Stalker. You know, my mother was very against it. You probably already know that he is blessed. The whole county laughed at him. And he was a scumbag, so pathetic... And my mother said: he is a stalker, he is a suicide bomber, he is an eternal prisoner! And kids. Remember what kind of children stalkers have. And I... I even... I didn't even argue... I myself knew about all this: that a suicide bomber, and that an eternal prisoner, and about children. Just what could I do? I was sure I'd be fine with him. I knew that there would be a lot of grief, but only bitter happiness would be better than ... a gray sad life.
Yuri Nikolaevich Arabov is one of the most talented screenwriters of domestic cinema. And in my philosophical depth and metaphysical outlook, I do not know of any other such authors. It is not surprising that Yuri Nikolaevich is a permanent co-author of many films by Alexander Nikolaevich Sokurov, who in domestic cinema continued the line of “metaphysical cinema” by Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky, although they, as artists should, have different artistic worlds.
The film “Presence” (1992) by Andrei Mikhailovich Dobrovolsky (42) scripted by Yuri Nikolaevich (38) is another art world from the artist who respects cinema. To cinema as art. This is an honest talented film, full of symbols and images, nuances and strokes, subtexts and contexts.
The main success of the film is the image of the main character in the stunning performance of Alexei Vasilyevich Petrenko (54). This is one of his lesser-known but perhaps best roles.
The film "Presence" is about transition time. Not only countries (the Soviet Union has disappeared – in the film there is a remarkable image of a monument of Soviet times, which is gradually taken apart for various everyday reasons). But also about the transition period in the life of a man.
Pyotr Nikolaevich Yakovlev both by profession (diver - then on land, then under the surface of the water) and by habitat (gateway as the border between land and water) is on the border of worlds. His existence is filled with dreams and visions. Attempts to explain this logically and rationally lead to a simple stereotypical explanation of his colleague Uncle Misha about manic-depressive psychosis.
But a thoughtful viewer understands that Uncle Petya, as a character, exists in some other artistic coordinate system, as evidenced by figurative dreams and visions of the hero, filled with metaphors, allusions and symbols.
The tunnel is not an allusion to the symbol of the transition between the world of being and non-being, which is then used by Jim Jarmusch in his most famous cult film Dead Man. A dog in a deserted world (this is a direct allusion to a dog from the Zone in Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky), a house, an ocean, a smoking cup - all these are again images, so familiar to us from the films of Andrei Arsenyevich.
And very soon, the authors confirm our hunch with the appearance of an amazing character-symbol, a girl without a name, and ... without an age. That is, physically she has an age, but there is no film in the symbolic language, since she is several representatives of the female primary, the anima, for the hero.
Jung believed that the anima is primarily the source of feelings and moods of men. He also saw the anima as a vehicle between the consciousness of a man and his unconscious. “Anima is the personification of all female psychological tendencies in the male psyche, such as nebula and vagueness of feelings and moods, prophetic inclinations, susceptibility to something irrational, capacity for individual love, and, ultimately, a connection with the Unconscious.”
In communication with a girl without a name, Peter meets with his mother, who is no longer in the world, and with his ex-wife, with whom they broke up and with an imaginary daughter, whom he never had.
As psychologists assure, a person takes his adult life from childhood. So the main character of “Presence” Peter Nikolaevich makes a symbolic return to childhood, in order to once again meet with the obvious truth that all a person needs is love in all its fruitful manifestations.
As in “Stalker” in the film there is almost no behind-the-scenes music, and when it sounds (from the works of Alfred Garrievich Schnittke), it creates not a background and not a manipulation of audience emotions, but emphasizes the organic whole with the frame space, as if manifesting itself from the inside of the frame (as Andrei Arsienevich sought in “Stalker” with the music of Eduard Nikolaevich Artemyev).
The film is not without drawbacks. The main disadvantage of the film is the technical capabilities and quality of the film on which it was shot. Circumstances, apparently, did not allow the screen as close as possible to the idea to convey the play of light and shadow, color solution many of the ideas of the authors. But even with such shortcomings, the camera of Yuri Vladimirovich Raisky (37) compositionally conveys the metaphysical world of the protagonist in the frame of post-Soviet life, worn and abandoned.
And as in the “Stalker” by Andrei Arsenyevich, the miracle was not in the Zone, where the Professor and the Writer aspired, but in the love-pity-compassion of the Wife to the Husband-Stalker and the Daughter-Mutant, and in the “Presence” manic-depressive psychosis is not in the consciousness of the hero, but in reality, devoid of love, where a woman’s head is attached to the monument to a man in a coat.
My opinion is good.
7 out of 10