family here, and everything is not easy.
In search of the main character
The main character of the film, perhaps, is not Shurik after all. The main character is the space in which we are immersed. The former village of the Doukhobor sectarians, where girls in antique costumes are still dancing on the shore. Everything is conditional here, and the times seem to be mixed up: the authors are pulling strings to the "Wedding in Malinovka", where the government regularly changes and where there is even a kind of Popandopulo. Where "Viburnum Krasnaya" may be seen at first, "Love and Doves" eventually sprout: individual characters, costumes, and plot moves seemed to have migrated straight from there. The hero's daughter can wear a fashionable Lenin T-shirt as much as she likes, but we can see that she's still a girl from Menshov's masterpiece.
There is a piglet in the village, listed in the Guinness Book of Records for High—speed running, cows give birth here at the most inopportune moment, monuments wink at each other - of course, we immediately understand everything when a musical theme close to the Soviet "Cranes" is suddenly replaced by Balkan motifs. Of course, "The Ferryman" is partly Kusturica's "Life as a Miracle," only a more modest, chaste movie, and the grotesque is of a different kind. What's that?"
A shot from the movie "The Ferryman"
Indeed, there is a lot of grotesque, and sometimes fantasy, here. So, Russian troops are entering the village, in general, hot days are going on, and the locals in somnambulistic goodness seem completely indifferent to the cataclysm around them. One is preparing to meet with aliens, the other is trying in vain to stop drinking, and there are feasts and performances in the local assembly hall. Vasya shows a number about the field of wonders in the land of fools — and everyone cheers carelessly. No one is following the news, nothing is being discussed, except maybe boxes of humanitarian aid. A film crew from the USA arrives, but for some reason they are filming the folklore quirks of the locals, as if they could really have been sent for this.
When the journalists find out that Russian troops are approaching, they are ordered to work from the editorial office. Well, the viewer thinks, now they will start shooting something about the war. Nothing like that: the cameraman will run away, the correspondent will fall in love with Vasya. In this space, anything is possible, here an American woman in one of the first dialogues may suddenly shout: "Come up with something, you're a man!" The viewer is shocked, because this can not be. Maybe, maybe, of course. There will be many more surprises.
Where did it all come from
Director Fyodor Popov has not shot many films, this is his seventh full meter in a long career. Moreover, his most famous works — the notorious "Caucasian Roulette" about the Chechen war and the cute family movie "Four Taxi Drivers and a Dog" — were released more than 20 years ago. But his main professional activity is producing, there are dozens and dozens of paintings, including iconic ones. This is the "Bull", after which Yura Borisov became a star. This is the "Vitka Garlic", which is considered almost a cult today. This is a tough drama about the Moscow escort girls "Kat". This is Spartak and Kalashnikov, which brought Andrey Proshkin the Golden Eagle for the best debut. But the most important thing is a number of paintings that Popov made with Nikolai Dostal.
A shot from the movie "The Ferryman"
You can list quotes from various films in "The Ferryman" as much as you like, but the space, aesthetics, author's optics, the naive absurdity of what is happening — it's all like a declaration of love for the cinema of Nikolai Dostal. It was as if he was invisibly present on the set, helping, guiding. He turned the usual types of genre cinema into idiots unlike anyone else, of whom there are so many in his paintings and who will forever be etched into the memory with their cute childish antics.
It seemed that Dostal had disappeared, and this movie had disappeared from our lives forever. Well, it's just become impossible. And Fyodor Popov brought him back, and the intonations of Dostalevsky's heroes already sound where there should have been only the buzzing of drones, machine gun shots, the roar of engines and everything that seems to be trying to invade the narrative here, but as if it settles, sinks, takes root in the ground that preserves the heroes and holds them Here, safe and sound. So even one of the saddest Russian-language songs "Not for me" sounds cheerful and life-affirming. Such a place is incredible, and starting next week it can be seen on the big screen.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
