Sometimes a person is ready to give everything, just to repeat that distant winter evening. Happy New Year to Friends!
A week of New Year viewing. Film 1st.
It’s time for the New Year’s Eve viewing week. All December, I was scratching my head to see this in the first week of January. I went through so many movies and didn’t even sleep for three nights. And yet we managed to choose films of the past years, which are not only Soviet, but also films of other countries. And the first in my search, I came across the film "Winter evening in Gagra". I only saw this movie once in my life when I was in high school. Today I watched this movie for the second time in my life. This is a great (I am not afraid of this word) drama about Time, which, leaving, erases everything.
The main character of the story, the once unsurpassed master tap dancer, who masterfully beat tap dance on the stage, now works as a modest tutor in the dance class. The fact that Alexey Ivanovich Beglov (Evgeny Evstigneev) was an idol in the 50s, the dancers of the pop collective do not even suspect. They do not know about his glorious past neither the choreographer Valentin Ivanovich Fomenko (Sergei Nikonenko), nor the capricious diva Irina Melnikova (Natalia Gundareva). For a mannered TV presenter (Alexander Shirvindt), he is not at all alive. Another blow overtakes Beglov from the daughter Lena (Svetlana Amanov). The daughter asks not to come to the wedding because she was raised by her stepfather: "They will drink for their father - it will be uncomfortable ... "
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"If a person does not have a curvature, do not be a good tap dancer", - so says Beglov, a very popular step dancer in his time. However, now he is forgotten by everyone and lives only by memories of his former glory, working as a dance tutor. And one day a strange student comes to him: Arkady (Alexander Poncratov-Black) has a disgusting gait, broken in two places of the leg and no sense of rhythm. A great desire to learn how to dance! This meeting will be necessary for both: Arkady will give Beglov the usual atmosphere of pop life, and Beglov will teach the young man to feel the world more subtlely. When piled with another heart attack Beglov remembers already in the hospital his life, the happiest day, he calls "winter evening in Gagra", when young, slender and beautiful he danced at a half-empty hall with his adoring daughter ... And it seemed that all life was ahead...
Crazy touching, humane film. It is impossible to resist tears, although these tears are joyful, as is usually the case with a real work of art. Of course, it is impossible to convey the full power of the drama in the scope of the review, but I still want to highlight one scene when Beglov gives a couple of slaps Grachev - such moments make you wonder and love the movie.
Evgeny Evstigneev finds expressive details and psychological nuances of his character. At first glance, Beglov is a boring silence. But, even talking about tap dancing, it is all transformed, lights up with internal fire. This is what his only student sees. But here passes the episode, another, and the idea of the authors becomes clear: they want to tell how important it is to remain faithful to their vocation, mental purity, how a person needs friendly attention and care of loved ones.
There are things I want to talk about and talk about. It seems that words flow by themselves: so many thoughts and feelings give rise to a novel or a film. It's the same in this case. After a bright start, it is difficult to get used to weekdays. A common problem of people of creative, public professions. Not only that. Everyone, after takeoff, victory, triumph, has devastation. The question is, how long will it last and how will it be handled? And the higher the takeoff, the more difficult it is to return to normality.
One of the best films of the 1980s: and melodrama, and did not go, and funny, but kind, tasteful, and musically, and an ensemble of delightful masters! A work of art. As time passes, you become convinced: the ideological “masterpieces-one-years” have long faded and forgotten, and this evening shines like a burning fire.
The film is now seen as a kind of prophecy. Soullessness, uniformity, easy substitutability overtakes us in everything. The name "Winter Evening in Gagra" already contains some conflict. Gagras in winter is not very necessary. Unnecessary over time becomes the triumphant of this evening once a young and talented tap dancer Beglov. Unnecessary not only for the new “art”, where it is easy to replace everyone with a Japanese computer, but even for a grown daughter. She once dreamed of dancing with her father. Over the years, she found a replacement for her steppe and father. She has a beautiful stepfather and will have a wonderful husband. Why bother with one another?
Step may not be the most popular genre, but it can only be performed by a person, not a computer. I think that is why the hero of Pankratov-Black is so persistent. He does not want to be “replaceable”, intuitively understands that it is not only in the art of putting his foot right, but also in the character, eccentric, lonely, in general, different from all others. In the film Beglov, a very modest person does not hesitate to publicly perform an old uncomplicated song, in the presence of a star singer. His voice sounds hearty, in contrast to the ever-played smile and bravado of Melnikova. Therefore, everyone immediately has a special mood. And the sofa he wanted to buy so much is a symbol of comfort, a certain wealth and the same non-standardity, because Beglov did not need just a sofa. He needs a symbol. The sofa was sold and sold.
A very deep film was made by Shakhnazarov, with sharp undertones for those times, and for the present too. It clearly shows that even then completely different, non-Soviet moral values prevailed in our society, and the attributes of external success - rank, rank, regalia - acquired too great importance. Therefore, Beglov appears to be a loser in the eyes of his daughter and ex-wife, that he did not beat out these very attributes for himself in time, so he does not belong in the “higher” society gathering at the wedding. Despite the fact that they parted with his wife in a “civilized” way, and he communicates with his daughter from time to time, she is clearly closer to her mother and stepfather, probably more prestigious in his position. That beautiful evening in Gagra, the daughter has already forgotten, only the Beglov himself remembers it as the happiest in life.
From a bright smile at the beginning of the film to tears at the end. Warm. The warm feeling through the whole film is nostalgia for those times, for those actors, and from the plot. A special thank you to Evstigneev. There will never be any actors like that again.
10 out of 10