Russia (bbabo.net), - Our perestroika cinema is connected with the name of Vladimir Khotinenko. The young director of the Sverdlovsk film studio made films that amazed with the freshness of his eyes and insight into the fate of a rapidly changing country. His "Mirror for a Hero" with a character caught in a time loop was six years ahead of the famous "Groundhog Day", but it was deeper and more important for understanding our yesterday, today and tomorrow. "Roy", "Makarov", "Patriotic Comedy" fought with sharpened imagery, metaphor, artistic capacity, "Muslim" turned out to be visionary. The director was fascinated by Chekhov's way of exploring a person, and Sergei Makovetsky became his favorite actor at that time, expressing Chekhov's irrationality better than others. But he also plunges Chekhov's unsettled characters into a kind of mystical space, where they are driven by forces of an almost otherworldly nature. In Makarov, a Makarov pistol, accidentally bought, like the devil, begins to tempt the hero and dictate his own laws of life to him. The surrounding world looked menacing, fraught with danger, and again the accuracy of foresight is striking: a new escalation of the violence of each against each in the country was just beginning.

In his newest films, already shot in Moscow, from Dostoevsky's "Demons" and sarcastic "Heirs" to films about the "demon of the revolution" Parvus, about Lenin, echoes of internal doubts and self-persuasion of an outwardly bravura, but much changed mind deep artist, who is constantly changing, are felt, and seeks to maintain positions that he considers the only true ones.

In one he is unshakable: in the fatalistic sense of life. He is a "mystical man" and declared this quality in his very first film "Lift", filmed in the 2nd year of the Higher Director's Courses with the participation of Avant-garde Leontiev and Tatiana Sidorenko. It is known that a good director can shoot a masterpiece in a telephone booth - Khotinenko set himself the task of filming a mixture of horror and family drama in an elevator. And this, in my opinion, turned out (those who wish can be convinced of this by looking at the picture on the site).

Cinema is what he lives by. He considers it a kind of magic: here a person died a long time ago - but on the screen he is alive! After reviewing the "Passion of Joan of Arc" in 1927, he admitted: "A fantastic feeling - none of the performers have long been gone, but the miracle continues to exist! This is cinema: it conserves time." So it is: Khotinenko's 26 films are a seismogram of our hopes and their collapses, our pains and attempts to explain, understand, "speak" them.

On the festival routes in different years we had many chances to talk.

Fatalist

- I graduated from the Sverdlovsk architectural school. Stumbled into construction institutions - neither I nor my ideas are needed. And then Nikita Mikhalkov came to the city - he met with the intelligentsia, and my friend dragged me to one of these meetings. In this story, the movement of fate is striking: after all, I didn’t want to go - what should I talk about with him, about my creative plans? But he went. I have always been a fan of cinema, and we hooked on tongues, talked for three hours. He said: come to Moscow, grab what you have written there. That's exactly what I did. And everything depended on this chance meeting! I am horrified at the thought that this might not have happened: the whole life would have gone on different tracks.

So yes, I am a fatalist. Once I showed "Muslim" in Canada, and one journalist was horrified when I answered her with the words of Chichibabin from the film "Makarov": "Those who do not accept flour will never be saved." I would really like Russia to be safe, clean and happy, but I see no preconditions for this. This is not in her story either. Sometimes a little better, a little worse, but the general context remained the same. Maybe the knowledge that we will gain in these torments is the highest and most valuable. And I don't think it's bad. This is bad while we are serving our human term, and it is short. But if you believe in eternal life, life after death, you need to prepare for it. And Russia, probably, had such a fate - through suffering. It is very large: a sea of ​​good - but also a sea of ​​evil. And a powerful discharge between these poles.

Our consciousness dangles between greatness and self-abasement, we can’t find a balance between pride and simple human dignity

I shot the film "Mirror for a Hero" for my parents - a declaration of love for them and their generation. At that time, it seemed to many that no one needed it, life was lived in vain. And I thought: it can not be in vain! There cannot be a bad mother, a bad motherland! And when I decided to shoot for mom and dad, I realized what I would shoot this picture about - about time. A farewell wave to a bygone era.

Inevitability

...So you took me at my word: they say, I am a fatalist, I called my film about Lenin "Inevitability" and at the same time I claim that this man changed the era - a coincidence, the direction of some higher powers? Undoubtedly! This play - the revolution - has already been written, it remains to choose the performers. And he got this role. Whether it could have gone to another - I'm not convinced: this play has a very tough plot. Everything happened contrary to worldly logic. Trotsky was a brilliant speaker, Plekhanov - an analyst, historian, philosopher, it seems that there is someone to replace - but no one succeeded! Of course, Lenin is not a very reflective person, and this probably helped him. But nothing human was alien to him. Upon learning of the execution of his brother, he went to a tavern and drank vodka. I never drank it again - I drank wine, beer, but not vodka. There is a hypothesis that he avenged his brother. It has its own truth: what can you think about the system, having learned that it executed your brother?! A career as a lawyer shone for him, and it is a fact that he refused to defend the merchant, who, in his opinion, was a scoundrel. The mass of such details show that this is not a devil, but a normal person. But such people do not have generally accepted moral principles - they do not apply them. Otherwise, they would never have reached their goal.

For us, Lenin was a monument, an icon, and from his deification we managed to make an overkill revolution - he completely disappeared from our life. In preparation for the film, I read a lot of serious studies about Lenin. The Germans, for example, have an opinion that this frail, bald and burry intellectual in a vest is the first in the list of people who changed the world. It seemed to me wrong that this event was erased from our consciousness: after all, it opened the door where we entered!

Price of glory

- A festival of Russian films was held in the French city of Quimper. I showed the movie "Roy" there. It was for Easter. I go out to the public to present the picture and say, among other things: we have a religious procession in Russia now! The film went on, and our delegation went to a fish restaurant to taste oysters with grape snails, and soon everyone was already warm. We go out warmly to the shore of the bay, where this restaurant stands, and there was a French journalist among us, very pretty, everyone was chasing after her. And I have such a black raincoat with a red scarf and white sneakers - the whole intellectual set.

Zhenya Tsymbal - our famous director - teases me: "And in Russia they are already swimming!" What to do - in front of all this audience, right in a raincoat and sneakers, I climb into the water, so fearless, and the water is not so very cold. Came up to the chest, Cymbal removes all this and encourages: "You dive, dive!" And how can you dive if you have francs in your pocket! But in such cases, show-off, of course, first of all, and I, holding my fist with francs above the water, dive. And under the water - the plants are beautiful, the fish swim among them. I choose something the most magnificent, with flowers, and emerge from under the water with a bouquet. The bouquet, of course, immediately turns into snot, but I still solemnly hand it over to our beautiful lady. People go crazy, cameras click, I'm wet and happy walking to the bus. The French driver laughs - he saw everything - and gallantly invites me, wet, to settle down in the chic salon of his Mercedes. The next morning, local newspapers come out with this photo of me, and I experienced my moment of glory.

Unfulfilled

...But "Third Rome" - a film very dear to me - was never finished: there was not enough money. Just a little was not enough: it remained to shoot a few scenes, but the key ones, without them in any way. And the project was interesting: Luzhkov's book "We are your children, Moscow", the time of action is 1948-1949. At first they made a pilot film, they even showed it in the program of the Moscow festival. Misha Filipchuk starred there, which Pavel Chukhrai has in "The Thief". Nina Usatova had a wonderful job. Then there was the 850th anniversary of Moscow, the whole city took to the streets, and the operator and I slowly moved, beeping, through this surprisingly friendly crowd. In the evening there was a concert of light music by Jean-Michel Jarre, and we got unique shots, no one else has them!

The Krasnogorsk archive looked through an incredible amount of material. And this idea of ​​the "Third Rome" crystallized. Many take it for a great-power and chauvinistic - well, to health, how to look. The Third Rome is the seed from which Russia was formed. Our consciousness is constantly dangling between greatness and self-deprecation, we can’t find a balance between pride and simple human dignity. This is the balance we wanted to find in the picture. For this, I believe, the angle was absolutely correctly chosen: the courtyard and the people inhabiting it. What is here - then in the country. Read the word "Rome" on the contrary - there will be "peace".

There were wonderful stories in Luzhkov's book, and they formed the basis of our film childhood.Stories about how the boys ate clay. Or: the guys have enmity with the firefighters, they constantly played dirty tricks on the firefighters. And they decided to take revenge on the guys. And while swimming in the Moscow River, they took away their panties from the baby, who was standing on the atas, and forced him to drive naked through the whole city in a fire truck to the orchestra. It turned out to be an amazing scene.

The guys for filming in Moscow were not found - here they are already different, there is no seal of that time. Found in Astrakhan. Ten or eleven years, absolutely fantastic boys. We started filming. The plot provided for the reception of "cinema in cinema", and there was the role of the director, which was played by Zhenya Mironov, the screenwriter - Zhenya Steblov, the cameraman - Sasha Baluev. Too bad all that luxury is gone...

But the money ran out. The material seemed so convincing that we counted on state support: a few more efforts - and the picture is ready. We got some more money and in late autumn we jumped out to Astrakhan, where winter comes later. And we filmed a little more - in the cold river, the boys showed incredible courage ... But we were unexpectedly denied state support. To my question to one of the jury members - why? - he replied: somehow you did not surprise us. The story is absolutely idiotic, but I feel sorry for the boys most of all - they gave away part of their childhood life for nothing. And that's trauma. The guys were ten or eleven years old, now they are already over thirty. But my principle is this: what happened - do not regret anything. And so far they have made a documentary picture out of this material, which was shown once. They say cinema is the art of editing. And my favorite definition: cinema is the art of loss.

Change milestones

Time passes quickly. The luminaries of the century are leaving - as if we are turning over the last pages of some thick, thick book. Some pages are still left, but it is clear that the book will end very soon. But Russia has great resources, and everything appears suddenly. Something pushes people, some energy invisible to us. As a mystical person, I do not really believe in rational miscalculations - indeed, everything can happen suddenly. And it just takes patience. The main thing is that there should be no shocks in Russia.

Although I must admit: I don't like much of what is happening. I cannot accept this new culture. Just because it seems to me immoral, uncivilized. I think this crisis will somehow exhaust itself, eat itself. It rages as long as it is a commercial product. But a person cannot scream for a long time, and when this hysteria ends, the product will no longer be in demand.

Someone on the internet called me a director who fantasizes a story. This is a compliment for me.

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