Parallel Russia A strong film, the philosophy of which extends much further than clarifying the relationship of the Old Believers with the outside world.
The Old Believer world in the film is shown quite capaciously, aptly and consistently. As an Old Believer and specialist in Old Believer culture, I cannot but note the meticulousness in the image of the Old Orthodox mentality. The social dimension of Old Believers is this: Russia has deteriorated, the last Orthodox kingdom has been damaged, the Third Rome has gone underground. But the Old Believers themselves remained - as they called themselves, "the ancient faith of the Christ remnant." If someone is interested in the Schism and the history of the Old Faith, information can be found in two clicks with a mouse - here we are talking about something else. The Old Believers felt themselves to be the last bearers of Christianity, the last bastion of the Third Rome. Just a little bit more, that's all. The Antichrist has already reigned in this world (according to the Old Believers-Bespopovites) or is already near at the door (the Old Believers-Bespopovites). Therefore, it is necessary to zealously preserve what remains of ancestors and try not to “infect” when communicating with heretics, apostates, God-fighters. It's best to get away from them. “Christians always retreated when there was room to retreat.” They reached the Far East, they reached Alaska. Old Believers were characterized by an intuition of spiritual entropy: There is almost no divine grace left in the world, so sins, free and involuntary, cause irreparable damage. There is no more stove that can be warmed, so the fur coat smells stronger.
Old believers are more traditionalists than Christians, this is especially valuable in them. Of course, we are not talking about modern urban centaurs, but about true, dense Old Believers. It is thanks to their drearyness, savagery (from the point of view of the “enlightened” Russian Empire) that they have preserved the most ancient and eternal foundations of Russianness and tradition. Preserved unintentionally, imbued with Christian dogma and asceticism. It turned out "Old Believer" as a household name.
In the film, two worlds are wonderfully juxtaposed: Old Orthodox-dreaming and Decembrist-enlightened. Both are anti-state, but going and leading in diametrically different directions. It turns out that rebellion and resistance is not enough – a constructive basis is needed, which the flight convict lacked ideologically, and the Old Believers – emotionally. The convict loved people, not knowing why. The Old Believers hated people, knowing why. Only the village abbot and the crouched little girl showed humanity, because of which they themselves suffered and destroyed all their strange habitat.
And none of the projects survived. The Decembrists-liberals led only to the strengthening of the Empire they hated and the implicit awakening of those social forces from which Pestel and Muravyov would spit away for a long time, drinking with them from the same vessel. Although these forces themselves often loved to draw their genealogy from completely alien to them and Decembrists, and Petrashevtsy, and other fantasists.
The Old Believers carefully brought their “parallel Russia” to the USSR so that it would be triumphantly destroyed by industrialization, collectivization, television and microdistricts. These forces were more effective than all the “anti-schismatic” missionaries of the Imperial Church. And now only ethnographers selflessly pick at drawings on kaftans and sundresses. In the space of ideas and mentality, nothing remains of Old Orthodox Christianity. Reason? This is exactly the kind of meeting that was shown in the film.
Now to day two. In 1991, Tregubovich noted the civilizational processes faced by his Soviet homeland; some were in the place of the Old Believers, others in the place of a convict, others in the place of imperial investigators, the fourth in the place of the godless crosses who betrayed their antiquity and culture.
In addition, very important ethical processes of love for the abstract man and the concrete man, my neighbor and higher principles, if they exclude each other, are raised. So Hop is more than a historical movie. This is a very underrated, deep and thought-provoking film; a film about us and everyone.
9 out of 10