Important questions: the Cannes hit and "The Aviator" were released at the same time

A rare case when an author's movie is liked by all viewers at once, Joachim Trier's "Sentimental Value" is released on Russian screens a few months after the triumph in Cannes. There is also a long-suffering film adaptation of Evgeny Vodolazkin's "The Aviator," which has been working on for many years; Konstantin Bronzit's animated full-meter "On the Release," the horror "Essence" starring Benedict Cumberbatch and the film tale "Masha and the Bears" starring Vitaly Kornienko and Zoya Berber. You can't download and watch these movies for free, but they can be seen in cinemas this weekend. Izvestia selected the main novelties of the weekend.

"Sentimental value", 18+

Directed by Joachim Trier. Starring: Renate Reinswe, Stellan Skarsgard, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleos, Elle Fanning, Anders Danielsen Lee

The winner of the Grand Prix of the Cannes Film Festival was greeted with a standing ovation after the first screening on the Croisette. Tired of the experimental, harsh and sometimes simply pretentious pictures of numerous programs, the audience happily greeted the therapeutic, understandable, melodramatic, but also quite intelligent and even somewhere subtle cinema. It's nice to spend an evening with someone like that, it's not scary to invite friends to this.: here you have the universal favorite Skarsgard, and the sex symbol Elle Fanning, and even the director's last name is like that of the great Dane, who hasn't shot anything for a long time, except for the controversial third season of Kingdom.

The Russian public fell in love with the "new" Trier after his "The Worst Man in the World," also a sweet and also somewhat optional Cannes film. And "Value" will surely become a national hit, large companies will go to it, cry at the sessions, without hesitation, and then sit in coffee shops for a long time and savor the aftertaste from this work.

And the plot fits into a few words: the once-very bright director, who was released, is trying to return to the big cinema, and for this he needs to return to the family that he abandoned many years ago in pursuit of fame. He wrote a script in which his daughter was supposed to play his former wife, and when his daughter refused, he called a Hollywood actress and decided to make movies the way he was used to. This is how the family story becomes public, and a father and his two daughters with childhood injuries have plenty of reasons for difficult conversations and pulling skeletons out of all the closets of a rickety house.

"For release", 6+

Director: Konstantin Bronzit. Starring: Andrey Levin, Andrey Zaitsev, Yulia Rudina, Anton Vinogradov

— An animated character does not have a ready—made mental content, - Konstantin Bronzit reflected in an interview after the premiere of the film "On the discard." — We have to create it completely from scratch every time. A person, an actor in a feature film, has it by default. A living face, his gaze, even from a photograph, affects us incomparably more strongly than the gaze of even a carefully drawn character. Therefore, any animated character will always lose to a live actor.

Let's disagree with the master. The characters of his new work "play" no worse than other artists, including honored and folk ones. Let's not forget that for some, Bronzite is a symbol of industrial success, a man who makes "heroic" cartoon blockbusters and "Luntik". But for the whole world, he is a two-time Oscar nominee and an indisputable authority in author's animation. "On Release", about the adventures of a tie, a shoe, a vase and a spray bottle, balances between these two poles. And it's very beautiful.

Aviator, 16+

Directed by Egor Konchalovsky. Starring: Alexander Gorbatov, Evgeny Stychkin, Daria Kukarskikh, Konstantin Khabensky, Irina Pegova, Sofia Ernst, Evgenia Dobrovolskaya, Alexey Kravchenko

Over the past quarter century, if you do not take the works of Viktor Pelevin, there have not been many novels in Russian literature that are considered must-reads. Aviator is one of them. If not everyone has read it, then everyone has definitely heard of it. Deep, contemplative, and slow, it was perfectly suited for film adaptation through the optics of Yuri Arabov, the only screenwriter in Russia who was able to make something absolutely metaphysical and at the same time completely authorial, new, and vivid out of a non-cinematic text.

But the film turned out to be completely different from what Arabov's fans are used to. There is no duality, illusory, or doubt characteristic of his themes here. Egor Konchalovsky made an audience movie, and therefore a strong love triangle appears here, the motive of repression disappears into the background, moreover, the main character of the narrative has changed! Not every reader will accept such freedom in relation to the original source. However, Vodolazkin himself actively welcomes the processing of his work, perhaps realizing that the novel looks even more advantageous at the same time.

"Essence", 18+

Directed by Dylan Southern. Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, David Thewlis, Sam Spruell, Jesse Cave

My hands are itching to translate the name of the painting The Thing with Feathers as "Miracle in Feathers," but distributors in Russia decided not to take any chances and came up with a more abstract and, perhaps, not too memorable, but corresponding to the horror genre. "Essence" has lost touch with a poem by Emily Dickinson, which has been translated into Russian more than once, including as "Hope is a miracle in feathers" (although it seems that the version "The Meek Bird is Hope..." is better), and with a novel by Max Porter, which refers to Dickinson, but there instead "Hope" means "Sorrow". And so this essence, perhaps, would have passed unnoticed by the viewer, even the participation of this feature debut of documentary filmmaker Dylan Southern in the prestigious Sundance would not have helped.

But, fortunately, Benedict Cumberbatch himself is on the poster of the picture, and David Thewlis is also in the credits, who, however, for most viewers is just "that guy from Harry Potter who played Remus Lupin." And already the story of how a single father with two children is being chased by a creature that feeds on fears is beginning to seem quite attractive.

Masha and the Bears, 6+

Directed by Antonina Rouget. Starring: Vitaly Kornienko, Lyudmila Artemyeva, Snezhana Samokhina, Miron Provorov, Zoya Berber

There are only a few weeks left before the release of Igor Voloshin's conceptual film story "Pinocchio", where Vita Kornienko plays a wooden doll. And, as we understand it, we will not see Kornienko herself in the frame, although she inspires the beloved character of all children. Therefore, for now, you can pass the time with another fairy tale, where Kornienko is also in the main role, but is constantly present in the frame. But there will be a lot of computer characters around, unlike "Pinocchio", where almost everything is made by hand, "lamp-like".

So Masha goes after her runaway brother, who becomes a baby goat, and then the bears themselves appear, who can only help save the boy. Before the release of the film, Izvestia talked with Zoya Berber, an actress who played the role of a Real Mom, the star of "Real Boys" and the cutest police robot in the world. Among other things, we found out, by the way, how many screen children the actress had this year alone — a very impressive figure.