Perhaps many have seen films dedicated to the problem of drug addiction, such as “Requiem for a Dream” or “On a Needle”. However, few people know that long before the appearance of these paintings, in the distant 1989, when the USSR was still relatively alive, a similar problem in its own way tried to solve in sunny Belarus. It turned out, as a result, a dark and rather contradictory story with the life-affirming title “Under the blue sky”.
This story has no beginning. There are no bright smiles, sunny weather and the blue sky advertised in the title. By default, no one was happy here, or rather, once, maybe he was, but now no one remembers about it. Without wasting time on various foreplays, Vitaly Dudin throws the viewer to the bottom of life - right in the everyday life of "experienced" drug addicts - people who take drugs not for the sake of high, but not to die; who have nothing to take out of the house; who have fallen into banal slavery to their hucksters. The film is ruled by despair, it permeates it from the very first frames. The whole picture we wander through the gloomy Belarusian streets of an incomprehensible time of year, alleyways, basements, construction sites, furnitureless apartments converted into dens. All this looks very hopeless, like the heroes themselves, turned from people into walking corpses. Dudin does not give his characters a single chance to get out, throwing them new and new problems, he seems to drown them like kittens, but not one jerk, and each time at the last moment pulling out of the water and again dipping. In this regard, the film is much stronger than, for example, the same “Requiem...”, released 11 years later. It is such a hopeless and should be frightened, it gives the whole atmosphere, after which you do not think: “Maybe it would be nice to try.” The picture hits on the head, but it does so throughout the film, not just at certain moments.
But there's not one hopeless movie alive. The atmosphere, of course, can not be taken away, but the picture of this plan is not only the surrounding environment, it is also well-discovered characters of the characters, and the very idea that the author wanted to convey to the viewer plays an important role. Here, the film begins to limp on both legs. The only idea that the viewer gets about the main characters is they are drug addicts. Okay. Only once the director seems to start talking about the bright and bright dreams of his main character, begins to show her as a person, but then, a little waking up from romantic moods, returns to dark alleys and incomprehensible mess on the asphalt. It seemed that the director himself tried to convince himself of the incorrectness of his position, but failed. Dudin’s understanding of his characters is exactly the same as that of one woman in the same film, who represents the comparative “forces of good” – very clumsy, superficial, overly moralized. It is philistinely sick, peremptory, and therefore uninteresting. Dudin tells us what we've heard a million times in lectures about drug addiction, from teachers and parents, a million times in social reporting. “Drug addiction is bad, drug addicts are inhuman” – why do we need it? Is there something else to say, perhaps in the same direction, but more interesting?
Dudin’s vision of the problem was reflected in the acting. Actors, clearly capable of more, played exactly what was demanded of them and not a drop from above, which left the feeling that somewhere the viewer was being deceived, not at all ashamed of it. All the fight scenes were too toy, and in general many scenes where the characters do something other than talk. The conversations in the picture are also quite specific. Most of the screen time, a young couple of protagonists beg someone to lend or wait a little longer. It seems that the screenwriter simply did not have enough imagination to work out the dialogue, and in all the empty lines he enthusiastically wrote “Well, please give it back tomorrow”, although on the other hand, these constant requests, although slightly annoying, but enhance the effect of the very hopelessness that we talked about at the beginning.
The impression of the film left, frankly, ambivalent. On the one hand – a beautiful atmosphere, on the other – no message. However, I do not think that the respected Vitaly Dudin is to blame for this. It's not even his fault. It’s just that he represents it in exactly the same way and in no other way. And drug addicts are, without a doubt, finished people who have no right to a person, dreams, thoughts, life. And who would condemn the respected Vitaly Dudin for such a position? Let yourself continue to think as you wish. But why, in this case, to call the film so beautiful and promising - "Under the sky blue"? It was definitely worth calling 'Their dirty souls deserved it all'. It would be more honest.