Find yourself without spilling your soul. . . Performed by the main character Nina Denisova, the song Bulat Okudzhava and Isaac Schwartz “There is Torture by the Fire” is a kind of epigraph to the whole film, because individual lines from the song as best as possible characterize all the vicissitudes of the fate of the character Svetlana Petrosyants.
"There is torment by fire, there is joy by iron, there are voices by the forest - all this is about me." Indeed, every word is about Nina Denisova, a young girl who entered the first year of Pedagogical Institute, going through life easily and cheerfully. Nina has a hearty secret: love from the school bench, which, like a guiding star, shows the girl the way she should go if she wants to find happiness. And Nina does. Very! It is the opportunity to meet again with secret love that leads her to the “big branch”, while the others go to BAM, Urengoy. Amazing in soulfulness, the song sharply contrasts with the way Tolik Smorodintsev behaved, “putting his eye” on a girl with a bright appearance. It’s not that secret love didn’t even recognize Nina (people grow up), but how he behaved five minutes after meeting her. If Nina’s eyes were covered with school love, then in Tolik’s eyes there was nothing but greasy shine.
In my empty house, there is a great expectation, like leaves, revival is unknown to anything. Obeying the call of feelings, Nina remains on the “big branch”, and the hero Prokhanov goes to “knock out” the panels at the house-building plant. Nina is really waiting for "great expectations" because Tolik decided to take "untrained" holidays, and this is almost impossible. 100 days! Nina does not yet know where her hasty desire to radically change her fate will lead, but she believes those who are close to her who are not indifferent to her fate. This is Tomka’s best friend, wonderfully played by Tatiana Dogileva, this is the head of the construction installation train (NSR) Ivan Ivanovich Zakharushkin in the convincing performance of Ivan Ryzhov, this is the customer inspector Dmitry Alexandrovich Vorobyov, whom Lev Prygunov endowed with the features of an honest, open, fair person. Unexpected short meetings of Dmitry and Nina allowed the man to see in the girl what he could not or did not want to see Tolik - the sincere feelings of a deeply vulnerable person.
And you can drive a horse, raving over a cliff, but you can be happy and a head clone. In full accordance with the lyrics of the song, Nina again throws everything and rushes forward. She thinks that she is in a hurry to meet her fate, but it turns out that this is not fate at all, but only ghostly mirages and elusive chimeras of possible happiness. It is not easy for the heart to part with the lofty girl dreams, but it has to. You have to, because walking forward with blinders in front of your eyes is hard even for a horse. And again, next to Nina there are people who care about her, who believe in her, trust her. And although people here are different: who is behind the fog, who is behind the car, who is behind the groom, but they are all ready to take part in the fate of Nina - at the beginning of the picture "gray mouse", in the middle - "a devoted cat", and at the end?
And every day and hour, with my hand on my heart, I celebrate the separation that binds us. A good movie is one that shows the spiritual growth of the hero. His ability to rethink his actions, his ability to take responsibility for himself and others. A romantic purple pink plaque of girlish dreams flew from Nina's eyes. She learned to understand people. I learned to understand them, appreciate them, respect them. She understood the main thing - words are only worth something when there is a case behind them. Air castles and sand castles are good for stimulating the imagination, but you can not live in them. Nina Denisova understood this and chose a real path with real people – open and reliable. But the girl did not forget about air castles - after all, we live at the bottom of the atmospheric ocean, which means that the most gifted of us are subject to the element of air - live! dream! love!