More than love One of the most famous works in an almost perfect screen embodiment, which is really rare and deserves special attention, it turned out to create the authors and performers of this variation 'The Master and Margarita' Bulgakov. A really impressive approach to the elaboration of actions, events and even the selection of actors, arouses delight, and the decoration makes a work of really great cinema!
Immediately I want to say that the movie was mounted in a shorter version, and a full review would like to do after the release of the disc with a three-hour film, but the theatrical release turned out to be wonderful, albeit with various reductions. The thing is that the script adaptation has already fixed the most significant and interesting in the book, diluting artistic visualization and creative additions, erasing the surplus. You can analyze and compare the scenes, both with the book and with other variations of the production, but do you need to?
The main advantage of the film is that it was based on an early version of the novel, which still has a lot of interesting, deleted as a result either by censorship or by someone else. So, for example, there is also a brilliant scene with the trampling of the image of Christ in the sand, a phrase worthy of applause ' here in the Kremlin, an unclean force was hiding!' but there is no scene of the meeting and sentencing by the Sanhedrin, just during which it was possible to launch the initial credits, instead of the already boring kind of flying over the city and other similar techniques.
As in the book, the action begins immediately. For the first time on the screen we see a decent and correct embodiment of Woland - Valentin Gaft coped perfectly, approaching the image with the maximum expressiveness of the presentation of such a hero, combining all his very controversial features from the novel. The same applies to Viktor Rakov - for the first time the Master appears as he should be, both in terms of the emotional expression of the hero and in terms of external and age criteria. In general, you can praise the casting almost indefinitely, the magnificent Korovev performed by Filippenko not only clearly follows all the twists of the book image, but also eclipses even Abdulova in the same role with his charisma. An assertive and restless draughtsman, with persistent and even nasty manners, deceiving a bunch of all sorts of citizens, is just amazing!
Magnificent Garmash in the role of the poet Homeless, brilliantly coped with the incarnation of Yeshua Nikolai Burlyaev, much before him to some Bezruky. Steklov, Kuravlev, Durov, Ulyanov and many others brilliantly play their screen images. Eyes run away from such outstanding and strong actors, ideally chosen for their roles. And even the choice of very secondary and rarely flickering heroes is really successful - there will be Igor Vernik on the part of Judas, and the magician Amayak Hakobyan as the host in ' Variety'.
The only casting misses are the completely ruined character of the Cat, whose vision in this production is not too suitable for contrasting images, and again not the most successful Margarita, not drawing attention to herself in the second part of the story, leaving all interest in the storyline of Woland in Moscow. In the part of Margarita - this is the problem of any of the productions, it is not possible to choose such a successful embodiment of the image. The hippopotamus is devoid of aristocratic manners and its signature scenes, the only significant one is the phrase pro ' pure alcohol' and it is presented in such intonation that the scene loses its emotional flavor. In Margarita, however, sometimes slips false emotions and some internal framework that does not allow you to express feelings to the maximum.
However, in the film of Yuri Kara, the whole romantic line of relations is presented rather not by the second plot that manifested itself from the middle, but only by an additional story that tends to the center of the narrative due to the importance of its heroes. And although the force of passion twists the characters, demonstrating a film about love for all time, where these sparks and flames of feelings are even much more than love in its earthly understanding, attention is paid only to the technically necessary, without preponderance towards their dialogues and relationships.
In visual manner, as well as the general style and method of presentation, this production is very similar to Bulgakovskiy 'Fatal eggs' Sergey Lomkin, filmed a year later. It is even a pity that the picture of Kara did not film an episode with horsemen in the sky, which would even become a connection between these paintings, which would really be desirable. Having added a lot of interesting things and preserving even rare moments, for some reason they completely forgot about the finale, crumpling everything with a boring transition to measurements. At the same time, all the most important things have been preserved - and the dialogues on the Patriarchs, and the phrases about ' second freshness', and the whole line of Levi Matvey, and how colorful the ball turned out! The Sabbath was a triumph of the diversity of eroticism in Russian cinema, with an impressive scale and a set of interesting historical personalities.
The changes made also gave a significant visual plus staging. So, for example, flying out to the ball, Margarita does not pronounce the word 'invisible' for stealth, and the flying witch is seen with horror by all citizens. The scene with the invitation and transfer of ointment, on the contrary, is correctly shortened without any disputes and bickering. And the film manages to bring something new and unusual, successfully fit into the entourage, and save almost all the main motives, scenes and even phrases. Thanks to the Bulgakov dialogues, the relationships of the characters turned out to be rich and interesting. With a very decent director and a brilliant cast, all this is decorated in a powerful and exciting production, instilling pride in the possibilities of Russian cinema and the presence of outstanding talents in our country!
Of all the adaptations 'Masters and Margarita' this is by far the best and most impressive. Although not as perfect as we would like, we will wait for the full version, maybe it will give even more impressions. And even though the almost perfect casting, you remember that the best Behemoth Cat was still in the TV series Bortko, Yuri Kara’s film admires much more than any other version. And the significant advantages side-by-side with the bright advantages of the picture easily cover most of the minor shortcomings, leaving very strong positive emotions when watching, the desire to see this film again and more than once, and impress the work done and the resulting magnificent result!
8 out of 10
Original