Pun intended This is my first review. It so happened that in this film I wanted to describe my impressions.
I like to watch Soviet films – they are lifelike and painful. They seem a little naive these days. Many of the problems are already living within ourselves (I was a kid in the 80s and 90s) and our society, and many of the questions posed in the 90s movies seem to have answers now.
The film is interesting and looks in one breath. Despite the tragic situation of the main characters, it is impossible to say that the film is heavy. There was no sense of hopelessness and lack of light at the end of the tunnel - somehow you do not even think about it. Maybe it was because the whole country lived like that at the time? The end of the 80s, Prohibition, Perestroika, the beginning of the change of epochs. The film is not about this at the same time.
Heroes Shakurov and Gundareva meet at the station of a small provincial town. The action of the whole film, with the exception of a brief ' sorties' in Leningrad, takes place there. Both the main characters are fallen people and in many ways similar. Arkady used to live in Leningrad, had a family, earned well, then had problems with alcohol and got into LTP (treatment and labor dispensary). Jeanne is an alcoholic who works as a train station cleaner, a deeply unhappy woman whom no one likes or understands. But he has everything bad as if behind him - he no longer drinks, goes home to Leningrad, where his family. Arkady is generally verbose, so what he feels or thinks can often only be judged. Jeanne, on the other hand, lives without any future – a sharped apartment in a similarly shabby house, a job as a cleaner at a shabby train station and loneliness. Their acquaintance begins before New Year's Eve, when Zhanka is about to go home alone. . .
In the course of the development of the plot, their position changes - Zhanka clings to Arcadia with his teeth, quits drinking, presses with enthusiasm begins to go to work. Arkady, on the other hand, having gone to Leningrad, where his former family gives him a turn from the gate & #39, loses all meaning of existence.
What's the movie about? In my opinion, the film is about everything at once and nothing in particular. A bit of a pun. The creators tried to shove several ideas and problems into it at the same time. First of all, this topic of alcoholism is an actual problem of that era. Alcohol haunts the main characters throughout the action. Everyone drinks - they themselves throughout the film, and with the change of roles - she drinks, then he, then both. Young people in the yard, the scene in the diner, where Arkady gets drunk after visiting home. Best friend of Zhanka (if you can call her that), a young pretty daughter & #39; a big man & #39; also an alcoholic. Vodka is also present in the neighbor Zhanka (Udovichenko). Although she and her husband don’t seem to drink, the first thing she does is pour a glass of confidence into Arkadia when he first arrives at her house. LTP, where Arkady was treated, even looks like some kind of advertising - Zhanka thinks for a second whether she herself will undergo a course of treatment.
The problem of meaning in life - Zhanka finds it with the appearance of Arkady, and Arkady, on the contrary, loses completely when, having arrived home, finds that his ex-friend lives in his apartment with his wife and children, he himself has long been discharged from there, and the children are set against him. But how good is it to find the meaning of life in another person? Are you looking for him in yourself?
Relationship problem - Zhanka almost by force tries to keep Arkady next to him - leaving for work, locks the outside of the apartment after it seemed to her (as she thinks) that he was with a neighbor. Buys him a jacket, surrounds him with care, begins to decide for him (you need to find a job), forgives him an affair with a neighbor. Arkady Zhanka is not very needed - he does not show emotions to her, except in those moments. when drunk (' with me you will not disappear'), restrained takes her care. The feeling that he is with her is rather hopeless. But, as they say, you will not be violently nice. Arkady falls in love with his neighbor. But is that love?
And a weak thread traces the problems of society and the country. General alcoholism, decline are shown on the example of this gray town and the house where Zhanka lives. A society without a future.
The film is as easy as possible for such a drama. The narrative goes organically. You like the actors, you trust them, you look in one breath. The only thing, Shakurov’s hero lacked emotionality. He is silent, does not express emotions, and it is unclear what he thinks he is living at any given moment. It is felt that his hero is an energetic person, economic, even sometimes evil. But lethargic. You're waiting for him to finally show up, but you're never going to see him. I really liked Gundareva’s game – unfortunately, she is no longer with us. . .
8 out of 10