A hero of our time. I have been following the work of Mavromatti, Baskova and their entire group for a long time. And to be honest, I was waiting for this film and I was waiting for Mavromatti to roll through festivals and the film to go online. Now I am in the same situation with his new movie.
Oleg Mavromatti in tandem with Baskova shot two brilliant films “Green Elephant” and “Five bottles of vodka”. In "Green Elephant" they have already placed in 86 minutes the whole idea of the state of the Russian, Russia and the Russian way, Russian history and the so-called "Russian world" named after Colonel Kvachkov. It would seem that the viewer has nothing to say? But expelled from the country, Mavromatti, after a long period of silence, entered the current political and social situation. After that, he issued another shocking, provocative and truly disgusting, caustic as a stab in the back of a Turkish-Ukrainian and now American rusty crutch in shit and urine, smeared in blood and semen film.
In principle, as far as directing and how the film is made, I would like to note that Mavromatti adheres to the format that was chosen by him in his first full-length film “B*tka”. This is the format of the monologue of the hero with the viewer. To me, this clumsy style of presentation of material does not paint him as a director and is the main drawback of the film. On the other hand, the film positions itself as an “experimental movie” and we can say that it is made in the style of a video blog or stream on twitch or YouTube, which is a philistine follow-up to modern trends. This is where the flaws of the film end and the merits begin. The main one is Mavromatti’s exceptional knowledge of Russian life. In fact, few people in cinema have this skill. Mavromatti’s style and vision combine outrage, ridicule, naturalism and anticlericalism, multiplied by deep skepticism about modern Russia. And the personification of all this is the hero of the picture - Astakhov Sergius.
Mavromatti finally found the hero of his novel.
But let's start in order. Yuri Zvezdny cannot be called a hero of Mavromatti, since he, in general, was and is a creative person and intellectual. Astakhov Sergius, on the contrary, is a real freak. Yeah. Making a mentally ill person (in addition to a deceased person) the hero of an acute social film is unethical. Especially when it is ridiculed between the lines. But that's Mavromatti. Astakhov’s discourse embodies all aspects of mental illness, but already in present-day Russia, where Orthodoxy coexists with the approval of the Soviet period and portraits of Stalin, and obscurantism with world conspiracy, Freemasons, etc. is promoted from state stands and channels. Well, how not to remember the aggressive domestic policy with tightening the screws in the foreign. And yet all this is multiplied by the masochistic and somewhere reaching to homosexual approval and support from the population. Here, in general, you can still speculate on this topic, especially remembering the approval with which the world gay community looked at brutal photos with a bare torso. There is a parallel between the lonely homosexual Astakhov and the isolated Russia. In the end, it becomes postmodern suicide. The film is particularly political.
A separate mention is terribly unaesthetic to the horror of the life of the hero. His girlfriend, mother, stepfather, credit, alcoholism, Orthodoxy and poverty. Everything is like many Russians, except for the fact that the hero is already sick and even more crazy under the influence of propaganda.
In the dry residue, this film should be watched, overcoming all vomiting urges and the desire to turn off. It's a real arthouse. This movie appears once a decade.
Would I revisit it as an elephant? No, I wouldn't.