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- All this punk: "The Four Lives of Peter Mamonov" will reveal the fate of a tramp and a rock star
All this punk: "The Four Lives of Peter Mamonov" will reveal the fate of a tramp and a rock star
The "Cast—iron Head", the king and the poet - all this is Pyotr Mamonov. His biography intertwines the contradictions of the era, creative experiments and the search for inner freedom. His contemporaries remembered him not only as the vocalist of the group "Sounds of Mu", but also as the only representative of the "peasant folk culture". This definition is featured in Pavel Lungin's new documentary "The Four Lives of Pyotr Mamonov." The director himself calls the screen hero a man from another era, as if from the Middle Ages. Izvestia was among the first to watch the film and is sharing its impressions.
A planet named Peter Mamonov
Pyotr Mamonov would have turned 75 in 2026, which is a good reason to remember a man who can be called the only punk of the Russian rock scene. He was a musician, actor, poet, and hermit. He changed himself, did not fit into other people's ideas about the norm, and at the same time reflected his time in an amazing way.
Pavel Lungin collects a portrait of an old friend and creative colleague from the memories of those who knew him from a variety of angles. In the frame are Ivan Okhlobystin, Viktor Sukhorukov, Evgeny Margulis, Alexander F. Sklyar, Sergey Shnurov, Sergey Loban, musicians of "Sounds of Mu", Mamonov's relatives, including his wife Olga, and clergymen.
Film director Pavel Lungin at the premiere of his film "The Four Lives of Peter Mamonov" at the October Cinema
The director worked on the film for two years and eventually built a story from four chapters — "The Tramp", "Rock Star", "Actor" and "The Elder". Archival recordings, family photos, fragments of concerts, performances, and movies are juxtaposed with eyewitness accounts. Minute by minute, Mamonov's personal story turns into a chronicle of a country that has gone through several radical changes.
Later, the film will be released on television as a four—part film with 40-minute episodes. The full-length version, in the best traditions of the genre, begins with the quintessence of ratings. Mamonov is called a pagan god and the only representative of the Russian folk "peasant culture", they say that he foresaw the era of wordlessness that we have entered today.
The first chapter, "The Tramp," introduces the viewer to the main character. An interview fragment confirms that the epithets that contemporaries tend to use to describe Mamonov are not acquired qualities, but his basic settings. Who else is capable of telling with simplicity, but not without pride, how in the fourth grade he broke through a plywood cabinet with a run and got the nickname "Cast Iron Head"? Further facts of the biography confirm that fearlessness and bravery only grew stronger after graduating from high school.
The film crew at the premiere of Pavel Lungin's film "The Four Lives of Pyotr Mamonov"
Mamonov grew up in the center of Moscow, in Bolshoy Karetny Lane, next door to Vladimir Vysotsky. His recognizable image consisted of extravagant details: long hair, a dozen bracelets on his arms and seven buttons on the belt of his trousers. In the documentary essay, Lungin departs from the external image of the musician in order to focus on his biography. In the 1980s, there were frequent clashes between "friends" and "strangers" on the streets. During one of these fights, Mamonov was stabbed with a shiv just below the heart — and, having won the fight, immediately collapsed dead.
Lungin assembles the evidence in such a way that the individual lines seem to pick up each other. Only in one fragment Mamonov is called cool, as in the next minute the artist and founder of the Hermitage club Svetlana Vickers adds: "And the songs are cool. Maybe because some of them are about me." By the way, there are three female characters in the film. According to Lungin himself, it is on these three whales that everything is based.
"He was cool," says Vickers. Artist Olga Gorokhova then recalls Mamonov's unusual plastic art and his early poems. Even before the advent of the experimental group "Sounds of Mu", the future vocalist of the band wrote lyrics, and certainly about love: for a woman, for alcohol, for God.
A special place in the painting is occupied by the memoirs of Mamonov's widow, Olga. She talks about living together, quotes the lyrics. Thanks to her, a living person appears behind the image of an eccentric artist — beloved, complex, and sometimes unbearable.
Interesting shamelessness
But the frame changes and the second chapter begins — "Rock Star". Here, Mamonov's story merges with the story of The Sounds of Mu, a group that turned a musical experiment into an independent artistic language, and the apartment dwellers into a phenomenon ahead of time.
"I am a grey pigeon," Mamonov sang to himself and to many other guys nearby. At concerts, he was greeted with shouts of "Peter, my dear father!" In the texts, many recognized their own weaknesses and fears.
The band's performances resembled performances: Mamonov could make faces, fall, and squirm, turning the song into a small performance. In 1987, British U2 producer Brian Eno noticed the musicians at one of their performances. The acquaintance turned into a ten-year contract, which led to two American tours. Then there was a split based on a dispute over leadership and the termination of joint work.
For Mamonov, this was the beginning of a new chapter, "The Actor." And few people will tell you about this period better than Pavel Lungin. In the late 1980s, he accidentally saw footage from the musician's interview and decided: this is the hero of his upcoming movie "Taxi Blues". The director was attracted by Mamonov's special acting condition — "complete shamelessness in the ancient sense."
Originally from the past
Despite his successful career, at the age of 45, Mamonov would come to a deep existential crisis, flee Moscow, and turn to God. The chapter "The Elder" opens with images from the film "The Island", a film in which Mamonov played a man seeking forgiveness for a long—standing sin. This role became an on-screen reflection of his mature worldview. "According to the structure of his soul, he may be a man of the Middle Ages. He may have been born here by mistake," says Lungin.
An important role is played by the musician's real home, where he moves after leaving the capital. The large brick building was distinguished by one feature — an external cast-iron staircase. There was no other way to go up to the second floor during his lifetime. He was looking for silence and an opportunity to focus on what he considered to be the most important thing.
The final chord is Mamonov's words: "There is no death. Man is a ray. There is only a beginning and no end." Then there are the credits. So who is he — a tramp, a rock star, or, as one of the characters in the interview claims, a fragment of an empire among romantic heroes? Lungin does not give a definite answer.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
