The author's severe sentence No one, not even a good director, goes through his creative path without a film, which he would in varying degrees regret. For Nikolai Gubenko, this is "If you want to be happy."
His second film Nikolai Gubenko shot exactly a year. After awards for his directorial debut with the film “Come soldier from the front”, the second film was given good funding, and indeed, it has footage that clearly was not easy to shoot.
The film is quite short, a little more than an hour, and there is no development of the plot. It's just two people's lives. Life as it is. When you have a family and a job. And often work takes a lot of time, much more than family matters. Many families have not been able to go through this.
In the film, we see the story of a test helicopter pilot and his wife, who rarely see each other, but still love each other and retain tender feelings, despite all the difficulties. It is this part that deserves attention, and Nikolai Gubenko is not ashamed of it even now, I am sure. Especially great was shown against this background, the family of the factory front-runner, who was given an apartment who became a father, but whose family does not have the warmth and mutual understanding as in the family of the main characters. It is noteworthy that both couples played acting families.
Nikolai Gubenko again played in his film, and this time with his charming wife Zhanna Bolotova. Perhaps that is why the feelings are not played in essence, they are lived on the screen. Well, the Shukshin family duo worked wonderfully. By the way, Vasily Shukshin helped in the work on the script of the first film Gubenko.
Why is the director ashamed? For the overly embellished and not-so-believable story of a helicopter pilot, and the overly stereotyped bad Americans. As Gubenko later admitted, this was done for political reasons. I don’t like to think about this picture.
And yet, it is a mistake for the author to do so with his work. There's more good than bad. It’s just that people of that generation are more conscientious, I can’t imagine a modern author berating himself so much for his work.
And my rating is higher than the author's.
7 out of 10