Who is in favor of me staying? Surprisingly, this film, shown once on TV a year, is now virtually forgotten. No way. The film clearly shows what the powerful turn into when they depend not on the voter, but on higher authorities.
I remembered him after Navalny’s investigation about Putin’s palace, reviewed and was amazed at how many parallels there are with the modern day.
After the completion of the solemn meeting with Gorbachev, the secretary of the regional committee (the governor, in modern terms) makes a speech at the party conference and receives quite fair criticism in his address. Here and the emergency state of the airport and poisoned rivers and a secret cottage in the taiga with a helicopter pad. And all this is accidentally recorded on the camera of Moscow television.
The official understands that if such material is made public, it will cost him his position, and may result in a trial. And he has no choice but to use all his administrative resources to deploy the aircraft, which carries a compromising film.
The film clearly demonstrates the mores that reigned in the party nomenclature at the outset of Soviet power. How all this camarilla on the one hand swears allegiance to the secretary of the regional committee, but on the other hand understands that his days are numbered and is already making plans for the future when he leaves office. There will probably be no future for them in this structure. For “circular responsibility smears like soot,” and with the departure of the head of the region, the entire bureaucratic house of cards will crumble, for there are sins behind each of them.
More than thirty years have passed since the release of the film, and nothing has changed in our power. All the same geniuses of mediocrity continue to sit in high offices and engage in their main business - achieving a bright future in a single apartment and on a separate garden plot, fenced off from the rest of the world by a barbed wire fence. Except they're getting bigger now. That there's a three-story cottage in the taiga. These are the servants of the present masters of life. And television, which for a short decade and a half tried to become a separate branch of government, again rolled back from the model of the Soviet period and no longer poses a threat to officials.
I especially want to note the quality of the direction and play of the main characters. There are scenes in the film that can be described as a transition to a new film language. What is the scene of the passage of the secretary through the night city, and the next car. This is a telling gait of a real party boss, the head of a huge region, who yesterday enjoyed power, and tomorrow may be overthrown from his post. Victor Smirnov performed this role perfectly.
As a TV director, I was surprised to recognize Nina Ruslanova. Somehow more used to see her in the roles of “ordinary Russian women” – Katka Airport from the film “Gypsy” or Daria Petrovna from “Heart of a Dog”. In the same film, she performs in a completely different role. Just as powerful in her team as Secretary Manokhin in her regional committee, very principled and penetrating, ready to fight for her cause.
Well, the big ending of the movie. What else can they do but agree with their boss? Unfortunately, we are still not far from this state.