The number of stated themes and meanings presented by the authors in the film is striking, because most of them serve as whole genre directions in Soviet cinema - from "production-conflict" dramas to the problems of growing up of youth. Moreover, the statements of the authors contradict each other, either being a conscious method of directing - opposition, or in an attempt to show the fullness of life of contemporaries, otherwise, showing their own confusion in orientations and meanings. Here, the pompous phrases in the “high” offices spoken by a positive hero coexist with the equally pompous said “old-time interest-bearer”, talk about the achievements of the socialist state and at the same time insert an episode with interviews with US journalists, and played not by actors, but by real journalists, as if with an eye on their opinion, somehow they look at us, I do not see any other meaning in this scene, so it is glued. And in the same interview, the question of the standard of living in America (meaning the United States) is quite correlated with the difficulties shown in the USSR: the obvious lack of money from salary to salary from a single mother - the heroine Nadezhdena, the rudeness of waiters and shoemakers, outright bribes for a room in the hotel, and actually the use of this hotel, instead of a hotel, says a lot about the character of Vladimirov, as well as the phrase about determining the degree of masculinity by the ability to bribe - "present". And all this is contrasted with the character's claims that he is a communist!
Further, all this mess in everyday life, and the difficulties in making responsible decisions, are quite consistently “varnished” from above with new slogans lowered from above: to stop being afraid to express one’s opinion, I emphasize, not to take responsibility, but to express an opinion, hence too many opinions, and responsibility is so – well, they will remove from work, I will find a place in the ranks of the builders of communism. That's thanks to such opinions, we squandered, as a result, by 1991, wealth on all sorts of unplanned innovations - one zoo of tanks and aircraft that is worth it. Yes, technical and scientific successes keep us afloat and hitherto, but how much was irrationally squandered - a dozen million there, a dozen here, and by the way, in coal technology being at that time advanced now "backwards" - just oil and gas became a priority, and coal was not treated sparingly. China is now offering coal-fired power plants with near-zero emissions and enormous efficiency. But just watching the movie coincided with the article I read.
Now, about the “cult of personality”, that’s without the mention of aprons could not do anything! I don’t know how it was, but based on my own experience, I see that all those who came to replace by default are “better” than their predecessors, and this trend has developed precisely in the change of the paradigm that is claimed by the film. Yes, and just on screen events: you have no “cult” for 15 years, and in everyday life no one wants to take rudeness and responsibility for decisive actions, fighting off with meetings and shaking opinions! Somehow, all this is not impressive, but the main thing here, apparently, is to turn about the responsibility, I repeat, of the aprons, without seeing their own self-interested rationality.
And the main thing is leisurely reflections on morality, conscience, responsibility, especially for young people entering life. Nothing but vague inventions, quotations from classics and contemporaries, the authors do not present to us, unfortunately, in the most progressive country this important social field was given to the figures of culture, not science, which served first to complete confusion in concepts, and then the degradation of meanings, following the degradation of the presenters of these meanings. In the West, however, this was taken seriously, and it is now necessary to learn from them as from the best in order to contrast their meanings with those introduced. But time wasted, including thanks to this work - after all, nothing more "smart" than that the character of the young man himself will understand. But the comparisons of the “new” approach with the “old school” were twisted, which, despite its condor and pathetics, was still a system with low efficiency, but still had a degree of freedom to develop, if it had not been buried under numerous “personal” judgments, and there, as it turned out later, quite far in Switzerland to be Khatynka... (I explain to readers: the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR suddenly inexplicable way in 1991, real estate was discovered in the country of cheeses and ozers). . . )