Mikhalkov hates the Soviet Union and Mikhalkov is vain - these are two things everyone knows about him. Mikhalkov naturally removes about the disadvantages of that time, but we need to understand what he has a right in general. Because the regime, the NKVD, cannibalistic orders - all this was in fact, and not the director himself invented. Some families were not affected, while others were less fortunate. The right to shoot about the bad will leave him, but it should be done objectively, and not to scold. Mikhalkov could not keep on this verge. First, Stalin is portrayed as a completely demonic creature, forcing him to play the piano at almost interrogation, exhaling smoke like a dragon, his yellow eyes blazing in the middle of darkness, he does not even look like himself. It's not serious at all. Of the 3 hours that the film lasts, to endure the first hour was the most difficult, because there is just obscurity - the Russians shoot at the Russians, blow up the bridge with their own people, the accountant is looking for who would put him a painting under the bombing, the head of the pioneer camp peed in his pants, the German pilot shits from the plane on the ship of the wounded ... I seriously doubt the latter is technically possible. To watch it all was painful and unpleasant even not because of patriotic feelings, I would feel the same resentment if it was in Africa or China.
For those who have managed to sit this squalor, later begins a set of stories, weakly related, but in their own way touching. First, the story of the mine, then about the outpost and cadets, then about the occupied village, about the prisoner and finally about the dying soldier - there are many details, dialogues, but you need to watch this, turning off your brain. Because the girl feels love for a water mine and lets her with God to blow up a Russian ship. Because German tanks approached the trenches from the side they simply could not – they would have had to break through the front in the opposite direction. Because the Gypsies actually shot themselves, and with incredible zeal. Because the captive and the captive embrace joyfully only because they were not killed by the bomb. All these fragments are almost unrelated to each other, and it is called a “bad scenario”.
I don’t know what’s worse in this film – the meaninglessness of the script or the director’s irrational hatred of everything Soviet.
Finally, a few points of the game:
- The character Mikhalkov ... glove ... with retractable claws ... What? Thank you for not clawing Wolverine. Absolutely knockout unreal detail, which he created for himself apparently because he had long dreamed of such a bumbass, and here is hop, a whole movie where you can fake it.
- Nadia again plays Mikhalkov’s daughter, but 5 years passed between the events of the film, and 16 years passed in her life, so changing the age of the heroine looks ridiculous, she should have been 10-11 years old.
- Oleg Menshikov (Mitya) does not play the whole film, but judiciously twists.
- The first "Weary of the Sun" ends with the fact that all the key characters died - Kotov was shot, his wife rotted, and Mitya committed suicide. To see them all alive and well after that would be foolish.