Change Your Image
alexkinoff
Reviews
Last Love (2017)
Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve - the first people on Earth begins in the Garden of Eden. When the creation of the world was completed, the Lord placed them in a country called Eden. Here the Lord planted a garden of unparalleled beauty, called Paradise. The Bible says that the Garden of Eden is "in the east" and through it flows a river that divides into four rivers: Pison, Tikhon, Tiger and Euphrates. The mention of the Tigris and the Euphrates - the really existing rivers, and the two vanished contributed to the emergence of different opinions about the location of the Garden of Eden. There are suggestions that he is in Africa, others suggest that in Syria, in Mesopotamia, in the Caucasus or on the island of Ceylon. However, these are only assumptions. Paradise, which once housed the first people, was hidden from the eyes of a man immediately after his fall, and in the Christian tradition is associated not with the real terrain, but with Paradise in Heaven - the abode of Almighty God.
Winter Will Not Be (2018)
Frost on the skin
In one of the novels of Thomas Mann so powerful a description of consumptive patients is given that it is not safe to read it - the disease threatens infection directly from the text. Such an attack awaits even when listening to the album Fedorov, who produced this record without "Auktsyon", too "correct" and cheerful for this heavy recording. "There will be no winters" is the fruit of Leonid Fedorov's collaboration with the Novozhazov musicians - bassist Volkov, guitarist Kurashov, trumpeter Parfyonov, vocalist and spiritualist Starostin. These people perform a lot of Russian folk music in its most afterlife and, to put it mildly, unconventional version - and therefore the material offered by Fedorov was perceived and arranged by them with truly otherworldly enthusiasm.
The album opens the vocal number of the choir "Sirin" - Orthodox spiritual music in their interpretation looks like the singing of Tibetan monks and generally adjusts the listener to a proper strictly twilight mode. And then Fedorov's songs begin - an acoustic sound composed of whispers, whistles, barely audible cod, scraps of sent-out phrases and interjections, knocking, groaning and mumbling.
In the album there is not a single song that would be allowed to be broadcasted on the radio, and the reasons for this are equally found in both the technical and the conceptual side of the record. If the former creations of Fedorov and Ozersky (the author of the texts) in the "Auktsion" were reduced to "normal" song verses, now only words and pieces resembling not so much Khlebnikov as Kruchenykh remained. A dark, abstruse text is as much an equal part of the music as a double bass or a rustling sound that emits into the rhythm. The last thing - and at all a fragment of the telephone conversation, a song about Lady Diana - a song that Fedorov recites to the answering machine legendary avant-garde poet Henri Volokhonsky.
Another literary association that arises in connection with this album is the prose of Andrei Platonov. Just as the "Pit" by its very existence crossed out most of the victorious socialist realism, "Winter will not be" the eerie, hopeless dislocation of songs that endlessly decay in the ears of the listener discredits most of the available Russian rock music. Fedorov cuts through the living, showing a mournful and uncomplicated thought - much of what we take for serious problems turns out to be a children's morning performance, much of what we take for rock music is in fact nothing more than a sophisticated version of "oh mother of chic ladies. "
Winter may not happen - in the presence of this album, it is simply not necessary.
Dmitry Olshansky
Nad ozerom: Above the Lake (1995)
In Memory of Alexander Block
"Above the Lake" is a deliberate stylization for films filmed at the beginning of the 20th century, with their characteristic flair of mysticism, mystery, understatement, and duality. The bifurcation here is manifested both at the visual, the most elementary level - for example, intraframe montage of scenes with "The Beautiful Lady" or the double of the main character - the lyrical poet-contemplator.
From the very beginning, the tone is set - a dedication to Blok ("In memory of Alexander Blok"). And in the future, the viewer understands that all the work is a kind of homage, which, taking on the appearance of an elegant stylization, remains executed at a filigree level throughout the film. Therefore, it seems to us, the question of a clear distinction between these two concepts is not so fundamental, since the goal set by the director is achieved and it turns out to be clearly stated to the viewer.
The motive of eroticism - female nudity - sexual desire - is one of the key ones, not only for the sketch of "Above the Lake", but in general for Frolov's work.
The "reflected" reality for Blok - and also for Frolov - is a blurring of boundaries. The theme of duality, there is no border between sleep and reality, the camera is old, there is no clear image, no focus, it seems to slide over the events shown, as it would have been filmed in the 10s of the 20th century, when cinema as an art was just getting on its feet.
In "Above the Lake" we see "outskirts" Petersburg - then not Petersburg at all. At present, it is a district of St. Petersburg, but at the beginning of the 20th century it is a separate world, where people came to be drugged with wine and forget themselves in the arms of easily accessible women. In general, the motive of St. Petersburg as a dark city with a large amount of evil power can be consistently traced in the director's work, this motive evolves along with the creative method.
K. Ilyina
Klounada (1989)
Literature and cinema. Film adaptation problems
A screen adaptation of a literary work is an ungrateful, difficult and far from being successful thing. How many times venerable scriptwriters and directors have explained, in pursuit of an indignant public, that it is simply impossible to transfer the entire book to the screen, much more impossible than for an amateur gardener to transplant a rose bush to another flower bed. They are, of course, right, because even the famous novels of Ian Fleming require significant script processing. The screen adaptation of the lyrics or multi-level complex prose is completely controversial, and sometimes has nothing to do with the literary source taken as a basis. There are authors whose works do not lend themselves to film adaptation at all, despite the seeming simplicity and consistency of the narrative at first glance.
The works of Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachev, who became known under the pseudonym Daniil Kharms, were never transferred to the screen, for the rarest timid attempts, never. Those who have read will understand why. Many and many literary followers tried to at least come close to what he did, but no one succeeded even on paper. There is nothing to say about the movie screen.
The film "Clownery" (in another interpretation, played in the credits - "Hell's Clown"). Directed by Dmitri Frolov.
In "Clownery" - everything is like in life: clearly and logically. And only then you realize how damn absurd everything is!
I would not want to slip into a banal mysticism like the one that shrouds the stories about some film adaptations. But fact is fact. A good melodramatic thriller could be written about the fate of the actors involved in the film. By the way, there are no others ...
"Clownery" is almost a rebus, a crossword puzzle. You will not immediately understand what was taken from the author (by the way, a lot was transferred to the screen with precision to the comma), what was "mixed" from scraps of text, and what was simply invented, but thought up so that you do not notice, because the most important thing is yourself the spirit of Harms' literature is "transplanted" without damaging the roots.
The film is so complete that the impression is not spoiled by even a seemingly inappropriate erotic scene, "told" by the director at the end of one of the stories. The scene is frankly shocking, but I dare say that it is "in the subject" here, because if it weren't for it, we would finally believe that we are "watching Kharms", and not Dmitri Frolov's wonderful film "Clownery". Although, if you look at it, Kharms also has shocking poems ...
I. Bobchuk