The first thing that catches the eye is monotony and inexpressiveness. They impregnate the film like a syrup, flow along all its facets from acting to staging light, smooth out sharp conflicts, bright scenes, making them faded and dull.
There's a lot of dialogue in the film. Long, expressionless, calm. They have almost no emotional swings, any expression. Maybe because gray Peter pushes people to restrained expression of emotions.
Actor's play doesn't shine with expression either. You can easily swap the hero’s wife and the woman he slept with to talk about zebras, and nothing will change. Neither the character of these characters, nor their style of play, nor the way they speak. Not the attitude of the audience towards them. Which shows not a particularly good quality of the script, which did not endow them with characters, and the acting game, which could correct this joint of writers already at the shooting stage, but did not correct.
Operator work also emphasizes the monotony, grayness of what is happening. Everywhere there is a smooth light that gives no contrast and casts no shadows. And everywhere it is the same – whether it is a street, apartment, exhibition or restaurant. Everything seems to be under an open cloudy sky. Perhaps it was the Creator’s intention to show the dullness of existence. The film says that our planet is not adapted for happiness. However, talking heads and cropped backs of the head do not even justify this.
The frame often seems close and airless. The world around heroes is dead. Not as dead as Zvyagintsev, where the sterility of the environment is part of the artistic image, and dead as a dusty museum of wax figures. Where in the role of figures acts faceless monotonous extras, sometimes appearing behind the heroes.
As for the general meaning of the film - the crisis of middle age, the betrayal of the ideals of youth - all this is shown rather vaguely. In a similar situation, the heroes of the films “Autumn Marathon” or “Flights in Dreams and Reality” turned out, but there it was shown more vividly, more contrastingly – there are people suffering from the hopelessness of being, and very next to them there are people who are so good, and so good, and they do not think about such complex issues. In the same film, all the characters are in a state of eternal despondency. Betrayal of ideals is shown too faint and boring.
Overall, the film was disappointing. Not so much its quality, as the fact that a hand to its creation put quite a good director Bortko, and from his creation I expected much more.
1 in 10
Original