A controversial film, ambiguous. You can write a dissertation on it, lay out everything for and against, to the substitution of concepts, the false identification of faith and the church, where you can ridicule the fanaticism of believers, the mercantileness of the priests, but at the same time be ready to dance in a mask with a diamond. If only I could... If there is no result, there is no faith. Where did it come from? did not teach... An ironic movie about a bigoted grandmother? Alas, no. But! The viewer is godlessly lied to. No abode will take a novice mother who has abandoned a child. With the baby, yes, they will. The character of a father without faith is false. He lived in the family, believed, and then “became aware” and left. And left your disabled daughter? And everything is so "decent" in the plot. Mother's character: suspiciously "overshoes" when the money came in. In reality, I'd rather pretend. Faith is the other way. Here's the drunken monologue real, though disgusting. This is the reasoning of cattle, not man. You're gonna get him high! And toss the glass over. I cried, drank and ... came to life! That's it? Yes! For this is his life, his rule and his limit. The basis of any film is the text expressed by monologues, dialogues, images, etc. And when the viewer is lied to, the whole movie is in the trumpet.
From my point of view, the film is not anti-religious. His enforced anti-religionism is not an end in itself or the main idea. Religion in general, and Orthodoxy in particular, act rather as a mask that helps to hide the lack of important qualities: compassion, love, understanding, the ability to support and come to the aid of perhaps the closest person in life. So the shaman of a wild African tribe is more human than an exalted Orthodox grandmother with a mobile phone.
In a world of total dislike, religion can really be a good way to forget, not see, not hear, under plausible pretext to escape from frightening reality, to stop being responsible for their own actions. By the way, a similar effect helps to achieve alcohol, the difference is only in appearance, but it depends on the perception of the environment. But do not scare the cause with the consequence, and the medicine with a placebo. In a world without compassion, death is deliverance. The question is, do we really live in such a world? If not, then trying to see and understand who is next to you will be far more effective than the most sincere repentance, baptism and observance of all prescribed rituals.
Life, pressing problems, lack of money, existential crisis. And suddenly a miracle, a light at the end of the tunnel. What is this if not God’s gift?
The son-loser and part-time unemployed father of the family suffers from a failed musical career. A mother who pulls out the whole family, strangled by the eternal pursuit of a “better life”, who has lost touch with her already adult daughter, turns into an aggressor from impotence. And it seems like a normal scenario of Russian life, but then there is a savior-mother-in-law, she is a religious fan.
Then everything develops quite rapidly - the son gets a well-paid job in the warehouse of one priest with the help of his mother, for his realtor wife there is also an interesting offer. Thank you, everyone. Only now the mother-in-law wants to introduce his own rules of the game.
Inconvenient questions finally surface: what is being loaded in this warehouse? Candles and icons? Not likely.
Religion in our culture has become a taboo subject, it is not accepted to discuss or condemn, there is only one option - to believe. Or-- ?
Very carefully, the director introduces irony, the plot develops quite rapidly, the fight with a representative of aggressive Orthodoxy ends in the victory of common sense.
Thank you for the alternative view on this subject, this movie was very much missed during my growing up.
P.S. Favorite Moment - Revelation of a Drunken Neighbor
“I drank, I did, and I didn’t get nailed. And then I said one word, one single word. The fucking word. You understand. I was drinking, swearing, crying and I felt alive! And when I didn't drink or swear, I felt dead. So what kind of faith is that if you can't drink and say what you're thinking? Where is happiness then, do you know or not? ?
Open anti-Christian agitation against believers and the Church. And they don’t know the liberals.
Its external form is an anti-church libel, the creation of people who have lost their way in unbelief (director, screenwriter, actors, and most importantly, producers and sponsors who finance it). That in today’s life, strange for all, Christianity can not help anything, but only aggravates human hardships.
And where else to aggravate them, if in showing hopeless difficulties, irregularities and even abominations, the director is quite a typical liberal? Therefore, the depicted life – like the film itself – is gray and heavy, people here are all ragged psychopaths, and everything related to the Church is an undisguised and typical God-fighting caricature of it. Up to, at first glance, a normal priest (which is rare for the heroes of the film), who does useful things, in fact being the secret owner of a transshipment warehouse, it is unclear what (and from this incomprehensibility even more sinister), allowing you to pay an honest but lost atheist, as much as 100 thousand for the kindness he hired!
But especially disgusting - in the key role of a believing grandmother for the film - an elderly, with a dry face actress Tatiana Vladimirova, who played the role of a dehumanized and deranged fanatic, in the last attack of the coming insanity. Under the beauty of the grandmother from the first shots there is a craving for violence, hypocrisy and falsehood, and for her life is only a place of suffering and the transition to death. They are reproached and unmasked by other heroes. Especially in the climactic scenes of the film - the almost successful suicide attempt of the granddaughter. That is, a full set of progressive cliches characteristic of both foreign and Soviet, and now for the current “liberated” left-wing cinema.
However, there is a possibility of a different look in the film. On which, as indulgences, the above-mentioned figures may insist. And this is quite postmodern (a lot of evil and a little good for taste). Like, there's another motive. And each his own. (Yes, only people who think deeply and are strong in the Orthodox faith can count it, and there are very few of them in any way.)
And such a possible interpretation of the film is a verdict for people living practical paganism. Materialism, atheism, liberalism, faith in the party and the communist future. No matter how beautiful words the characters of the film such a worldview and the life that follows from it are called and no matter what they associate with – culture, philosophy and even with a parody of faith (characteristics passing through the film and for different characters the same Nietzsche or shamanistic African teachings). But they all - of different ages and conditions - come to a complete collapse of life.
And even an explicit appeal to them in such an existential situation of the Creator in the form of a miracle (parodied and therefore crossed out in their minds by a mad grandmother) is not able to pull them out of the captivity of senseless disbelief and unfaithful thoughtlessness.
And the timid attempt at a completely liberal happy ending is more like a bad infinity. With the convulsions of the life path that continues despite everything (leaving the family, defending the dissertation, reuniting mother and daughter, etc.), playing on a pipe over a sick, grinning African mask and a well-audible mat in relation to everything - to yourself, to others, to life itself.
Those who are beyond heaven, beauty and love are unable to see God. And come to him.
From the very first pictures we see people on the ice. Some consciously (but safely) plunge into the dark abyss, imagining a miraculous rebirth, others step on a fragile surface fleeing hopelessness, perhaps not so comprehensive, but rather prevailing due to internal maximalism, but in the depths of themselves also hoping to find a narrow path through the dangerous wormwoods that will lead and save. But ice, as you know, is unreliable, and in a public place and with witnesses - doubly. And, perhaps for the first time, having tried such a way to assert oneself and get even with this hard world, feeling in this desire the expression of one’s own will, strength and despair, one tries to make this passage (or find a way out) again, only in a more radical way.
The filmmakers, perhaps without aiming at this, openly march a certain march of a certain category of persons, and coming, how to say it, from the other end point to the still available freedom of one’s own spiritual choice. Although religion and feelings towards it are now protected by law, but to show that side of both the religious institution and the religious consciousness that often shines & #39; quite differently, it is still a very strong opportunity to act and defend!
': And here's the family, the normal family, Mom, Dad, me. There is a family, a decent family, a horse, a rat and a pig.' Here, of course, as everywhere else, other animals are possible, but it is obvious that from this pagan zoo the dead crow is most clearly visible. The image of a dead animal can certainly make the consciousness of a young girl fix on itself, but it is strange that it was captured and preserved at the age of three. When a grandmother appears, their filthy world begins to resist, but some only until the material benefits of such an unexpected visit are visible. When you watch a movie, you don’t want to worry about anyone except a girl! Everyone is there and does what he wants most, receiving either the reproaches he wants or the reinforcement of his sense of differentness and selectivity.
When I watched the film to the middle (until the moment when the first positive 'miracles' began to happen), I thought that everything - now all the way to the end will go only endless charms. But the continuation turned out to be quite the opposite. . .
What's inside?
A half-mad hypnotist grandmother is a religious fanatic who, by the way, works miracles with one foot in the grave. A disgusting couple of parents: a sinuous corpse-like dad + a poisonous realtor mom. Even at their home, consider that some drunkard with nasty tendrils has settled, who has been putting them poor tiles in an equally poor room for six months.
And, of course, the daughter - the main antagonist of this grave evil - fragile soul, suffering from the illusions of early love. Which from time to time falls into a poetic trance and brings the most powerful punches and mind-blowing monologues under the beats all this exhausted whirlwind of talentless parents, obscurantist grandmother, sluggish entrances, and the general poverty of Russian life.
A multifaceted film play on acute themes (religious fanaticism, tragic indifference) that deftly plays with the moods of the viewer. You hate first one, then another, then all at once, then you start sympathizing, then laughing, then something else. That's cool.
And what is very important - without agitation and propaganda of their own positions. Everything is very subtle and humorous, everyone will understand in their own way, due to their cultural and ideological filter.
10 out of 10
“But it turned out differently, it turned out not so.” (C) Egor Letov.
Modern Moscow. A recognizable unhappy family with no future, no hope. The main character is visited by his mother, whom he has not seen for fifteen years. Mother, strongly in the subject of the Christian religion, and I am sure that this is a universal pill for all problems, even if demons in a person, even if there is no money, at least diarrhea. All this splendor happens somewhere in the Easter week, during the iconic holidays for Christians.
I didn’t really get a sense of whether they were against Christianity in general, or just the form of consumerism that was portrayed in the film. That was the question I was most interested in watching. And we can ask in another way: is Christianity one of the types of paganism, albeit more complex and elegantly organized, but still paganism? With my ignorance, I see no difference in principle, the meaning of belief, or rather the rules of the game are the same: to ask for something, you need to observe certain orders. By order I understand not only the implementation of religious rituals and laws, but also a new internal self-determination of the individual in the world, a different worldview.
If you want to know about humanity, the very first thing to understand how and what it believes.
The essence of any religion is to curb the fear that sits inside Sapiens, who have intelligence but are unable to escape the weight of their ego, find their place in the universe, accept life and biological death as it is. In addition, religion is an excellent power tool for ordering the thoughts and lives of human individuals, which is naturally used and used by everyone who is not lazy. People invented gods themselves, and then tried to establish some rules for communicating with them, with those whom they had never seen. That is, they wanted to create conditional justice and order in an unpredictable life on earth. It is, of course, amusing if one does not go deep into history, and the history is such that faith and dogmatism have brought humanity more grief than happiness. At least when it comes to Christianity in particular. Although in some historical periods religion (church) was the engine of progress, the development of science, education, cities, laws. But not on purpose, of course, forgive her.
The older I get, the more I am moved by this universal justice. Is there a global order, if you play by the rules of which you can count, if not on heaven after death, then at least on an adequate happy life here? Christianity speaks confidently, yes. I say no a thousand times, and I still look at movies like that. Billions of unfortunate people, thousands of years, continue and continue to seek this justice, and in hope, are ready to ask for it at least from God, even from his son, even from a wooden mask, as well as all sorts of idols and even a dead parrot ... by and large it does not matter who to ask. After all, it seems so simple: I did not sin, I even fasted, then prayed, now the higher mind listened to me and will give everything to me, and who gave it to me, God, hell, chance or a wooden mask does not matter.
If closer to the picture, it is a resulting, lively, talented, important, and partly iconic film that delved deeply into the theme of belief. Faith in relation to modern life in Russia. The film is likely to fly by the audience, at least because it will be deprived of the support of representatives of the traditional church.
I didn't like my daughter's monologue in the police. I do not believe that at the age of three a child realizes his future unhappiness. Children enjoy life, even in hungry Zimbabwe, even in gray Moscow. This inflection is fundamentally unnecessary. It’s a good thing, but it’s far away.
Grandma, of course, is recognizable, such an accurate character from church squares: with meekness in movements and a kind look. In general, all the main roles were successful.
The film turned out in a TV format, a lot of tense conversations in the rooms, literally two or three scenes on the street, and purely cinematic camera capabilities in the film were not used. I think that the picture would not be damaged by the additional atmosphere created by the operator, as it happens, for example, Zvyagintsev.
I recently got hooked on Russian cinema, it seems to me more interesting than Western. We have some incredible movement going on here, life is boiling, unlike the crisis in Hollywood, where for years the only topic about tolerance to the sick, idiots, amphibians, national and sex minorities, etc. is being sucked in. And there are people in Russia who see thinner, who have something to say about our lives, and who know how to do it with talent. The movie is a proof of that.
It is impossible not to say that given the tragic death of the author of the play Anna Yablonskaya, on which this film was shot, the whole story with faith takes on a demonic appearance.
In the dark rectangle – “Author Anna Yablonskaya”. And I remembered January 2011, the terrorist attack in Domodedovo, Anna Yablonskaya on the list of dead, brief information about her, that the play “Pagans” was awarded the “Art of Cinema” award, which was presented on the day of Anna’s death. I found the play, tried to read, but after the first page closed the book – too much mat.
Today I watched the movie "Pagans".
A little retreat. The film “Inception” with Inna Churikova, there is a scene in the dormitory, when the heroes of the film Pasha and Arkady sing. No matter how many times my husband and I watched this movie, when this scene was going on, my husband looked down, did not look at the screen: “I can’t look at it – it’s like looking through a keyhole.”
So today I looked through someone else's window, through a accidentally left open door, into a keyhole. She looked at me and went on, Why stop? This family, a neighbor friend, does not need help, they manage themselves.” And I still have in my soul ... transparency, the air that Oleg talked about. And the film ends not with a happy ending, but with a question, but the question turned out not to be a desperate “What is to be done!”, but a calm, positive one: “Should we solve it?” We will!
Completely shocked scene in the police (1:35). The story is not a story, but a recitative, a cry of Christina.
{...} I was three years old, there was such a winter when even the soul gets icy - the whole earth was covered with a crust ... stew, slippery, everything clutched, hardened, time turned off, and the heating too ... my mother boiled water in the kitchen in boiling pots ... steam came from the pots, rose to the ceiling and immediately melted, because it was winter, such a terrible winter that even five hundred thousand boiling pots could not melt this ice ... My mother wrapped me in four blankets, and my father’s mouth melted ...
And I also remembered long conversations and arguments with my classmate, a gold medalist, a future scientist who went to the clergy. To the question “Why?” he replied, “It’s time to think about the soul.” But one day, he agreed with me, "I sell cigarettes, and you sell faith."
It seems that on the fingers of one hand you can count the films made on the basis of the plays of the so-called "new drama" - a movement that in the null years led to Russian dramaturgy at least a dozen cool authors (including Sigarev, Kurochkin, Klavdiev, Durnenkova and others). And we can only bitterly regret that the quite impressive body of wonderful texts created then remains outside the scope of the interest of film producers, although there are very cinematic stories there.
Detractors will say that the “new drama” is black, blood-intestines and mat. Yeah, not without that. But not all of it. And that's not the point. And the main thing is that its authors created a new language, melting the slang of the doorways and hastily-indistinct conversation of kitchens with Russian literary, were not afraid to raise the most acute topics, and eternal themes were refracted through today, through us living today.
Anna Yablonskaya also belonged to the Novodramov authors. Her Pagans is one of those plays to which, no doubt, a long life is destined. Written in 2010, it seemed to draw a symbolic line to zero years and everything that hurt and burned then. But the theme raised in this play will always be relevant: can the absence of love in the heart be replaced by simulacrum, supports? It does not matter whether it is a religion or a philosophical doctrine that denies God. If you don’t have air-love, if you don’t feel the sky around, how do you live? Then the whole earth is a desert, through which you drag yourself, having lost count of the days, and in response to the prayer for bread you can give only a stone to the suffering.
You can talk about the successes and failures of casting, camera work and so on, but Surkova definitely managed to grasp and feel the atmosphere of a wonderful text, transfer it to the screen. I am very happy that this book will live in the form of a good movie.
For the script “Pagans” Anna Yablonskaya in 2010 received the main prize of the script competition of the magazine “The Art of Cinema”. On January 24, 2011, she flew from Odessa to Moscow to receive the award. 25 minutes after the plane landed in the Domodedovo explosion. The bombshell hit Ana right in the heart. She was 29 years old.
The author, in this work, shouts a scream trying to reach each of us. There is nothing more important than family. On how easy it is to seize the religious fanatic thoughts of people who find themselves in a life impasse.
In improving the material condition, we completely forget about faith, about faith in our relatives. In this family, everyone is fixated on his own and everyone dies alone afraid to share pain with relatives without seeing in each other close people. But the standard of selfishness was the grandmother – who never appeared and did not participate in the lives of these people, endlessly praying for her soul trying to make amends before the universal mind. But in the meantime, suddenly appearing, she tried to thoroughly assume the role of leader. For he is a man who has lived his whole life only for the sake of his beloved. She does not try to delve into the essence of the problems and immediately hangs all the labels guided only by crumbs of knowledge and those are taken from a mythical book.
Here is shown all the cruel truth of modern "Marcobesia". In the example of one family, we see what is happening on the screen, the whole society. Like the futile attempts of parents who don’t respect each other, children grow up alone.
Botsman, who rarely appears in the frame, shows himself quite clearly - this is the light of hope that is in us, is in our people.
In general, this picture is for lovers of real cinema with irony and real meaning.
P.S. Unexpected denouement, to be honest, this is what I wanted.
It is hard, oh hard to raise the topic of religion in Russian art in recent years. If we are talking about something simple and unauthorized patriarchy, the project risks running into the wrath of religious activists, as it was, for example, with Matilda for some reason. If the creator presents to the public something abstruse, but, again, without the approval of the church community, then the situation with the “Disciple” will repeat, when Kirill Serebrennikov was called a madman, and the project – “black”. And if something too cunning, sometimes not very clear to a casual viewer, comes out, then the film risks going unnoticed both for the saturated intellectual public and for ardent opponents of the topic of religion on the movie screen. With the “pagans” just such a situation. The script of the picture raises an interesting and relevant topic of religious hypocrisy, but the general cheapness of the project and individual flaws, both in the plot part and in cinematic elements, level the admiring impression of viewing.
The film follows a family that seems to have lost almost everything. The mother has a hopeless job, the father of the family is sitting without a job at all, and the daughter does not appreciate her parents and manages to fly out of the institute. God has left the family, but suddenly a visit is made by an overly religious grandmother. The family opens the soul to the ideas of Christianity and then everything is fine. At first glance.
What may have turned out to be a sweet syrup, a model film of religious propaganda and a opportunistic project, turns into harsh satire. Having adopted Christianity, all the inhabitants of the Moscow sleeping area remained at their low intellectual level. Strictly speaking, faith, worship of God, and worship are different things, and the Gentiles show this well. The father of the family remained a rohl, the neighbor an alcoholic, despite the fact that the first fasts, and the second learned to be baptized. Only the daughter in the family refuses to adopt a new way of life, which inexorably leads to tragedy.
However, from the plot side, everything is not so smooth either. Questions don’t seem to be raised well. I mean, it's hard to call a heavy psychological or philosophical film. “Pagans” are more like a series of sketches about a family that has embarked on the right path, but only on it the family has again screwed up. To one degree or another, this does not allow you to take the picture seriously, although it seems to me that ideas here have more potential than in the same “disciple”: religious “indifference” is more common than fanaticism.
Second, Pagans are often overloaded with unnecessary plot details, clarifying relationships, and so on. If desired, a lot could be cut or left in the form of a statement: it would not hurt to reveal the characters, but the film itself would look livelier.
An emotional film, open to many interpretations, may appeal to fans of “Russian longing”. However, it seems to me that the Pagans make no special sense: it is a kind of visualized parable from the library of the famous atheist Alexander Nevzorov, where modern Russian Christians are compared to primitive shamans. And if so, then there is no special intrinsic value, and there is simply no reasoning in the Pagans – you will not be fed up with the relevance for Russia of the end of the “zero” years. As they say, trust in God, and do not be bad.
5 out of 10