In search of lost time The most difficult decade in our modern history is not the 10th (evolution = revolution), the 20th (to fight - not to sow = hunger), the 30th (Kremlin bloodletting = "purification"), or even the 40th years (" we came to see you ...). Brest = the feat of the people, there it is clear who is the enemy, who is a traitor, who is a tyrant, and who is the father of the nation. The most difficult decade in the history of our country is the 90s!
You used to go to visit your grandmother, with a pinch of sugar purchased on coupons, because she has the same "talons-limiters" of products, and along the street there are former teachers and officers selling Turkish junk. You will come, sit down, pour “Indian tea” (which was packed somewhere in the Caucasus), turn on the Chinese Sumsang: and there you will find tanks shooting their own government in the White House, and the crying mothers of boys who died in Chechnya, and even a funny, always drunk eight-toed uncle with a strange reprimand. You know...
There are movies that we don’t watch, they watch us. Time was preserved in them by a clear cast of the era. As a rule, these tapes are “lost”, which came to the scrap of history and did not reach their viewer. In the 90s, during the period of total impoverishment and theft, film distribution left much to be desired, like all other spheres of life of our country. “Cooperative” and “rollback” cinema, blacks, non-professionals with their “clip biographies” gave rise to a small picture (which has not been since post-war times). What do you remember from the 90s movie? Probably, only the "Brother", Mikhalkovsky "The Barber", and the drunk "Kuzmich".
Vadim Abdrashitov and Alexander Mindadze, more than just a harmonious creative union stretching over decades, is the type of classical co-authorship that has always existed in our cinema: Mikhalkov-Adabashyan, Sokurov-Arabov, etc. A characteristic feature of Abdrashitov’s best films was, in the presence of two obvious antagonists, the absence of an unambiguous directorial message – “this one is bad, and the other is right.”
So in the “Play for the Passenger”, the first post-Soviet film by Abdrashitov-Mindadze, there are so many layers that you will not understand the author’s message without having lived the “dashing 90s”. Two characters, whose lives were turned upside down by the collapse of the USSR, accidentally (or not?) collide on a train going somewhere to the sea. One is the master of a new life, a former speculator and a “zek,” the other is a litigator (who once condemned him), an idealist of a collapsed era. He who was nothing again rose up to all, only on the contrary, “were rich, became humpbacks.”
Yes, the trouble, having money, the hero of Igor Livanov can neither eat delicacies, nor drink alcohol, nor even “love” (this is subtly hinted at), and generally loses consciousness (hello to Van Santo) – on the “zone” fought off everything possible. The character of Sergei Makovetsky, a ridiculous smart guy in huge glasses, no matter how bad his storyline turned out, with the easy filing of the same “old friend”, secretly avenging his abuser, becomes more and more happy. The funny thing is that he didn’t even remember his misfortune.
It is no coincidence that for the role of judge-guide, Abdrashitov chose Makovetsky, an actor with a seemingly open, simple, with an interesting non-heroic appearance, but a very clear negative charm, a certain inner wormhole. It is his character here that is more important, it is he who is both a consistent adapter and a moral center at the same time, a kind of walking contradiction, as the era itself gave rise to it.
As for Mindadze’s script, it’s a real little masterpiece, as well as the verbal dives of the characters floating by music, as if you were listening to dialogue from Kira Muratova’s films. The almost theatrical schematics of speech raises the support layer of this tape, where Abdrashitov’s picture turns out to be at least tragic, but comedy. Moreover, the Comedy del Arte, where the types are hidden behind grotesque masks, crooked and laughing hard, so as not to cry bitterly.
The finale of this tape for each viewer is different, here it is not that it is open, he just “litmus test” will change himself depending on the beliefs and individual qualities of each person. Abdrashitov, as an intelligent author, does not give direction to the viewer on whose side the truth is on. Is there even one in the world? But another thing is important: if someone forgets and languishes for the times of democratic freedoms with the “pig drunken snout of a gray tennis player”, there is always a reason, including this film, to give the opportunity to watch you.
8 out of 10