The movie looks hard. It seems that some late Soviet marginal history, and no, is topical, entering many houses, and this is most frightening.
The problem of alcohol is relevant then and no less relevant now rises sharply. Holiday - you need to drink, acquaintance - you need to drink, grief - you need to drink, a person is in the hospital - you need to bring him a beer!
The problem of fathers and children also, unfortunately, has not gone away. "Don't smoke, it's bad!" “Right,” says the father, standing with a cigarette on the balcony.
“How will we look people in the eye?” is an eternal problem.
The problem of Beznadega.ru, which grows out of decades of knocking out the initiative, I welcome you to the 21st century!
Vera graduated from school and has no idea what to do in life, sees no prospects. The limit of dreams - to become a telephone operator - the job is not dusty, and all men want to meet you.
Girl. Dresses, makes up, behaves defiantly, portrays an adult burnt-out confident woman. But in selected moments, we see her naivety, insecurity, desire for reciprocity, love for her parents and care for them. She does not like the reality surrounding her, but she does not know how to change it or how to change it.
Sergey at first looks like a kind of “hero of our time”: girls fall in stacks, and he is bored. We see him only with Vera and do not understand who he is, and their story seems doomed to failure in advance: the first “Do you love me?” sounds ridiculous. Seryozha's character is revealed when confronted with Vera's parents. It breaks out of the matrix and does not meet the expectations of either the characters of the film or the audience. And it is his character that gives hope for the future, shows a different path.
The images of Vera’s father and mother are shown in the film from the moralizing and tantrums of frightened parents to ignoring the problem and destroying her daughter’s life, but the characters do not undergo any changes. In the final credits, we understand that these are the same people as in the initial credits.
But for Little Faith, all is not yet lost.
“All people are brothers, but their faces are often broken for some reason.”
One of the leaders of the Soviet rental in history. The debut of 27-year-old Vasily Pichul, now, unfortunately, looks very relevant for the Russian province.
The film is not about freedom, on the contrary, it is about slavery, squalor and nausea of Russian life. It is difficult to attribute the picture to Soviet films, such as we are used to seeing. He has a different, independent character.
The first associations that arise after viewing are pain from the realism of what you see, despondency, tightness and depression.
What does it mean to the viewer? The degradation of a typical family drowning in everyday life: an alcoholic father, a limited mother who tolerates it, a son who has achieved any success in his Moscow career, and a shawl daughter who does not want to study or work, and in short, does not want anything at all.
All the heroes are very alive and grounded. It seems that this story is about your neighbors or acquaintances, or maybe your own.
The first plane transports us to a world of factories and factories, consisting of countless pipes producing mud. With the same plan, the narrative ends. The city remains unchanged, as do its inhabitants. The tragedy never happened.
In the apartment of parents of faith, everything is permeated with the era of Brezhnev stagnation, starting from the service behind the glass, ending with a welcoming family feast in honor of meeting Vera's future husband Sergey.
The viewer is also shown the student life - ugly walls with decorated dilapidated wallpaper, decorated with cheap posters and cigarette packs.
The main character is completely lost, she can not be sure of anything, but one thing is clear to her - there is only falsehood around her. Faith is an absolutely atypical female character of Soviet cinema. She smokes a lot, drinks wine and staggers through vulgar discos. However, young people in such a remote area have nothing more to do. It consists entirely of unrealized hopes and melted desires like butter in a pan.
Scenes of Vera's drunken tantrums, in which she breaks into feelings, cause tremors. It's very uncomfortable to look at. It’s as if she’s no longer capable of holding all the emotions that have been suppressed for so long.
The most interesting and ambiguous seems to be the character of A. Solonov – Sergey, demonstrating an undisguised contempt for the squalor and insignificance of life of his future mother-in-law and father-in-law, and philistines in general. He is more like a “new” person, for whom it is impossible to live in such conditions. But he's not going anywhere. He won't. And soon screams, quarrels, the ubiquitous salting of cucumbers and xenophobia will become his reality too.
The film also raises the issue of fathers and children. A special force is the scene where Vera's father runs after her to take the ice caps of the hail falling from the sky, and then hugs her tightly. It is after this event that Vera changes her mind - she no longer wants to put her father in prison. Because she and her family are one whole – unchanging and “dumb”, as Sergey calls it, society.
The picture is not anti-Soviet, but it demonstrates how rotten the regime has become and the horror of the monotony of the life of the philistines who are stuck in the past era. Time has transferred these people to restructuring, to a new coordinate system, but none of them seems to know what to do with this time.
I couldn’t figure out what this movie reminded me. And then came to mind a follower of Pichul - Bykov with his typical traumatic moral foundations plots of paintings about Russian life and complete lack of spirituality.
The film lasts more than two hours, tired of what is happening on the screen Sartre’s “nausea” waiting for the finale, but the film has no ending. It feels like everything that happens will last forever. And that's the scariest thing. The audience is shown one family, and there are thousands of such families. And the life of these thousands is just as empty and hopeless. Among the heroes, Victor is the luckiest - he has somewhere to run away. Residents of the industrial outback have nowhere to run.
Pichul and Khmelik groped in their film not the birth of a new mentality - not a Soviet one that values freedom, but morally lost, without a core in the form of moral foundations and aspiration to the high. Young people are no longer interested in building communism, their goals are much more petty.
Such philistine views of the Soviet people have not disappeared even now. In their development, they have reached a climax, so they continue to compost in their pathetic cramped Khrushchevs. Little people like Pushkin. And Vera's just as small.
There's no withdrawal. Everyone has to do it themselves.
One of the best films of recent years in the USSR. Being a game, the film is remarkable natural-looking characters with natural behavior in the then familiar surroundings, especially colorful Alexander Mironov (“Tolik”, in many ways “made” the film character of the second plan). The images of typical co-citizens of the 80s forever captured Yuri Nazarov and Lyudmila Zaitsev. Brilliantly orchestrated and played a complex episode with simultaneous interrogation by two interrogators on two cases in a cramped office. Very well guessed the place of action – Donbass Mariupol, then still in Soviet Zhdanov, industrial-port-railway and very proletarian, which, still pre-war, have a chance to look. With typical Soviet typical residential high-rise buildings, hardly radically modernized its appearance over the next 30 years since the late 80s, when to imagine that it would also become military-strategically important - so much so that up to the destruction, and even not at the hands of malicious aggressors from NATO - was unrealistic. The film seems to mark the final rejection of the imitation of optimism, probably for Soviet cinema. Then came into its rights the genre of “black”, which has not exhausted itself, despite everything, and to this day.
General impression: Seaside town. A normal working family. Father and mother are concerned only with everyday problems and are content with unassuming everyday joys. Daughter Vera, just graduated from school, spends time at discos, over a bottle of wine in the corner and chatting with girlfriends. An important event in the life of Vera becomes a meeting with a student Sergey – he grew up in a different environment, thinks independently, he has other cultural values. Young people “from different worlds” try to understand and accept each other.
It happens that a person grows up in a family where there are both mom and dad, it seems that everyone works, but parents do not care for each other. Family values are blurred, culture is also no. Such a person grows in dislike and wants to escape as quickly as possible to the world of another. That person is Faith. By and large, it is the drunks who distract her from the unloved family. After all, it is easier to forget with friends and friends than to hear a drunk father and a mother who sees nothing. But Vera meets a completely different person in her life. He asks her questions: about life, about goals, falls in love with a girl. Sergey is not at all like Vera, and he was brought up differently. It seems that such different people can not be together, but for each other become a lifeline, but for a time that becomes foggy for them at a moment.
I won’t say it’s an easy movie, at all. There is enough acute tension in relations with both parents and in the Vera-Sergei pair. The reality is that it’s not a fairy tale and you can’t escape into a glass of wine. You look at the Faith, and it becomes sad, but only such Ver, there is darkness in our vast Motherland. Unfulfilled hopes, trampled dreams of a better life, sad.
8 out of 10
Lessons from Freedom: Dreams and Hopes of Perestroika Cinema (Part 7)
In a similar way, like Ryazanov, in a very acute, dramatic form, the problem of the price of freedom and emancipation, but this time the sexual, painful ideological discrepancy of generations is put in their paintings by very young Vasily Pichul and already mature Peter Todorovsky, coinciding, oddly enough, in the conclusions. One of the leaders of the Soviet box office in its history, the debut of 27-year-old Vasily Pichul “Little Faith” and now looks incredibly relevant for the Russian province, because more than freedom, it is a film about slavery, squalor and nausea of Soviet life, toxic parents, rudeness, everyday psychological violence and pressure, which are subjected to all those who decided to “live not by the rules”, and this collision has found a new life already in the post-Soviet province.
In my opinion, it is from this film that it is worth keeping a record of modern acute social cinema in Russia from the hard tapes of Bykov and Zvyagintsev to the parable statements of Tverdovsky. Picula’s film destroys the lies of communist ideology about the welfare of the Soviet family, ruthlessly turning its background inside out with alcoholism, philistineism, animal immersion in everyday life and complete lack of spirituality. It is amazing how a very young director and screenwriter were able to express through precise details the unbearability of life in the Soviet family: constant reading of lectures, the ubiquitous pickling of cucumbers, screams and screams, quarrels and moralizing, nasty psychological blackmail and aggressive rejection of everything new.
After all, Vera after her “wakes” still got married, which means that the main thing in the film is not her emancipation from outdated laws (she is basically a good daughter, as indicated by the scene of her courtship of a drunken father) and not the sexual aspect (the notorious bed scene is filmed in general innocently by today’s standards), but the inability of a “new” person to live in the old conditions. In many ways, “Little Faith”, of course, is about the “sexual revolution” in the late USSR, partly this picture inspired it, but to a greater extent it is a story about the conflict of generations, the clash of nihilistic youth and their parents, bogged down in the quagmire of moral compromises with the authorities, but at the same time duplicitously teaching their children life.
Brilliant play on the sexual texture of Negoda and Sokolov (for a long time, the actor is shown with a naked torso), its impeccability and beauty is clearly contrasted with the cartoonish ugliness of Vera’s parents (Zaitsev and Nazarov played flawlessly, in many ways not understanding what they are doing, this is indicated by the hatred of today’s Nazarov to this film and his role, it is not for nothing that he joined the Communist Party, proving that he remained a Soviet man). Pichul and Khmelik groped in their picture the birth of a new mentality – non-Soviet, loving and valuing freedom, but morally loose, without the core of conscience, which was, for example, the sixties and dissidents, and therefore the younger generation, which has this mentality, in the future, as time has shown, will become predatory and eventually lost in the expanses of the 1990s.
“Little Faith” is a movie about the fact, and this was pointed out by many critics, that the basic belief in communism has been undermined, it has indeed become small among young people, if not completely disappeared. Young people want to arrange their personal life, the fate of the country does not concern them: the tragedy of the “perestroika” generation is that they were largely politically indifferent, they were not interested in communism, but they did not hate him. It was the political indifference of the future builders of free Russia that caused the anarchy of the 1990s, freedom was given to them for nothing, not won in the fight against communism.
“Little Faith” is in many ways a “black” movie, the emotional intensity in it is prohibitive, the colors are thickened to unbearable, but at the same time it is a very important film about people who wanted to just live, but they were not given this. Unfortunately, the youth of “perestroika” did not understand that in order to build a private life, it is necessary to first ideologically cleanse themselves, they were deaf to the trumpet calls of “Repentance” Abuladze, looking more and more at the West. Breathing in the suffocating philistine atmosphere of the Soviet family with these bottles, banks, shouts, they themselves later became philistines, for they saw in the West primarily a consumer paradise, contrasting it with the scarce hell of “real socialism”, but they did not see freedom as denouncing all slavery and tyranny of conscience.
Cinema about late Soviet reality and the apotheosis of philistineism
The movie was very impressive! The poor realities of the industrial town, despair, lack of prospects for self-development are shown. Heroes do not cause compassion, rather some pity, even contempt. Vera’s parents live in their small, poor world, are mired in everyday trifles, gossip, want to live like everyone else, so that ' everything is like people' The father is drinking, although the whole family does not have vodka. Faith is a typical growing scoundrel, jumping on men, trying to forget, to get away from the cruel reality and family poverty in sexual adventures. Vera’s friend is the same, although he is friendly inferior to Sergey to his girlfriend when he sees that they have everything ' seriously '. Sergey is an ordinary student, from a more or less intelligent family, studies at a metallurgical institute, lives in a dormitory.
It is noteworthy that there is a lack of personal space, the possibility of solitude for ' a couple in love', friends of Sergei burst into the dorm room, and when Vera brings her ' chosen one' into the house, then her mother comes to them, lying still in bed and, as if nothing had happened, slips a book on home economics. It's funny and sad. Even wretched and trembled looks like the moment, as his son (elder brother Victor) mother gives jars on the road, and at the airport snuffing watermelon, here I could barely resist laughing, well, so absurd, primitive, poor. And of course, the dialogue of Father Vera about the wedding, so that "Neighbors are not ashamed to look into the eyes" & #39; Or the mother's speech that let the sailor marry, the type like "39; with money" & #39; will. Parents do not care about the feelings of Faith, and they themselves do not have any feelings, only grayness, routine, romance, there is no place here.
The once revolutionary spirit, ideas about world communism, a new man, the romance of five-year plans, Komsomol construction projects, pride in the first flight of a man into space - all this was replaced by a dull picture of philistineism, the lack of ideals, goals in life. And we can certainly condemn Sergey for disrespectful behavior towards Vera’s parents and threats to his father (although this does not justify the act of his father, for which he is supposed to go to prison). But he asked his Faith the truth about the stupidity of her parents, the boring life, the aimlessness of their existence. The elder brother Victor himself, who sort of lives in the capital and ' broke out in people' rather hurry to get out of this miserable hell of lumpenstvo, 'Sharikivshchina' In general, the film is realistic, like other such films, such as Cargo 200 Balabanova, Courier Shakhnazarova, Dear Elena Sergeevna Eldar Ryazanova. All these films show a typical everyday life in Soviet monotowns, where the whole reality consists of Khrushchev, a factory, vodka, gossip with neighbors, TV and f**ks. Ideals have been lost, people no longer believe in communism, romanticism has been lost and remained in their naive youth, there are only family quarrels, everyday life, unwise growing children who feel all the falsity and hypocrisy, and therefore choose the path of nihilism, cynicism, promiscuous sex, parties, indents.
Even with my love for cinema, I learned about this picture in the most unexpected place. In a museum, historical, not dedicated to cinema. The museum is called “Russia My History”, which has been operating in many cities since recently. The film was included in the exposition “XX century in Russian history”, as part of an interactive test about Soviet cinema. At first, I was surprised that I wasn’t a rumor or a spirit about a movie like Little Faith. And as it turns out, for good reason. As a person who did not find universal equality and faith in the socialist revolution, I did not even think that revolutions took place not only in the country, but also on the screen. “Little Faith” is a great example of a picture that, with the fury of an angry bull, tears up all the templates about cinema in the USSR even in modern man. Judge for yourself, the film shows a province that has not changed much since then (Hello, I am from the Volga region), strange low values, from which even an avid altruist will come to a three-day stupor, and of course, the nudity beloved by all of us. And all this with abundance, all this spills over to the viewer in an amount equal to the years in which such films were not released in the Soviet Union. But everything in order.
I would like to highlight the main characters, most of which are relevant to this day. Take Faith for example. A rebel who does not want to live by the laws of the existing society. Faith in life does not want anything but to fill your life with the charms of youth, namely: alcohol, sex, hanging out with friends and not so much. We all go through this without a nostalgic tear. BUT. There's always one thing. Faith doesn't need anything else. She hopes for a fairy tale with a prince who will give her only joy. And yet she finds, it seems to her, a similar in the face of the student Sergey. About him separately.
Sergey, in my opinion, is the only good character in the film. At the beginning, presented to us as a mysterious man and clearly having his own evil motives, in the course of the plot turns out to be the very outsider in the world of the picture. Swimming with the current and sharp on the tongue, he understands the oppressive atmosphere of the place in which he is, and he is the only one who wants more. What I paid for...
There is no point in talking about the other characters. All of them are an addition to the image of the terrible reality, they are better to look at and be afraid.
The film is good, but heavy. Like a wave, it first captures you, and then hits the stones with all its might.
It is especially impressive to watch in the company of a blanket and a loved one in whom you can cry.
Many people whose youth fell on perestroika, this film is extremely admired. I personally did not have anything like this on the first viewing, and over time I came to the conclusion that ' Faith' is perhaps the most destructive film of perestroika. There were, of course, much more frostbitten pictures, but they gathered much less viewers, and their level is simply very low. Responding to the question, and why some people loved this movie, I decided to write a review, especially since the criticism ' Little Faith' often very banal.
If you characterize ' Faith' as briefly as possible - it is a film-suffering. Everyone suffers, even a black boy. It seems that the hero of Sokolov does not suffer at first, but rather quickly joins everyone else. The main character suffers most of all. Look for yourself: parents are stupid scoops who are always climbing with their irrelevant Soviet values, she lives in a terrible city where there is nothing but nasty factories that are only needed to poison life, and miserable five-story buildings. It's a completely hopeless life, isn't it? And the young soul wants to love, which would seem impossible in this miserable country. However, love does happen, which allows the Faith to move away from the false and rotten reality. This goal, in fact, is pursued in different ways by young residents of Zhdanov (Mariupol).
Then comes a very important moment. There is a collision of a young and liberated man (the hero of Sokolov) with a stupid scoop-kamazista. The latter, by the way, is not very aggressive towards the first, and behaves normally, but the normal behavior of the scoop is inhuman. Therefore, the groom is trying to reach the scoop, and at least somehow make him realize his Sovietness. But failure occurs - the hero Sokolov is defeated. Physically, he continues to exist, but, broken by the system, begins to suffer in hospital. Thus, the lumen in the metallurgical hell that gave Faith vitality was extinguished. For which the viewer should sympathize. In the end, all the characters in the picture become much more unhappy than at the beginning. And we have no choice but to utter the catch phrase made in the title of the review.
And here it is, the deafening truth. Communist ideology is a lie that ultimately makes people hate each other and live by that hatred. Here it is, the life of ordinary people, super-realistic. Finally, they showed the truth, and not the world of all sorts of Seryozh Syroezhkins and Alis Seleznyovs, and even the not comfortable Ryazan intellectuals.
The film just screams about the system's horror, which, by the way, is not typical of all perestroika films. For example, in 'Asse' or 'Courier' you won’t see that. By the way, if you put in one row of the main characters of these films and this, then you can empathize with Ivan Miroshnikov and in something even necessary, I can not empathize with Banana, but I do not feel disgust for him, but only an anti-Soviet can empathize with Vera, in my opinion, or just an irresponsible person.
Many admired the images of terrible Faithful Parents, personifying the misanthropic system. What's wrong with them? By wanting their daughter to get an education ('The challenge came from school?!') and take her place in society? The fact that they do not accept the hero Sokolov, who behaves towards the father of Vera not only aggressively, he just humiliates him! To reproach them, perhaps, in the fact that they talk with Vera is not quite constructive. But Yuri Shevchuk perfectly sang about the difficulties of the dialogue between fathers and children at that time: ' Their hard youth passed away from the things that so overwhelmed us to the top.' This will be discussed at the very end.
***
Yuri Nazarov, speaking about this film, was quite restrained in criticism, and his main claim was expressed as succinctly as possible - the lack of a lumen. This is where the important watershed lies. Indeed, after viewing 'Faith' you may feel some sort of end to the story. There is absolutely nothing that is at least a way out. There is no character who is irresponsibly opposed to the suffering masses. Or the variant used in 'Courier' where was the lumen in the main character, in which there was a kind of struggle of thoughts? It is also rejected, there is only suffering.
The person who misses the review may say: ' The scoop burns with true criticism'. And yes and no. Were the Soviet Union and Soviet society in crisis in the 1980s? Of course he was! But the fault was not 39; communism 39; (a socialist state in itself), but those 39; communists 39; who with each congress of the party became further away from Marxism, and in the end created all the conditions for the restoration of capitalism. It was on this basis that a rich culture of suffering emerged, from which the Little Faith & #39 grew. But again, that's the problem. The topic of this suffering has been raised before, both in relation to young people and already accomplished people. But there was a search for that exit that made people change. And these films left behind the idea that society would develop. Here sees Vera in front of him 'Azovstal' and thinks in what terrible city he lives. But this very 'Azovstal' (or any other enterprise) - you can say, and is real life.
But very soon (in 1988), life will change so dramatically that the plot of this film will become simply impossible, and it is not possible even now. Remember the debut album '45' bands ' Film', songs such as 'Just You Want to Know' or ' Bezdelnik'. The latter seems to be suitable to some extent for all the main characters of youth perestroika films. People played by Evgeny Urbansky, who were shaking in dump trucks on the ceilings of rivers, created conditions in which people played by Natalia Negoda can calmly go in mesh tights to have fun under Sofia Rotaru. But these people have created completely different conditions for their children. There is a certain guilt in this and the generations of the Urbanskys, who raised their children in different ways, and sometimes, wanting ' just to live', missed many important points. Someone did not miss, because in serene times someone was sitting in new dump trucks on the ceilings of new rivers. But as a result, the contemporaries of the Faith have much more serious problems. Despite the fact that in the air we have a conditional vapor, not blast furnace gas.
I will definitely remember this film, primarily because of the insanely useful acting, the thickest and most juicy atmosphere of the late, tired and dehumanized “scoop”, doomed and unnatural. Because of the truthful transmission of the spirit of the times and camera work, too.
So, the Soviet depressive city. Ignorance and inner emptiness in the person of Vera’s parents, cynicism and nihilism fashionable among young people, the atmosphere of a decaying way of life that has rotted to the roots, panels! Everything is exactly like 2019.
And among all this adish we have almost no single positive character - Faith. By the way, a symbolic name, don't you think? She's an ordinary woman in her own right. She hangs out, sometimes drinks, does not stand out, except that she has a real and sincere feeling. The character to which it arose, however, is also not particularly remarkable and does not play a special role in the plot, except that he is just normal and adequate. Well, smart, now they are ironically called "silk".
And this moment is masterfully conveyed -- I mean, something real and pure, a vs. rotten, unnatural household mess that hates and seeks to destroy everything that doesn't look like it. Vera’s parents don’t just “care about everyday problems” – they are toxic and try to destroy what they don’t understand. The hamstrings at the table, psychological pressure, lack of manners, herding, “how I will look into the eyes of my neighbors” – a pathetic sight. And on the other hand, sincere feelings that do not care about anything, which even at first glance, amid all this ugliness, look ridiculous and out of place.
But in the end, no matter how much the quagmire of such a society is crushed, no matter how the environment resists and snaps, the present eventually gets its way, and the outdated, faded environment dies by itself, pumping vodka in a shabby kitchen, causing a lot of harm before death.
The ending is suddenly very inspiring. Faith is in tears, but alive (oh that symbolism), the old world is dead, and there is no pity for it. Only a little bit. What are you saying? Porn? Erotica? I didn't even notice it.
A movie that I only watched once shocked me. In general, everything that is shown in it, because no one is used to seeing the truth in movies. Everyone is used to thinking that directors paint the imagination of a sick imagination, or describe the suffering of their wives or husbands. It's not like that.
Recently celebrated the 30th anniversary of the film, although in fact it was shot in late 1987. In the program of Andrey Malakhov, no one answered what this film was about. Everyone was clinging to sex. Here it is shown and so, and sik, but it is not porn, even Soviet. It seems that only screenwriter Maria Khmelik originally wanted to say in her novel “Broken TV”, what this film wanted her generation to catch this idea. I didn’t understand that then and now. Because the film was prophetic.
If you want, read this story. Through the letters of the audience to Khmelik’s apartment and Gorky’s film studio, the prism of the parallel life of actors in Italy and America passes, where Little Vera took all the prizes, just a little bit lacked luck. And in between, there is the real life of us, the viewers, who were changed by this film, because we too were born to these songs by Matetsky, the voice of Rotaru, the alcoholism of parents and promiscuous sex majors in shorts. It all came through us.
Well, Pichul's movie is about love. It is eternal, like a ray that passes through the darkness of the unauthorized relationship between Vera’s parents and the young womanizer Andrei. Therefore, the question “How to live” has a different outline: will there be love in the future? With the death of Vera’s father, love dies, because in his heart is the country in which he lived. There is no love between the new Russians who have entered a new era of capitalism. there is sex, money, debauchery, lust, lies and hypocrisy. In this model of the state there is no love.
8 out of 10
In many sources, authoritative and not so, this film is presented to us as one of the brightest symbols of perestroika, transition period, terrible chaos of values and landmarks in the minds of people.
However, in my humble opinion, the characters and situations in this film are timeless. These are small people with little moral and intellectual baggage. And they understand that very well. Someone calmly accepts this fact, someone can not do it. There are two ways left: to break out of the vicious circle, to break with the tired, drawn swamp (all available ways), or to suffer and suffer, boiling all his life in this cauldron, like a sinner in hell.
Hell doesn’t just exist in the souls, it’s hell around these poor people. Personal space is minimized. Crowding everywhere, the number of people per square meter is skyrocketing. At the same time, the aforementioned people do not allow each other to live peacefully. And life is so incredibly boring. You have to entertain yourself. Everyone finds entertainment according to their possibilities: who falls into the abyss of alcoholism, who enjoys gossip, well, for someone carnal pleasures are sweeter. And all these beautiful ways of pastime are superimposed on each other, woven into one nasty tangle.
So why not live normally, humanly? Why do they not strive for self-development and improvement of the world around them? Yes, because there are no favorable conditions, there is not enough time, physical and spiritual strength for all this. It is necessary daily in the sweat of the face to get daily bread. Well, after a hard day's work, you want only rest, and no more effort.
It is obvious that the unappealing existence gave rise to the same consciousness. Or vice versa?
The plot can be described in such words, imagine that you went to visit a friend who temporarily lives in a communal apartment. And then your conversation is interrupted by a drunken neighbor, then the hostess comes in, screaming to pay the rent. A child starts yelling at the sweetest thing through the wall, and his father violently knocks at the wall to calm you down. It is such feelings from what is happening, two hours wasted simply in vain, meaningless adventures of the main character of easy behavior. Scandals, intrigues at home, the father is an alcoholic, the mother is tired at work, a brother who has achieved something is in fact no better than others.
There is no strength to describe everything that I saw, I will write you a recommendation so that you never turn on this movie. And you include, because reviews and reviews say something else. The picture was dubbed a breakthrough, see there the first bed scene in Soviet cinema. There's a bush, sharp corners, sharp social. But the heroes cannot empathize, they change and immediately acquire the former face. Tell me, you will empathize with alcoholics in the entrance or gopniks screaming in the entrance, but the director apparently empathized. The picture does not introduce anything new, if there is an interest in such things as everyday dramas, turn on “Moscow does not believe in tears”, and fall asleep peacefully.
Old Tolstoy was right that all happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Little Faith is a vivid quintessence of all the drama and tragedy in Soviet families in the last years of the USSR. Parents are concerned only with household issues, and where they cannot think and decide for themselves, look into profile books, Vera’s brother lives in another city with a young family and cares little about parents and sister, Vera herself goes into all seriousness with her friend. But even acquaintance with a progressive peer Sergei does not tear Vera out of the circle of drunkenness, black household and narrow-mindedness.
I sincerely do not understand the indignation of people who consider the film to be low, vilifying Soviet families. Since the release of the film on the screen has passed almost 30 years, and the cart is still there. “Little Faith” is a film about the classic problem of “fathers and children”, about drunkenness in Russian families, about neglect of children.
Beautifully enough, Little Faith is not a black woman, it is a story of love and misunderstanding, despair and rebellion. In my opinion, this film is not a edification to children, they say, this is what you can become and where to fall, but primarily a lesson to parents. If, after watching Little Faith, at least one father puts a stack of vodka aside, and the mother stops closing endless cans of canned food, and talks to the child, this will be a victory for the film.
9 out of 10
I was saddened by the film, even though I was told so much about it.
Faith is a really boring whore and a young fool who has no interests, a useless weed of society.
Sergey is just like Vera, except that he is at least aware of something. But he doesn’t want to change anything.
Parents are gray people who do not need anything, are not interested in anything, no personal life and personal joys.
You look at them all, no one is sorry. This is especially true of Faith. All righteously got what they deserved and went to their negligence and unwillingness to think.
Mariupol was shown a collapsed barracks, I as a Mariupol girl one with a film of the year of release is already hurtful. After all, specially selected places worse, and that factories in the background constantly smoked and freight trains constantly went even under the entrances and under hospitals.
I don’t understand movies that don’t have a sound idea or grain. However, there is an idea that you can not contact such people, otherwise it will end badly.
Vera - not a very prosperous girl in a not too prosperous family - has graduated from school, is waiting for a call to the vocational school. Around - drunkenness of the father, household in the style of "you dined (a)", hooligans-"friends", a depressed industrial city ... And then there appears ... no, not the prince (because she is not Cinderella) - a student, but not a spectacle, the son of parents who are in Mongolia, but live in a dormitory, young and without complexes and prejudices (but in some ways reckless), but almost wise young handsome. And like, love happens.
Then there is deception, marriage, an attempt to live with parents, domestic conflicts, fathers and children, the intelligentsia and the proletariat. And although there is an important twist in the plot that made little Vera choose, becoming big, and there is a bed scene that is frank but not exciting, there is a mat, but which does not please, does not shock and does not cut the ear, the movie is not about that. The word that characterizes it is hopelessness.
What is the bright future, the joy of work, the raising of the cultural level? It is obvious that there are no longer goals and ideas, but a general and widespread alienation. Materialism, all one came not to Marxism, but to the reincarnation of philistines (Andrey Fomin's hero therefore does not attract Faith - a foreigner, rags and a goofy attempt to buy a beautiful "toy"). The silent horror is about Little Faith. Vasily Pichul was able to create a concentrate of Soviet everyday life and become the forerunner of a completely Russian black woman. But unlike her works in “Faith” there is no contrivance and pressure. But the social and existential slice of stagnation and perestroika is very relief.
The film would not have happened without Natalia Negoda. It's not just her sexual courage and exalted schoolgirl type. It is persuasive and in character - a teenage rebellion turns into a rebellion against reality and its falsehood. The drama of the girl is that looking for guides (be it a friend-Ariadne or a husband-Theseus) who will lead her out of this labyrinth, she eventually found herself alone with reality and beats her forehead against the wall.
From this plot, the name becomes metaphorical – in the sense that the everyday drama of the Faith becomes the drama of the faith of the Soviet layman – in the bright future, in the dark past. Just like in the joke - the dead end of communism. Except it wasn't funny.
The finale of Little Faith proved less tragic than it seemed from memory, after watching it in the late 80s. In general, the way out is outlined, and how else - perestroika without hope does not happen - not so radical for the young, but the death of the father (like the dictator-guardian of that outdated type of existence, dying out in the convulsions of futile violence) - apparently - the death of a dysfunctional state with giant industrial zones, abandoned facilities, the infantile life of most of the young. Ideology, in general, is a lie of politicians, since it forms a somewhat one-sided perception of reality, paternalism also does not add criticality. It seems that it is difficult to grow up in such a country, and this in turn gave rise to a cycle of permanent misbehavior.
How the ideological instability of the state influenced the type of relations in the family (and possibly vice versa) is revealed through the life of a typical dysfunctional family, which, as is customary for the cinema of ideas, is described classically convexly as from a textbook. On the one hand, was it possible to escape from such a family-state without death and destruction, without the separation of its members? It is clear that separation is, in part, destruction as a necessary element of the movement towards the new. To some extent, it is possible to keep everything as before, although family members are burdened by the existing relationship, but for some reason it is beneficial to them, and the fear of losing the usual course of life generally paralyzes all new beginnings. For example, Vera and her brother, trying to live their own life, still can not leave the family, as if all roads lead back. Although they are hard and nauseous, but the mechanism of ignoring the feelings comes to “help”, they have learned not to notice the pain, and this is almost organically obtained. When they and their parents are deaf and blind, a whole country has become deaf and blind, trying to preserve the external attributes of a good family-state.
The finale shows the moment when a relationship radicalizes, which could be the result of, for example, the appearance of a new person who does not accept this type of relationship (new generations). Through the death of the head (as if he had decided to leave them), the family seems to be liberated, the restructuring comes to the finale, behind which a new point of reference. It is clear that the final was dictated by the pre-sent circumstances, because in normal, the family, for the transition to a new quality, there is no need for the physical death of parents. Such a death even changes little for the further developing type of interaction with the world, if the subjects do not have experience of overcoming old problems, intrapsychic readiness, internal changes. For example, after the collapse of the USSR, various atavisms of relations persist for a long time, and the attraction to them remains in society. But a sufficient number of people initially asked for change, from those who accepted and supported reforms that seemed to be life-saving.
The USSR was pressured by various circumstances, including generations no longer very susceptible to ideology. Perhaps the film may, in retrospect, lead to the reflection that society was largely not mature enough to adapt evolutionarily to change and influence the environment without leading to a tragic breakdown. The question is how great must be the loss on the way to a new life, how dead is that which is rejected, and whether much else is poured with water. Perhaps, for maturity, society needs to pass through the stages of development that we missed as a result of the revolutionary leap in the early twentieth century, and living this experience would help fill the gaps, collect the integrity of the national character. But only here the transition to this new external state, again, was radically lightning-fast, apparently underlived and reflected in the post-transitional nineties. Therefore, there are myths about the glorious or terrible USSR, as well as about RI.
Apparently, the unfortunate experience of a new “adult life” causes many to want to return to a situation that does not exist, and will not. But failure on the way to the new, do not necessarily become a reason to escape from reality. Probably, a mature society is able to take into account mistakes, feel the pain of failure, not to despair and stay, to stay in the present, in reality, without turning away from problems in the direction of a golden past or an ideal future, not to fall into various ideological traps. It is difficult for a society that has survived so much damage in a single century. There is probably no other way than to accept and try to respond to the challenges of our time based on a comprehensive knowledge of reality.
"This summer is over, this summer is over."
Like it never happened.
It's warm in the heat.
This is not enough.
It is under this poem by Arseny Tarkovsky that the viewer gets acquainted with Vera - an ordinary provincial, yesterday's schoolgirl, waiting for a call from vocational school. But this work of the famous Russian poet appears in an eclectic arrangement of the eight-costal stage, trying to sit on two chairs, in the middle of an era of change. So the young Faith, on the one hand, embarks on the path of rebellion without an ideal, and on the other, dreams of preserving the traditional way of life. At home, she wears an old, washed robe, but on the evening streets of industrial Zhdanov, she appears exclusively in catchy clothes on the verge of losing her sense of taste and proportion. Vera tries to maintain a good relationship with parents, who tend to put their own failures on the daughter. And at the same time, she tries to look like an emancipated free girl, for whom certain foundations of society have long been decreed, meeting with a student Sergey, an adherent of a progressive view of society. But trying to connect the best of both worlds, she unwittingly finds herself trapped in a confrontation between the old and the new. The general line has shifted, but where exactly - no one absolutely understands.
The young director Vasily Pichul was able to make a revolution in domestic cinema (and in my opinion in the world, although his creative success is still underestimated), in spite of himself. Years later, he referred to many of the film's finds (a ragged editing, sometimes losing focus and balance camera) as a technical marriage caused by the fact that he was assigned the weakest crew of all that could single out a debutant without a name. But in fact, he was just ahead of time, and today we see how the conventional "Life of Adele: Chapters one and two" Abdellatifa Kesheesh receives the Palme d'Or from the Cannes Film Festival, largely unconsciously using the experience of Little Faith, because he is, as many mistakenly believe, not tied to a specific environment.
But the real success of the picture was the performer of the title role Natalia Negoda, who before the shooting categorically Pichulu did not like. He described her as an inadequate person. But the actress already approved by him, committed, according to him, a betrayal and went to star in another director at the moment when it was time to shoot the film. He does not name the actress, but mentions that the director was Viktor Tregubovich, so inquisitive minds easily add up twice two and understand who he meant. And it was the uncontrollable inadequacy of Negoda that became the right note for the narrative. The psychological split of the heroine is largely emphasized by her behavior with sharp mood swings, which in the final Vera tries to suppress with the help of antidepressants interspersed with alcohol. Unfortunately, the actress never found herself in the movies. Overnight, becoming a star, she died in low-budget American films and television series. Only in the two thousandth there was a brilliant return to the cinema for a single role in the film “Buben, Drum” by Alexei Mizgirev.
But the fate of the director himself was much sadder. Having never understood the reason for his own success, in the 90s he at least kept a certain artistic bar, while ceasing to be a favorite among critics and viewers. In the 2000s, Vasily Pichul finally registered on television and for the rest of his life mainly shot documentaries about the past. The world where he was born. A world that no longer exists. There is neither the city of Zhdanov, nor the Stalin region, nor the Ukrainian SSR, nor the Soviet Union. In fact, losing faith in tomorrow.
So the film itself leaves the viewer with little hope that everything will get better. Tomorrow will be a little better than yesterday. And all adversity is temporary. After all, just a blue sky above the factory pipes is also a small happiness. And it is not in vain that almost all scenes of the film feature Vera herself, or to paraphrase the name Verochka. With her relaxed quirkiness, she unwittingly, in spite of herself, saves all those around her. And his father, a perfectly normal worker, were it not for the craving for booze. And her mother, trying to ignore the obvious. And Sergey, clearly stuck behind the student bench and careless life. Even the local hooligan Tolik, engaged in behind-the-scenes cases close to the criminal, she leaves a bit of faith. Let it be expressed in the hope that soon there will be a summons to the army, which will save him from local problems, and he will prick the Orthodox cross in his chest. Perhaps, only to his brother Victor there is no sympathy, in his frank conceit of the “new Muscovite” and undisguised hatred for his own small homeland. But the times are gone, and the industrial districts remain. It seems that faith, even the smallest, no longer exists.
No matter what they say or write, this film was once a concept film for us. For us, for the children of redevelopment. We're many, but we're hiding. The film turned the mind. He made me look at things from a different angle. Someone got strabismus, and someone saw the light. It was the beginning of something terrifying, something truly real, something that still makes us think that all is not lost for the country. And this is not the notorious Russian spirituality, but something deeper. Something real.
Thank you Vasily, you will remain in our hearts forever. I'm sorry about the scoop. Sleep well, dear friend. You did not come into this world for nothing.
P.s. Vasily Pichul, the director of the film “Little Faith” died yesterday. Whatever critics and audiences call it, it occupies a special niche in my mind and I will be watching it decades from now. If I live. And then from there, he and I will watch together. You'll be fine, Vasily.
Now any student knows exactly what kind of changes Viktor Tsoi eagerly craved. Today we do not expect any lighthouses of a new era from domestic cinema. Rather, these films demonstrate what Mother Russia already lives. But it used to be different. Gorbachev’s perestroika can be viewed both positively and sharply negatively. But one thing is certain: people fed up with the crumbling illusions of a bright communist future were in dire need of another movie. It wasn't the nude people were chasing, no. They wanted to see the truth on the screen that families can be "unhappy in their own way." People wanted to see how purely everyday difficulties can destroy the incipient light feeling. It's so familiar to many people! The image of the “worker” and “peasant” has outlived its usefulness, and there are those who have managed to understand the aspirations of the proletarian people. To understand and present to the suffering public the cinema, which is rightfully the banner of the fleeting but turning era of our country.
An ordinary backwater town, a very ordinary family, working-class parents, very fond of drinking. They live (or rather exist) archaic ideals, with their own daughter they understand each other worse and worse. Faith is difficult to call beautiful, and about the typicality of her appearance, it is more helpful to reason with those who found perestroika at a more adult age than I. But the freethinking of yesterday’s schoolgirl is very characteristic of her peers, there is no doubt about this. What should a girl do if she is not eager to continue her studies? The dance floor, smoking, underground video, questionable friends, libertine connections - a full bouquet of "hippish" Soviet youth. However, they do not want to consider themselves Soviet.
"Only, only, only that is not enough..."
Song honored Sofia Rotaru in the “other” movie for a reason. The main problem of faith and its surroundings is that they do not know what they really want in life. The Soviet system of education was once considered the best in the world, so the guys are not stupid. But where to go if abroad is still unattainable? Vera’s thinking is still absolutely fragile, she is influenced, for example, by her nimble friend Lena. What is the relationship between the melated detachment and the future seaman Andrey? He is crazy about her, but she only tolerates him, apparently just fills the vacuum.
And here on the seedy "discache" there is a cute guy from some other class. Sergei is somehow determined in life, studying for a metallurgist, lives in a dormitory and does not bother at all. He's handsome, girls drool, but more importantly, he represents an intellectual future. This is the future when young people will not be integrated into the era. It will create an era. They're quite a match. An uninhibited guy and a nasty girl. The nature of Sergei’s feelings remains unclear. Did he love her? Or just took advantage of the situation, especially when there was a chance to move to a normal housing.
It was, it was, it was, but it passed.
Fragile love must be cherished, nurtured into a feeling that forever unites two people. Another song by Sofia Mikhailovna is like a formidable warning to nimble youth. Faith is talking about a possible pregnancy, but can you imagine her caring mother? It's not about years. Its maturation is still narrowly focused. She met a man who probably embodied her girl dreams, but she hardly seriously thought about living together. Let her soul not lie to school, but who does she see herself? Just a housewife? Aimlessness extinguishes the most beautiful impulses of her young soul. The upcoming family storm was not difficult to predict. Sergei, as the modern generation imagines, does not consider it necessary to restrain the irritation of faithful parents, he almost sentenced them from the threshold. In family squabbles, traditionally, it is difficult to find only one party to blame. All four are equally wrong.
Faith that hastened to move the beloved.
Sergei, who already knew what family he was going to.
Father who dissolved the remnants of authority in a forty-degree bottle.
A mother who, for routine household chores, stopped hearing her children.
Nothing hits the kumpol unexpectedly. Life always announces a warning. Not everyone is able to hear and respond. The role of the brother of Vera, Victor, in the events should not be underestimated. We do not know how happy he is in Moscow. But the fact that he is already looking at the world with his eyes not washed away - of course. He can not help loving his father and mother, but obviously these visits are given to him with great difficulty, and it is a wonder, the sister chose his old friend as her groom! The scene of Sergei’s solemn acquaintance with the bride’s parents seems to me key. Victor literally flares up, realizing that there is no such union under these conditions. The groom didn't even see fit to dress up! When neither side seeks compromise, it is not a family, it is a communal service. Little Faith can only be regretted. She's really a victim of circumstance. The girl wants to love and be loved. Her tasteless hairstyle screams, "Here I am." The girl is ripe. She had a choice: get an education, wait for her sailor and build a typical "cell of society." But who would want this movie? Faith and Sergey want a different fate, boredom for them death. But what did they do to change their lives? Guy shouldn't be sorry. Yes, the future father-in-law is disgusting. Why would you want to live under one roof? A favorite under the arm and somewhere far away. Yes, at least in the dorm, because you can quickly sign. This is a paradox. He hates his parents, but does not want to change anything. And this is the future head of the family? . .
Shocking cinema influenced the fate of the characters in different ways. Natalia Negoda even visited the role of a sex symbol of the crumbling Union, although she does not have special grace. She's long since been forgotten. However, such a bright role should have a worthy continuation. Andrey Sokolov has hardly changed in 25 years. Aged, of course, but he is still intelligent, smug and loose. His characters quickly fascinated and just as quickly disappointed. For example, in his Sergei there is no human action. Turning to the classic, he is rather Oblomov, and not Stolz. And his tragedy is that he thinks he's wrong.
"Little Faith" just had to come out on screen. The collapse of old ideals is inconceivable without such reference points. To understand this movie better, I should have seen it back in 1988. But that doesn’t mean it has become an anachronism. On the contrary, it is a monument to an era. You can't get words out of a song. You don’t have to take unsightly things out of history. People "voted" for this tape "legs", which means Natalia Negoda not in vain decided to show the country breasts. And even if she did not find acting happiness, but her most famous work will attract more than one generation of connoisseurs of the Soviet heritage.
Speaking about perestroika in the context of mass culture of the late eighties, it is necessary first of all to mean the first messenger of these processes - the generation born in the late 60s-early 70s, who grew up in the moment of the highest social well-being. Radically new value and cultural message became their first life attitude outside the educational hearth. With the former control over the art of state monopoly and mass production in the mid-eighties, the Soviet people for the first time in peacetime experience a culture shock. It is difficult to overestimate the impact on these processes of specific films – from “Repentance” to “Taxi Blues”, through numerous “Crash of Little Couriers”.
At a time when one educated Soviet youth, already strongly fascinated by Western music and cinema, preserved the innate strength of character and scale of thought, trying to give birth to a new “last” hero with a mirror in his hands, as an opportunity to give him a chance to correct himself, another eagerly sucked to the pits of new opportunities for self-expression: both new topics (for some reason always associated with the purchase and sale of honor, love and fatherland), and new artistic techniques (for some reason associated with savoring from the display of dirty underwear). All the hopes and aspirations of the former were drowned in a deep existential void - a cultural dead end, a hole dug by the latter. In addition, this hole from a certain moment began to sprinkle the real blood of the civil war on almost all the outskirts of the USSR, giving it a painful meaning, a sense of black fate. So all the characters of “Little Faith”, which anticipated the very peak of these processes – the year eighty-eighth, were dragged into a kind of crazy metaphysical labyrinth of old walls and destructive relationships, where everyone is imprisoned in his own doom.
Actress Natalia Negoda in the image of Vera is really nice to watch the whole film. Against the background of the plot absurdity, even frank scenes with the actress are perceived just as easily, although it can be seen that they are presented very diligently. But where is the self-assured hero-lover Sergei (Andrey Sokolov), who at first silently took what he needed, including our frivolous heroine? But he, in hospital clothes, sits in a strange kitchen with strangers crawling people, completely pale, while his once “Sessian” beloved girl is in the next room in a pre-suicide state; a little more and he will swing from side to side, saying “ku-ku”, but decides to rinse his head in the sink. The factor leading to all this action is humanly inexplicable, being an ordinary artistic rudeness. Here you can also attribute wavering, from paternal love to furious contempt, parents, people like “that” old temper. Such an image of mother and father - completely weak-willed and deaf intercessors of the Domostroev order, drinking strong alcohol for any reason, was shown to the country for the first time. Later, the same caricatures of close blood ties will be used directly according to the template in “Crash – the daughter of a cop” and other “geniuses”.
The young metropolitan intelligentsia, embodied in Vera’s brother Victor, is by far the most subtle stroke of this riot of colors. Unable to tune in to his personal life, he is caught off guard and in a small homeland. Blind and pathological override of solutions to other people's problems turns into nervous breakdowns on loved ones (don't forget about constant drinking) and the brother slams the door only when he realizes his harmful participation in this talentless circus. It is worth noting the typological similarity of Alexander Negreb in this role with Alexander Kaidanovsky, up to mannerism and intonation.
If it refers to the script as a set of plot branches, wires, and to the narrative as to the electric current flowing through them, then the main plot branches of “Little Faith” stop not even in the middle of a word, but in the half-breath. For example, the acquaintance of approximate peers of Sergei-Victor is limited in fact to the scene of their first friendly greeting and this potentially winning line simply disappears, in contrast to, in my opinion, the excessive denouement in the line of Vera and her classmate-sailor. The protest of the younger generation against the deliberately categorical and dry worldview of the older generation is not expressed in the film. Probably, undisguised rudeness and arrogance coupled with the unbearable ease of being described youth could pass for the principle of sincere love against philistine ostentatiousness. However, how domestic rudeness and arrogance towards the older generation can be perceived - qualities that simply cannot grow into something more - is decidedly unclear. There was no feeling in the painting itself. Director Pichul, in the end, manages to break and the most developing branch of the relationship — Sergey and Vera. It is clear that the final farce will not strengthen and bind these two, initially similar - young, light and independent, at the end - unacceptably spineless and hopeless, as if dissolved in their emptiness.
The final scene “with a lovely paradise and in a hut” is so predictable that it seems and did not try to become a point of narrative, did not become a comma: there is no paradise or cute in it, one prefabricated hut at the bumped bed of the younger child of the family. Therefore, the only significant final question is the fatherly question: “What will happen to you next, Vera?” The scene of a family holiday on the coast, when Vera reflects the triple "Ha!" tirade of a mother distraught at the whim of the director, paves a direct associative path only to the Cigarev "Wolf", to the main role of Troyanova with her "Lla!" - a kind of adult Vera from the non-childish nineties. It is terrible to think where such girls wandered in their lives – the “Russian cross” following the collapse of the country is too talkative to talk about a better fate.
5 out of 10
Kohl’s father, the driver without whom “no one will work”, did not wait for an answer to his question. You bet! After all, Vera Verochka, a thin twig, the youngest daughter of a driver and a garment factory worker, thinks only about how to arrange her own life in the difficult time of perestroika.
Dad is a drunk who only works. Mom is a stupefying middle-aged woman who does not care about the adult problems of her 17-year-old daughter. Vitya’s older brother is the only normal person in the family who managed to escape from the provincial, sore life to the “big land” in Moscow, to get a family and work as a doctor, although his mother-in-law cries every day. It is on him that parents have one hope to settle the unbridled Faith: “Here Victor comes, let him teach her.” But Vera herself will teach anyone you want the adult life she had to face so quickly.
The film was shot in my hometown of Mariupol. From there, the director of the film, Vasily Pichul, is his thesis, in which he wanted to show all the “charms” of the life of an ordinary provincial family. His parents, like the parents of Vera and Victor, are simple workers, his father is a factory worker, his mother worked in a garment factory. The script for the film was written by his wife – a native Muscovite Maria Khmelik. Masha's father - a famous children's writer Alexander Khmelik at that time was the chief editor of the film studio of children's and youth films named after Gorky, where the Little Faith was launched into production.
The film caused heated and furious debate, it was much talked about and written. But that's not what matters to me. This movie is a confession. A film about the life that is close to us.
Interesting facts
It was impossible to get to the movie. Tickets for all sessions sold out in a few days. To watch “Little Faith”, people stormed cinema halls – broke windows, tore down doors from hinges.
Among those who hated the painting was Mikhail Gorbachev. They say that while watching the film at his dacha, he vomited and metaled when he saw “obscene things” on the screen.
“Faith” was sold to 12 countries. There she brought fabulous profits and collected a huge number of awards. Negoda traveled with the film around the world and even co-hosted at the Oscar ceremony, and in May 1989 she was the first Soviet woman to star for Playboy. The slogan “From Russia – with love!” became the most popular in the West.
For four years, Vasily Pichul was looking for money, and it is unknown how the fate of “Little Faith” would have developed if it had not been for the support of the director-director of “Seventeen Moments of Spring” Tatiana Lioznova. Tatiana Mikhailovna was then a deputy and delegate of perestroika congresses. Somewhere she put in a word, somewhere pressed her authority.
The bed scene was filmed by the entire cast. Negoda and Sokolov were surrounded by 25 people: who with light, who with makeup, who just stared. The cameraman told the actors what to do, how to move. By the way, the nudity of Negoda was worth personal happiness. It was the bed scene that put an end to her three-year romance with Efremov Jr.
Vasily Pichul decided to shoot a sequel to the once popular film. According to his plan, the film will take place in Moscow and America. The main characters are the grown-up children of Negoda and Sokolov. The actors have already received an invitation to play themselves, but so far they have not given consent to participate in this project. Natalia Negoda lives in Los Angeles, she does not appear, leads a reclusive lifestyle, sometimes comes to Moscow, almost does not communicate with the press.
Who says you can make a bad movie from your wife? Don't believe me. You can make such a movie, the revenue from which in the cinemas of the country will be a very impressive amount. And our Russian people can not be deceived, if the movie is really worthwhile and good, people will not just go to the cinema. For its time, it was a breakthrough. I remember I really wanted to see this picture, but in our cinema it was under the sign of children under 16, and I was 10 years old at that time. And it wasn't until many years later that I bought a videotape that I was able to watch this movie. Expectations were more than met. The movie is called the movie.
Maybe it’s because I’m from a small town that I understand this movie more than anyone else. How many families in which parents think about daily bread, about how to survive and little attention and love get children? This is where faith comes from, for the education of which the street is responsible. The picture does not thicken the colors, as it may seem, it only outlines our reality of the late 80s. It is so beautiful that there are no words. Vasily Pichul shot his film and hit the heart.
Simple family. The parents were not financially successful. Their daughter Vera's interests, to put it mildly, have no buzz, even by the standards of being young and young. Vera has no contact with her parents, as well as with them. The only one who has any control over the situation is his older brother. But it lives separately and cannot be a lightning rod all the time. Vera meets Sergei (Andrey Sokolov), a young athletic guy who puts her to bed without thinking twice. But by the way, there are no dirty scenes in the picture. Compared to what movies are out now, this movie is just a dandelion of God.
The most interesting thing is that I was impressed not by the play of Natalia Negoda and Andrei Sokolov, but by Vera’s parents, who were performed by wonderful Russian artists Yuri Nazarov and Lyudmila Zaitseva. This couple worked so well, as if they were not artists at all. A drama film, with elements of tragicomedy, I would describe it as such. Good movie, quite decent by today's standards.
This is the last Soviet film, which gathered more than fifty million viewers in the domestic box office and turned out to be a kind of watershed between Soviet and new Russian cinema. The most high-profile film of the “era of Perestroika and glasnost” can be considered her manifesto, which not only calls nowhere, but, on the contrary, exposes the horror of a tragic existence.
27-year-old Vasily Pichul, who made his debut in a big movie, shot the film in his homeland, in the Ukrainian city of Zhdanov, the former and future Mariupol. The everyday drama about the “semi-middle” class of Soviet society is so closely connected with the social surface that it seems almost hopeless black. But, at the same time, unexpectedly gaining the volume of the “pagan parable”, where the intensity of atheistic passions is on par with the creations of Shakespeare.
The agonizing desire of Vera to get rid of her ancestral attachment to the kingdom of pots and three-liter cans (the real misfortune for Verina Mother is the refusal of children to eat cooked treats) and the inability to overcome this attachment leads to youthful extremism and feverish flight from reality into beautiful love. On the Soviet viewer, for many decades lulled by pink-sterile pseudo-realism, suddenly fell something true and at the same time frightening - and erotic, and genuine pain. A clear metaphor can be seen in the title: Faith here is not only a name, but also the feeling that still lurks in the heroes, in their reflex-based, almost animal way of life.
While the older generation – the short-sighted, the drinker, the evil – thinks only of the extraction of daily bread, the younger generation seeks salvation in love longing and sensual pleasures. The first "very frank" erotic scene in Soviet cinema immediately forced to bite the tongues of those who assured everyone that "we do not have sex." Still remember those giant lines that lined up for the first “strawberry movie” made in the USSR. The whole hall froze as if on command, holding its breath in the scene where Vera topless swayed on a lover in the pose of a rider. Fifty-plus million viewers are no joke. This is one in five inhabitants of the USSR.
The sad sensuality of the young director was multiplied not only by accurate, but for most performers by the best in their career lists of acting works, with which their names began to be associated after the release of the film. An interesting and sad fact: none of the new generation of actors discovered by Pichul was able to be realized in the future as effectively and effectively. Neither Natalia Negoda, who became a victim of her image, nor Andrey Sokolov, although he then played many other roles, but all some optional, nor the sharp-haired Alexandra Tabakova, who shone here as a girlfriend, nor Alexander Alekseev-Negreba, who disappeared nowhere.
It does not look particularly successful and creative fate of the director. After a triumphant debut, he, by and large, did not find himself in a feature film, and then completely switched to television. There he engaged in serial production of “Dolls”, “Old songs about the main thing”, video show, and in subsequent years he began to engage in non-fiction journalism, releasing several documentaries about Soviet leaders – Stalin and others.
It would seem that “Little Faith”, which in 1988 was “categorically afraid” to release on the screens, even then finally said goodbye to shameful socialism and kind of promised in the near future something absolutely bright and happy. But everything that followed turned out to be no less catastrophic than what happened to the main character. That’s why today, the film evokes (at least for those who first saw it in its year of release) a painful sense of nostalgia – like an old song about a never-happening lead.
Many films of the Soviet and post-Soviet period, my parents showed me as a child, introducing me to domestic cinema, but this one did not, and the point is not only in the pioneering spectacle of the sexual intercourse of the main characters on the Soviet screens, but in the fact that the main characters did not show up.
"Well, they lived so hard, and this film is even more a hammer on the head: you do not live in the city, comrades viewers!" - a phrase of one of the parents.
Independent viewing arranged itself recently, learning that the film is considered to insert mandatory for viewing for Russian schoolchildren. No way. School was cursed, spat, drooling furiously, and here means more smoothed realities? Can this be shown to minors? Is everything okay here?
Well, that context is omitted.
I liked the movie. It is the fact that it is alive, emotional, no hero leaves indifferent, everyone wants to know more, study it, learn the motivation of actions. Vera herself, although a repulsive character, at first glance, but if we carefully watch the movie, we will understand that this is not a tear with a coated bangs, but a domestic teenage girl in a torn robe, trying as much as possible to “break away” from life, which is taught by the world around her, including her best friend – Chistyakov’s jackass.
The young man Sergey is an extremely interesting character, especially on the questions he asks Vera:
“Faith, do you read books?”, “What is your favorite book?”, “Who is your first man?” It is immediately evident that a person of another circle, although he lives in a dormitory, and drinks canned food not with beer, but with Pepsi, which also distinguishes him from the alkaline town.
Everybody drinks in this town. All husbands eat without drying, and all wives justify them. And I even in real life a little saw such people who are disgusted with alcoholics, and Sergey just repeated my thoughts.
Vera's father and mother are the unfortunate victims of the alcohol province. I don't like those personalities. If you watch the movie, you will understand why. They are not that blue-swimmed-dropped, no, very decent in appearance, but rustic smart, mean, calculating, selfish, which crushed their own daughter. Brother, smart Muscovite, also good, clean, reasonable, and in one of the scenes we see that the same alkanaut, like his family. The adapter is simple. Although she loves Vera, she thinks about her more than her parents. Although it is impossible to say so, the film should be watched.
Vera has just graduated from high school, and looks like a burnt-out woman with a smoked voice, like a currency prostitute, or even a pretty penny. There is no maiden tenderness and touchingness in her, except from the back, at home, when we see her washing dishes in her ragged robe.
What a harsh, unpleasant voice... The alcoholic is the highest grade. And what she liked clean major Andrews from the seafarer – it is unclear, he has a different mother.
Let everyone watch this film for themselves, for themselves, draw conclusions, but schoolchildren should include it in the program. You will see and decide for yourself whether this idea is reasonable or not.
I am still under the impression, bitter and not the easiest, from this tape, so the review came out confused.
But the verdict is the same: look, look, draw conclusions.
We live in such a country and in such a time that we just need it.
This movie is like a shot of vodka.
Adults are different, but for the most part they are too identical to be any different.
From the film “Little Faith” by Vasily Pichula, I have ambivalent feelings. I incredibly liked the work of the operator, editing, acting and the problem raised in the tape was close and relevant. But this is not what motivated me to write a review. To make things clearer, I’d better start over.
I started watching because my parents repeatedly mentioned the title of the film and discussed it more than once, recalling the years of their youth. Speaking about this tape every time, they seemed not to notice me, completely immersed in their memories, as if the past decades did not exist. In fact, this film illustrates their youth, which means that it can help to understand what these strange creatures from another planet, popularly called “parents”, are made of.
“Little Faith” is a rebellion of its time. Mom and Dad still talk about him with awe. But their battle has already been lost: they have become the parents of the restless faith. In any case, I do not mean myself by the main character.
Nope! This is not just a problem for fathers and children. Here comes another, more important question for me: the struggle of man with philistines.
In youth, rebellion is not supernatural: blood boils and all. This is just an organic need of a growing man. And then, as they say, circumstances prevail, which means no one is to blame.
It seems that not only the body is aging, but also, sadly, the soul. And this one is really scary.
I may have misunderstood the film, but it seems to me that it depicts an ever-changing series of “irrepressible Faiths” by the “parents of the Faith.” And the film itself is designed to draw people’s attention to this terrifying pattern, to help them understand the problem. And there everyone decides for himself whether to leave this enchanted circle or it is better to agree that it is comfortable enough (at least calmly).
Personally, I've already made a choice.
She read the world like a novel, and it turned out to be a story.
Hundreds of films have had a moral impact on me of varying degrees of concentration, but only one has tried to change it physically. When the whirlpool coming out of the provincial, but proud cinema "Smena", mixed with the crowd eager to see the very size of three by four meters, I naturally flattened so that the exhalation lingered in the area of the diaphragm, and the desire to join the great was washed away by a panic wave of thirst for life. This is where he came from.
Well, naturally, we got screwed that time. Of the two and a half scenes showed half, today’s undergrown on that strawberry now would not throw a look, on TV channels in childhood have long been shown deeper and harder. But those moments were enough to analyze the flights the next day. Unplanned class hour on the fact of a sharp degradation of generations, perplexing speech of the educator of souls, offended by an unworthy herd splash is remembered (fragments) and after a quarter of a century.
And, meanwhile, “Little Faith” was not the gateway gates of black and household, watered for a good decade, and quite ordinary Soviet realistic cinema. The same as “Homeland” or “White Dews”. But the vector was unusual, without a bright future. The viewer suddenly saw his life without a romantic flair. And, of course, it was hard for many to agree that their ideals were so small.
But the oppressive factory pipes or shabby student walls, decorated with empty cigarette packs, pay attention later. First we have heroes. The title character of Natalia Negoda does not want anything from the set proposed by the public. No study, no work, no family nest. It’s not because she’s a shabby, as it seems to others. This is how it was brought to life by industrial socialism, which is limited but feels the falsity of what is happening. Student Andrey Sokolov is a hero of a different kind. Charming, intelligent guy plunges into the unsophisticated bustle of a sleeping town, where young people have nowhere to go, except for the interludes at discos. Sergey is lazy, and therefore the measured swaying of the surface of the everyday swamp begins to envelop him, sucking him into nowhere.
The family of Little Faith is a visual slice not only of the perestroika, but of the modern cell of society. The routine burned out feelings, erased goals and landmarks. Father (Yuri Nazarov) has long been a cog, not knowing what he was carved for. "KAMAZ", a moonshine, you respect me - most Russian men over forty live according to similar schemes, waiting for nothing and wanting nothing. Even more typical mother (Lyudmila Zaitseva) – the mechanism worked out the set program, everything is like people, went to roll watermelons. Even the brother Victor (Alexander Negreba) who came out to people, he “also came from the people”, his thin gloss of the capital man instantly grays under the lead clouds of hopelessness. But he still has a place to run.
And the people of the outback, where I live, have nowhere to run. Soviet philistinism, which reached its apogee in the eighties, has not gone anywhere even now. It molds in the panel walls of Khrushchev, it manifests itself in the inertia of young people, still considering a poor disco a worthy pastime. Not because people are degraded. They just have small desires, small goals. And faith is small, too.
100% hit over time. Very successful film. It was an incompatibility between generations in those years. But it is not strange to look now because of the eternal family relationship. Difficulties in the family are probably still relevant today, especially due to domestic instability. The film emphasized this very subtly. Of course, young actors played very well (although it is worth noting that Negoda would look better if she simplified her role, Vera is still a beautiful three-year girl, her mind should not differ), Sokolov is a real handsome man, he played so real that it seems that documentary filming was conducted. Of course, it is impossible not to mention the wonderful game of Nazarov and Zaitseva - real professionals! It is they who create the color of this film, showing how they differ from the new generation. Good and Alexander Negreba, it is strange that his further acting career somehow failed.
Needless to say, among the stream of perestroika black, which then overwhelmed the Soviet cinema, this film clearly stands out. It will remain a classic for centuries to come. Therefore