Goodbye, Odesa gangster! Before you write anything for this picture, still answer me an incomprehensible question: if it, which picture, has a release date of 1989, then what, that is, makar (with a small letter, since not the name, but in general), her world premiere took place in 2007 in Hungary, as recorded by some poch on its local page? What's going on? Hasn't anyone mentioned it in almost 20 years? Or did they, but only ours and then theirs? Or where was she dusting? So isn't Moisha Peretz in the warehouse? That's how I lived!
Now seriously. Just before I got acquainted with the film “The Art of Living in Odessa”, I carefully watched the 20-episode Ukrainian documentary series “Legends of Bandit Odessa” (2007-2008, I highly recommend!), which used a lot of video material from this picture (actually, from him I came to it). And it became finally clear (however, known before) that Babel “not documentary” reproduced in the image of his Benny Creek Mishka Yaponchik (he was not in Odessa for almost 10 years until the revolutionary 1917 year). Here much more reliable recent TV series about Mishka (had the honor to write a review on it), which, by the way, borrowed a lot from the “Art of living in Odessa” (however, and there and there in the primary basis – Babel).
Our most famous “adventure” Odessa director Jungvald-Khilkevich quite logically divided his picture into two parts – “before the Cheka” and “during the Cheka”, and the first part turned out to be an order of magnitude more artistic than the second, where the intentional demonization of “revolutionary punitive bodies” began in favor of the new “democratic” trends of the beginning of perestroika (the unkillable Avilov as the head of the Chekists is a devil!). Of course, it is a pity the “history of Odessa” Grach-Petrenko (as in the series about the Japanese), who himself came to the Cheka and who was immediately allowed to spend... But on the other hand, tell me what the Soviet government had to do with the hardened bandits, who knew nothing and did not want to do anything but rob, steal and kill. Do you feel sorry for them? I don't! I would take you (and let your pockets ring a little bit!) and let you in the evening on the then Moldavanka, and I would listen to what you would scream when you put a knife to your throat and ordered to undress to the goal! And where would you run to complain if you were still alive? Criminals (in literature, in movies) are good and sympathetic as long as they don’t really get into your pocket, smash your house, and rape your daughters. And this psychology has long and successfully used writers and filmmakers, including Babel and Khilkevich.
I will not say anything about the performance of our beautiful actors (Tabakov, Petrenko, etc.) who have become “fucking” with Odessa Jews – all are good! By the way, judging by archival documents, almost 90 percent of the notable criminality in Odessa of the 19th and early 20th centuries was of Jewish nationality. I will tell you about the music and songs for the film “production” by Alexander Gradsky. Our famous vocal singer proved himself best, performing other people's songs (in particular, Pakhmutova-Dobronravova), but as a composer and author-performer of his opuses, he, alas, did not succeed. This is not only my opinion (and the opinion of a number of reputable music critics), this is already a historical fact - his compositions have not been deposited in the memory of the people, they are not corny remembered. A year earlier, Gradsky had a really successful musical project - in the mini-series "Prisoner of the Castle IF", with Avilov in the title role, but what the maestro wrote and sang for "The Art of Living in Odessa", dreary and faded like the Black Sea in January ... What a rich subject matter!
In short, the masterpiece did not come out of the picture. Well, at least the documentary filmmakers dirban it on the frames ...
6 out of 10 (admittedly plus)