In the program of the main competition MIFF presented the film “Sunday”, Director Svetlana Proskurina, Russia, was awarded a diploma of the Federation of film clubs.
We see one day in the life of an official in a small town. In the morning he receives an anonymous note with the words “You will die soon”, from this moment the whole day becomes a series of unpredictable events.
The writer explains that her task was to ennoble the image of the official. “It does not matter that the hero is an official. It is important what face he brought, his identity.”
Vera Alentova, the performer of one of the main roles, says, “I do not always agree to work in the cinema, I am more a person of theater.” But I was interested in playing a dying man. The phrase in the scene "Have you been to the cemetery" is about the important person leaving as the person changes. It has a lot of life in it.
I think Sunday reflects the Russian soul. The hero of the picture tries to equip the city park, but faces the negative from residents who do not want change. Trying to take care of the family, receiving reproaches in response that gives them little time. We have to give credit to the character that at the same time he does not lose face, remains human. An interesting detail of the picture depicts the power of money in our world. Through bribes and donations, he influences everything without doing anything. However, there are situations in life when money does not solve the problem - accidents, illness or inevitable aging. The picture shows that the idea “If a person is provided, then he is wealthy” is wrong. We can say that the heroes of the movie go from near death to resurrection.
Chairman of the jury Svetlana Proskurina appealed to fellow directors whose films were at the festival, almost with despair: Dear directors! To eat two hours of time, you have to think ten times: what are you talking to him about? A man walks out, constructs on the screen for two hours - he is depressed! This is crazy! Nothing's happening to him, but he's been out for two hours. Monstrous montages, monstrous scripts, actors work terribly. The director says before the screening that the actor had only a day and a half to shoot and that he did not read the script, but agreed because they were filming at his school. And then in the film I see that a good actor seems to have fallen off the tree, he does not know what he is doing, in the genre he is, not in the genre. What is this? What's happening to us? Why did we go from Alien Letters to this? There's a whole movie theater. They paid the money! What is two hours of human life? We have lost all respect. What movie do we want to bring back to theaters? It's a hot dream.
Proscurina went to the directors, who themselves act as a director, screenwriter, editor and almost single-handedly shoot the whole film: “The director has his profession.” He's not a writer or an artist. And here I see how the man in the frame can not divorce five people. Respect our time and other professions. Sokurov summons for his film the artist Cooper, whose paintings hang in the Metropolitan Museum, and thinks how to persuade him. What a grand scheme it must be to pull a man out of there and make him work with him! How much you need to think of to offer this person this level of communication. Why don’t you, the directors, take to the aid of someone for whom you will try to stand on tiptoe? Why are you talking to yourself in the script and editing? Choose yourself normal people in a team with whom you can argue (from the article about the film festival “Window to Europe”, Vyborg)
C. Proskurina does not declare, but follows his words. One of the indicators of the director's talent is the ability to find no less talented colleagues.
Starting with a poster that reflects almost the whole essence of the film: glued frames of each faceless day, suffocating and dead; “slider” of the calendar, which became the frame of the tomb portrait.
Magnificent camera work of Artem Emelyanov (“Tenness”): frame construction, rhythm, close-ups, angles, attention to the smallest details, designed to fall into the frame. I especially remember the episode of the evening gatherings of two sisters on the pond: to show the depth of the alienated-squeamish attitude of the mother, loneliness and worthlessness of the daughter only by the compositional construction of the frame! Or the reflection of Dmitry in the dark screen of the gadget, turning into a portrait of a dead man falling into himself. The combination of a very careful attitude to the viewer and the hero and the ugly large shots of all the characters of the film are emphasized. Oh, yes, there are also peeled calluses on the feet of a high-ranking official's greasy daughter. Oh, she trampled them, wanting to forcibly return the child to alcoholic parents.
The most talented game of actors, which is only the feat of Vera Alentova!
Music that permeates, weaves the fabric of the film or desperately agonizes to the beat of the weak pulse of life.
Scenario (Ekaterina Tirdatova), despite the apparent monotony, heavyness, built amazingly consistently and plastically.
Social issues, which such a term and call the language does not turn. What's going on on screen? Life happens. No one needs children growing weeds in the forest of life, on its shore, on the roadside. Children who speak the truth of their mistakes. The insanely superficial attitude of others to the most important philosophical questions of life completely kills everything human in children. The squeamish-aggressive behavior of adults comes to them with an absolute physical “reversal” – a stone blow to the head. Such “alaverds” from the emptiness of existence – emptiness of the soul.
Officials, who have long been living the reflected lives of those on top (the city of residence in the film is listed), have already packed their suitcases, leaving the order to find the “lost” millions.
If you compare the film of Svetlana Proskurina with Elena Zvyagintsev, then, of course, “Sunday”, despite the aftertaste of hopeless worthlessness, leaves hope for a shivering light, for the dawn. Those who want to escape from dark and false cities have happily lost their memories. But limits, limitations, and fatalism have failed to leave behind. A clean sheet with a down smile, floating on a small boat on the light-drenched river of life.
I thank the director for at least a weak pulse of this life.
Is the patient more alive than dead?
The main character (Alexei Vertkov), an influential man from the city hall receives a note “you will die soon”. He has many worries and dangers, and his mother is seriously ill.
The role of the mother in Vera Alentova (the word “plays” is not applicable here), and how she does it remains beyond understanding. Lying patient, grumbles, grunts, from pain on the face of a grimace, waiting for the end and wants to live, and tries to command and control. And how she conveys love for her only son. And this reaction to the phrase of the son about the card in the fitness club – how much understanding and depth.
A delightful scene at the (future?) mother-in-law's birthday party. Beautiful house, family feast, all lively jokes, and as if the actors have no text. How could you do that? Homerically funny talk about methods of murder: "... times are not the same now." Why not? I'd kill someone... Find a professional. - It's easier with poison. Do you know how much poison is now diluted?
These words as if about the whole society – poison and really a lot of diluted.
Omitting the social context, "Sunday" is a personal tragic story, which is the most valuable - to withstand the measure of resynthement (colors - background), leaving the hero the opportunity to dispose of the time to have time to tell us the main thing about himself (and about us).
He is frustrated, waiting for death (even a few), he is haunted by trouble, and I as a spectator from the very beginning fall into euphoria and even gleeful – what adorable actors! What a game! What a tone of voice! What dialogue! And static, what music! And then I feel more and more esthetic. I wish you all the best film awards.
Still, it's a paradox. No matter how deceptive it may seem to be an hour and a half of a beautiful film, it takes quite many years to learn to absorb and disassemble masterpieces, learn to enjoy the shot and recognize falsehood, overcome boredom and experience frozen pauses and cinematic time with the characters, brush off various stupidities like morality and humanistic messages, read faces, views, feel mood and light, light and silence, ignore rude ideas and hormonal movies, no matter how tempting it may tempt you, listen and hear. And very not immediately, in an uncertain moment, you may become an unknown spectator. Just to be able to appreciate it.
Sunday for the hero Alexei Vertkov was a good day. For us, the resurrection is not the day of the week, the cinema itself is the resurrection.
10 out of 10
The whole film of the film is reduced to the application for the languor of the main character, with his contemplation of the surrounding world, read, lifeless, spiritual black woman. There is no idea in this film except that everything is bad everywhere. Instead of highly artistic aestheticism or the search for subtle strings of the human soul, reflections, the authors simply slid to demonstrate the grayness of the surrounding life, deception of loved ones, hopelessness and disappointment in life or situations where, apparently, the senseless wandering with a sour face turned out to be the only important meaning of the hero’s life.
If we take into account metaphorical connotations, then everything is bad not only for one particular person, but for everyone who lives in Russia. After all, this country is filled with anger, stupidity and aggression, but again, there are no specifics in the film. Just all the bitches. And the country is the same!
In short, it's the most depressing and meaningless movie I've ever seen, just about everybody being a bastard and soon we're all going to die.
The film quite accurately conveys the feeling of viscous hopelessness, which hovers over all of us invisibly now - including over people like successful and wealthy. . .
Leprosy in faces. Tedeum Vite Disease Inevitability
Lost is not expected - Sad do not want
They do not live, they are drowned like kittens.
Squeeze and die - Say it's nonsense
Lie and Lie - What You Love Forever
Evening without love, morning without offense
People with disabilities, people with disabilities
Evening without love, morning without offense
People with disabilities, people with disabilities
People with disabilities. . .
An amazing movie designed for a mature viewer. Being in the same row with such films as ' Elena'(2011), 'Leviathan'(2014) Andrey Zvyagintsev, 'Treason'(2012), 'Student'(2016) Kirill Serebrennikova, 'Live'(2010), 'Watchman'(2019) Yuriya Bykov, 'Intimate Places'(2013), 'Nizova,'#39;Nia,'#2019;Nyazova, 'Nia, 'Nizova, 'Nizova, #39;Nizova, #39;Nizova, #39;###39;######39;Nizova, #######39;Nia,##39;Nia,' And you can continue to list more and more, fortunately, that lately the cinema gives us similar meetings. Alive, adapted to the realities of time, speech is heard here. Human faces are portraits of our contemporaries. On fractures. On turns. On the corners. Everyone has a story. And to pass by without stopping, without showing human participation, it is impossible, it does not work. I don't feel like it. The soul strings are hurt. Emotional attitude from touch - the desire to share, the desire to hear others. Compare your opinion to someone else's. Did everything open up to me? Missed something? Has the author reached out to me?
Movies ' loaded ' conscience, morality sprouting in the public. These are not soapy knapsacks of cardboard characters of grey TV series. It's like you're working 100% of the troupe. Everyone deserves their bread. No one eats it for nothing. Definitely, the sense of integrity of the design is present. 'Rightness', stupidity, haste etched. They're not here. Not truncated or censored edits, characters. The plans are directed, implemented and revealed. And long, static plans are verified by the legacy of the Russian school. 'Sunday'(2019) cultivates this language. It breathes.
Everything you need for a thoughtful, good movie, the author demonstrated.
At the same time, 'Sunday' Svetlana Proskurina is a tart, unhurried, attractive movie for aesthetes. Like 'Goodbye Mom'(2014) it envelops the characters' faces. Emotional color is moderate, scanty. Again there is a couple Alexei Vertkov - Alexandra Child (a married couple). At the same time, the first one has the third participation in the filming process of the director, Alexandra has the second. The viewer again, five years later, is trapped in the relationship of the two. There was drama before, now there is tragedy. Previously, the plot pulsed with an unexpected novel in the spirit of Anna Karenina, now only a subtle echo of ' yesterday' heard. The men's part is clear and clear, the women's part is narrowed down to a mini-plot at the very beginning. It's like these two have changed places. It's as if they've redistributed themselves in dominance.
Heartburn, satiety is demonstrated in this work by the author. The eyes of the lifeless fish are before us. Fish stranded. It's about to suffocate, it's about to end ' And the disease progressing with punctures on a permanent basis, with bouts of nausea is just about that. Official, no account of money, any benefits like a magician out of his pockets, like a rotten stump. Forty years old, but emotionally devastated. And the note that at the very beginning of the picture sets a detective note in the narrative story, only an explanation-hint to the viewer. Days numbered. Time, man, time. On the road. No refund. That's all. Women? They were, and they are. Hardly in line. Family? Already in the past, with the breakup of relations and only in monthly offerings, memories. Status of service? Cheese in butter. Personal driver in the state, comfortable car for movement. What else is characterized by a successful 'servant of the people'? 'Food' and the ability to steal? Palaces and castles behind you? Cutbacks, bribes? The right friendship with the right people? And the other-other-other on the list to characterize... However, it's a long time. It's exhausting for less than an hour and a half tape. And that's why hyperbole is used here. What? Deforestation. Park in ' Wasteland' turns our crook.'Good' creates for people. Allegedly. And in fact, 'saw money', fuss to improve personal financial condition. All of it. No more, no less. But there's no joy. And there's no joy in it.
An evening without love, a morning without offense
People with disabilities, people with disabilities
Evening without love, morning without offense
People with disabilities, people with disabilities
People with disabilities. . .
...and he, from such ' gluttony' money, business - heartburn. It's been a while. They all have heartburn around them. This is the reason for Inna’s actions. There's nothing you can do, heartburn! Aren't the mayor of the city, empty eye sockets in us, without heartburn? He also has a note on his hands, like Terekhov. We even hear her voice - going to Moscow. How long? I don't know. Yeah, he really doesn't know. But Kochergin (the character of V. Ilyin) already knows. And at the gathering, trustingly reveals the secret.
Thieves and crooks of different stripes are in front of us. And in the quiet of the cemetery, and in the office meeting at the father of the city. The only difference is that one is at the critical line, the others are still bathed in the pleasure of vices.
Tedeum vite is not familiar to them yet.
This is only P. P. Ikonnikov in 'Visit to the Minotaur' (1987) had the courage to confess:
Do you know what Tedeum Vite is?
- No, I don't know. What is this?
- Illness. Aversion to life. There is no cure.
Grieving insensitivity is like a mask on your face. Scorched soul. Fatigue. It's all Tedeum vite. Her manifestations. Her syndrome. Why did you get it? Excessive gluttony causes this sore. And everyone is punished for excesses. In life. Payback in torment. It's always been. It's always there. You will. Remember at least Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin ' Hero of our time'. At 25, I was tired of myself and people. I tried and tried everything 'medicines '. Didn't get a cure. Even the Caucasus, with the bullets of the mountaineers, did not save. Where did you get it? In St. Petersburg salons, touching their own kind. And not only that.
About it 'Sunday' narrates. That's what it sounds like in the strings. There's a woman's share in that breath of sadness. All ages, from a child to an infirm old woman in troubled crying. It is only necessary to look closely at contemporaries. It seems that Bulat Okudzhava drops prophetic lines:
The girl cries: the ball flew away.
She is comforted and the ball flies.
The girl cries: the groom is all gone.
She is comforted and the ball flies.
The woman cries: the husband went to another.
She is comforted and the ball flies.
Crying old woman: little lived. . .
And the ball came back and it was blue.
Tedeum vite and in the festive feast sounds. In the face of the face (or rather, the face is reflected). What are they talking about? What exactly is the meal with? What music is heard in this 'packed ' tereme? Mozart? Vivaldi? Yeah, whatever. Death and her henchmen are poisons, cold weapons rinse in front of each other. Wonderful. Funny. Nice people. Nice ones. Aces from the deck. But with the brain, just a problem.
The finale marks the first happy smile on his face. And the cloth of a suit for a striped veal. You okay? Aha...
. . Evening without love, morning without offense
People with disabilities, people with disabilities
Evening without love, morning without offense
People with disabilities, people with disabilities
People with disabilities. . .
The saddest and most pointless thing I've ever seen!
To begin with, I almost never write reviews. I'm not good at describing movies. But after seeing this creation, I decided! I do this so that I can save someone from 80 minutes of wasted time.
Plot
To begin with, it has just huge holes and absurdity. It seems that the dialogue was written by a bad student the last night before the deadline! The main character is constantly silent and makes a sour face! They talk to him and he's silent! They pull his hand and he is silent!
Heroes at the table on the birthday for some reason begin to discuss methods of murder, although the logic and continuation of this is not found in the film.
The stage in the stadium with his daughter stands apart: First, some left-handed kid comes up, shamelessly sits next to him and begins to talk about some mistake in the notebook (does any of us often approach one of us on the street and start staring at a smartphone or book?) to which the hero generally responds with some kind of shouting and inadequacy.
The scene and dialogue about slaughtered sheep is also funny, stupid and illogical!
Yes, yes, yes, all of the above refers to one movie, there is a lot of everything, but in general there is nothing.
Operational work
There is simply no operator job! Some incomprehensible big and unnecessary plans. He takes a minute to film two girls just sitting by the lake, then another minute to film the face of the official, who just sits and is silent, a couple of minutes in the film and we again for about a minute see the dull silent face of the official! Well, the apogee of the exemplary work of a normal operator is the scene when the hero and his driver are driving from the object: the operator just for thirty seconds shoots a flashing forest, and the camera jumps as if he is doing all this sitting on a horse, and the sound in the background gives the feeling that the action takes place on the railway in the train (this is a paradox).
Output
Unfortunately, I am not a master of conveying my indignation and evaluation of this film beautifully in writing, but I hope that at least someone will stop watching this nonsense and incompetence! I tried to find some advantages in this film, but I failed!
1 out of 10
In the zero years there was an amazing period of independent cinema (in the whole world - not only in Russia), and if you remember that beautiful renaissance of author's cinema, then even with some perverse pleasure you will remember these monotonous films about a wandering hero in the scant scenery of gray reality (they were inexpensive films, so, as a rule, it was a gray reality). This hero met with characters related to his life and, metaphorically, to reality, but did not find himself among them - everything was gray, everywhere there was deception, hopelessness and disappointment, where wandering itself was the only meaning of life. And this is not a description of a particular movie – they were almost all like that, because the Internet finally spread everywhere, cameras became just a junk product and everyone who was willing to put even a little effort could enter the movie. The trouble is that many against the background of this simply did not understand what to make a movie without money and filmed, in fact, their confusion.
This is all to the fact that in 2010, Svetlana Proskurina, the director of “Sunday”, just made such a film – it was called “Truce” and was an excellent and even exemplary representative of independent cinema zero with one problem – he was late with the release of seven years and it was felt in the 10th year. “Truce” was to be released in the same year as “The Return” of Zvyagintsev, in a year when such an unpretentious film as “Koktebel” by Khlebnikov and Popogrebsky could become almost a symbol of domestic author’s cinema. It is now 19, but Svetlana Proskurina still wants to catch up with her elusive 2003. And if you are a fan, then in "Resurrection" you will find everything that is so sweet to you: a lifeless amorphous body wandering around the corners of his own life, so accustomed to the role that you do not even understand, before you a great actor or just a person in the third month of binge - here he is called the main hero; much more expressive, but living in their own worlds and fixated on their problems characters of the second plan; symbolic third-rate characters who, coming out of the extras, obsessively try to violate the personal space of the main character; with the plot "walking through the movie", as a murderer, but in general, you do not even know what is the classic one in the end.
The reference for the plot of “Sunday” is a leaf of A-4 format, on which the marker is vastly written “You will die soon”. The main character is an honest but unpleasant official who at one point even participates in a corruption scheme! Gives a bribe to a ritual company so they can set aside a place in the cemetery for his dying mother. Apparently, we are in the spin-off of the movie “Daddy, Die!”, or at least in its cinematic universe – there, too, two police officers once take a bribe to treat the dying wife of one of them, and then sit in the car for a long time and cry – social! Otherwise, he is a good official, but now he is occupied with an important question - how to treat this note, which is so careless that no one would pay even attention to such a thing, except our hero, who begins his wander through his own life to answer the main question - how it affected him. How did it make him look at life differently—his colleagues, friends, relatives, mistress, dying mother, her maid, fascist driver, illiterate daughter, ex-wife... Or maybe not much influenced, because in the end, this is the main character of the art house zero, which means that he is too stingy for emotions. And yes, you’ll be watching him for the entire movie—all his public hours are twenty, even though the typical morality of human selfishness has already been poked under your nose several times in the first ten minutes.
And I wouldn’t blame this film if it was at least like “Truce” or the same simple, but timely “Koktebel”, which today hardly anyone will watch in their right mind. “Sunday” is a boring movie even in its outdated frame. Instead of artistic aestheticism or searching for the delicate strings of the human soul, it tries to play with you on the social agenda, but it does it at the level of comments from the public “Overheard Voronezh”: there is literally a person who wants to close the borders because he does not like Kurbam-Bairam (this is his only claim to human civilization!), and there is a character who tells about local protests that are funded by America. And there are protesters here! These are ten comically aggressive grandmothers with signs saying “Save the trees!” because they want to save the trees. And with them, there's a moment where they gather around a working excavator and lightly tap it with sticks, like they're zombie bots in a poorly designed game. Of course, I didn’t quite understand what the director wanted to say, but probably something about the fact that games are evil!
An official from the city hall of a small town, a gloomy middle-aged man named Terekhov, is in a crisis stage: the mistress suddenly tries to kill herself by getting to the first floor from the roof without using an elevator, damages someone else’s car, but remains alive; the mother is chained to a bed and barely breathes, so the place in the cemetery needs to be taken care of in advance; the ex-wife demands alimony, the townspeople arrange rallies and, of course, other provocations, and the driver scolds guest workers. And although the calendar is Sunday, Terekhov will not be able to rest, because the mood the day before spoiled another unpleasant surprise - an anonymous note containing a short and simple phrase "you will soon die."
The fact that in “Our Rasha” things have long been not too joyful, the fact, frankly speaking, is not new and the directors in most cases stubbornly continue to build their arthouse projects on this pessimistic topic. Here the most important thing is not just to smear everything with black colors, but objectively criticize, find the light and think where and how everything can move, otherwise the cinema risks falling into a banal hopeless black man - even such a bright artist as Andrei Zvyagintsev allowed in his famous "Leviathan" a fair portion of "fatness". Unfortunately, this erroneous trend succumbed to Svetlana Proskurina, who once took part in writing the script for Sokurov’s “Russian Ark” and fought for the Golden Lion of the Venice Film Festival with her film “Remote Access”.
Although the plot introduces a rather intriguing McGuffin in the form of a mysterious note, Proskurina does not use it in any way - this is only a sluggish hint that Terekhova does not expect anything good, as, indeed, the viewer. And the point is not even that absolutely everything is bad for the director in the country, and officials, and ordinary people, and an everyday existence filled with anger, stupidity and aggression, but that she cannot present any specific and clearly formulated claims to domestic reality. To show that the people have lost the meaning of life, bribes are needed everywhere, and citizens are obsessed with money and hatred for each other is somehow not enough for full-fledged social satire and whiplash criticism in the absence of a multifaceted approach and a more skilful study of conflicts. But in his constant thickening of colors, Proskurina manages to expose inadequate defenders of parks cut down across the country and, most disgustingly, employees of the volunteer search team, whose activities, according to her, are actually meaningless, and the people who work in it, and did not spit on the fate of the children sought - and in fact Zvyagintsev did not accidentally demonstrate in "Dislike" the work of volunteers with such care, in order to show that it is too early to sentence the whole society (but Proskurina clearly indicates that officials are also people).
As for the atmosphere and acting, these components also come under the detached, hung on one emotion (namely, sluggish longing and a permanent existential crisis) narrative style, and a good half of the characters, as well as the storylines associated with them, remain cut threads, victims of false authorial inefficiency, when it was believed that their images themselves will be meaningful. But in fact Proskurina with their help nothing more to say, except a bold hint that we are all real bastards here and in general will die soon.
It’s hard to explain why, but the film made a good impression on me. Human vices are shown, hopelessness in the fight against them (although there is no struggle at all), but in the end, a pleasant aftertaste. I left the cinema in the evening humidity of autumn, puddles reflected the light of passing cars and, for the first 10 minutes, I watched the world around melancholy. Gradually, sadness began to be replaced by a pleasant feeling of the contemplator. There was no thought of the film, no thought of life, no thought of where we were all going. The surrounding reality played bright colors, everything that happened seemed fascinating. It was interesting to watch people change landscapes, I was 'here and now' and I was comfortable with it.
The film sets in a contemplative row. This is the merit of the director and operators. Successfully built frames convey the atmosphere in which you immerse yourself with the characters of the film.
Terekhov in the first minutes of the film seems to us rather a negative character. Ignoring the mistress, ignoring the dying mother. Heartlessness. Then we realize that he is just an involuntary participant in a game that he is not very interested in. He acts according to the rules of this reality, which he cannot control and from which he cannot escape until the very end. Absolutely everyone needs something from him, we clearly see and hear these requests, demands, claims, but we absolutely do not understand what Terekhov needs, what he aspires to or from what he runs.
The main character is nothing, in the fullest sense of the word. It seems to me that the viewer himself unwittingly fills him with those qualities that are characteristic of himself. The same can be said about the film itself, everyone sees it through the prism of his own views, noticing or omitting details, giving his own assessment of events.
The film is filled with metaphors, allegories, they are interesting to notice while watching. Many episodes are grotesque, but in all this exaggeration it is easy to recognize the average small Russian town. There is not a single event that could not happen in reality, just here they are built in just one day.
Almost all the characters of the film are immersed in their own problems, everyday life, emotionally react to what is happening, while Terekhov remains detached, indifferent to both surrounding people and his own fate. He just floats with the current, along the path laid out for him by others, until an accident brings him to a new path. And here he is, driven by a series of events, finds himself in a dead end ... but is this a dead end or does fate itself show him a way out of this game?
7 out of 10
From time to time, films appear in the domestic box office, from which it blows its favorite Russian longing and self-digging. Even at the stage of poster or description, it becomes clear that the movie will be more about the philosophy of being in general than about any particular event.
Therefore, such pictures should be viewed not from the point of view of the logic of the storylines or the reliability of the facts, but from the point of view of acting and emotional thrill after watching. Here they play very subtly on the spectator nerve endings: they pull the strings of conscience, fear, put pressure on a long-sleeping sense of justice ... Pressure on the favorite callus: showing the despair and grief of a small person before the system and before the person of this system.
Particular attention should be paid to the beautiful duet of Alexei Vertkov and Vera Alentova. A very special detail of the film, where between a mother, a stuffy load lying on the shoulders of others, and a son who constantly escapes the limits of morality, is actually much more in common and negative than they think.
After such films, people usually do not want to live. But it is for such emotional shake-ups that the art of cinema is necessary.
I suggest you shake it up.
In the Russian Federation there is a special cohort of directors, headed by the winner of film awards Zvyagintsev, who for film art considers the immersion of everything around in stench and horror. The more, but more thinly smeared with feces reality, the cinema closer to the masterpiece! People in this community of “high flight” and with a subtle sense of beauty, therefore, to plunge everything into despondency should be subtly, neatly and beautifully through replicas, looks, movements or individual scenes!
If I were to evaluate this film as a lover of “Dislike”, “Leviathan” and the like, then I would award this film the highest award. Since the film in 1:22 manages to do a titanic work, enter and quickly withdraw from the plot a lot of characters, put each of them in a specific situation, where he dives headlong into his special needy.
This film, like “Leviathan”, for me, is comparable to Marvel comics, since it is still hypertrophied and unrealistic, happens at one moment and with one person everything that could not happen at once with the highest degree of probability, but it is this that creates a “wow effect” that comics like dramas!
Why do I put “Sunday” on the pedestal of the drama of the “Zhyagintsev” type!? The main character of the film has a clear, readable character arc which, firstly, has a clearly complex structure, it is not "black and white", and secondly, the character arc undergoes changes by the end of the film, which does not happen to the heroes of "weak" films of this genre, the character arc is not in the above-mentioned films.
Separately, I would note the excellent work of the camera crew, which again brings to me this film with Zvyagintsev and his “Nelbovya”, excellent angles, beautiful alternation of plans, pleasant colors in the frame, a good choice of optics for different situations and creating the necessary depth – any expensive look!
The film clearly has strengths, but I personally do not want to see the world this way, given that it is not so hopeless, the way out of the situation that the main character took me is not satisfied and I am clearly aware that this is my subjective opinion!
4 out of 10
General impression: This picture has its own unusually sad and at the same time heavy atmosphere, immersed in it and looking at the face of GG - official Terekhov (Alexei Vertkov), a sense of disgust and fatigue cross the edges of despair, slide down the face of the actor, imprinted on us, the viewer becomes an invisible companion of events that changed the fate of Terekhov.
Actions in the film unfold in just 1 day, but what happens on the screen, skillfully assembled among the characters, who, in principle, are all tired of life, performing honed movements day after day: the official tries to do his job; his mother (Vera Alentov) - tries to calmly die, remembering that the hospice is clearly better; the servant helping the sick mother of the hero, and she is tired of old women and eternal reproaches, disbelief; the ex-wife, who sat on top and demanding money and attention to the child, is stuck in his cries, and love here. By the way, each hero of this tape carries a sad shade, there are no happy, there are unhappy people here, offended, pinched and for some reason everyone carries his grief, as if in this film only a black stripe, white was not painted intentionally, depicting the dark side, life as it is. And a note with the inscription "You will soon die" - only the surface, in fact, in the soul, here all died long ago.
In addition to these heroes, there is an everyday routine – activists, pensioners, unrealizable desires, lack of money and our younger generation of unnecessary children, whose development can only be patted on the head with a pebble. As you know, darkness is not a convention, but a synonym for tape and everyday life, dressed in pink glasses, which many people stubbornly do not want to remove.
Selected good acting, pours into the tape some angular frames. Heroes are scattered around the corners of the screen, filling the edges of the picture, it is clear, not so much attention to them as on everyday life, which does not carry anything good.
This is a real movie, without the embellishment of a rustling fantasy and other tinsel, depressing, but the way it is. It ends here only on a metaphorical note, you can even say beautifully, giving hope, but do not expect enlightenment from this film, Sunday is only a day, and a hint of light is just a hint, a promise that people throw, but, alas, the deadline for implementation is different for everyone.
“Sunday” is a film from the program of the 41st MIFF. As you know, if in Russia, in principle, an art house, then critics immediately give undeserved praise. Therefore, it is absolutely impossible to understand the quality of the film. There may be a strong work like “Above the sky”, or a non-art house like “Ambivalence”, “It’s not forever” and others. The only thing left is to give movies a chance. What does “Sunday” by Svetlana Proskurina offer us?
Spherical black in a vacuum. I’m certainly not stupid to criticize Russia either, but what we see on Sunday is too much. The main character here is a middle-class official from the Moscow region. And those of us, as the creators believe, are not people. He's doing something wrong just because he's an official. Like all civil servants. They are literally standing and thinking about how to hurt their people worse. "Ordinary" people are no worse: on "Sunday" they are exceptional wild beasts, or barbarians who only look at how to cling to an evil official's throat. Bonus are: an aggressive ex-wife, who is not enough alimony, frankly stupid, despite her age, a daughter, schoolboys, gopniks, saying “dratuti” and attacking adults, a racist, guest workers, butchering a ram, and bribes are all. As they say, choose who you are.
Almost the entire plot of the film is reduced to languid walking and contemplation of "all this horror." Each shot is like, "Look how bad it is." Even as the action moves into the beautiful country house of the rich, guests discuss ways to kill people. Marasmus is getting stronger. But the creators cannot express specific claims to Russia. The picture slides into whining, watching which for an hour and a half is unbearable. And here they are bad, and there is bad, and what to do is unknown.
A thousand times the next thought has been made, but I will repeat it. Even Andrei Zvyagintsev in “Dislike” (sorry, Andrei Petrovich, for the comparison) had some rays of light, despite the fact that in general everything was “bad”. Svetlana Proskurina doesn't have that. She, like that note in the annotation, says we're all doomed. And Russia (as well as Russia).
By the way, about the note "you will die soon", which is mentioned in the abstract. No, there won't be any intrigue. Moreover, the note will not even create intrigue. Lifeless observation of a black woman is all that Sunday has to offer.
Actors? There are no important supporting roles here, so I can only mention Alexei Vertkov, who managed that sick, hyperbolized image of a bad official.
Over. Even “Ambivalence” can be methodically poured dirt, considering ideas and their implementation. But on Sunday there is no idea. It's just a dumb black woman. It is good that we do not live in the world of Svetlana Proskurina.
3 out of 10
Having passed the earthly life before half, I found myself in a dark forest...
The line from “Divine Comedy” accurately describes the state of the hero Alexei Vertkov, the main character of the film “Sunday”. Director Svetlana Proskurina offers to step not into the poetic metaphor of “Hell” by Dante Alighieri, but into the prosaic reality of the Russian outback together with provincial official Dmitry Terekhov.
Without black motives, the author of the film “Truce” leads through the forest lost characters in it, among whom he holds the path of the Terekhs. He doesn't know where his journey, which began on Sunday with the note "You'll die soon," will take him. The hero passes a mistress who stepped from the balcony. Leaves the sick mother in the care of a groomed nurse. Dmitry tries to talk to his daughter and listens indifferently to the problems of the foreman of the site.
Alexei Vertkov melancholy capaciously played a character who was mired in the blackness of human indifference and callousness. The light of hope no longer comes from a dying mother with soulful play by Vera Alentova. He is not afraid of the threats of an influential friend of the Kochergin family (Vladimir Ilyin). He goes further into loneliness.
Create a gloomy aesthetic of the picture monotonous dialogues, occasionally full of swear words, creaking music, empty looks and silence. This darkness of complete indifference cannot be dispersed with envelopes with five thousand bills, forgotten in the arms of women. Instead of words of support, the characters say “what’s the difference?” In any intonation, the quote sounds cold and doomed, like a tombstone, like the waters of the river, which the main character looks at. In the end, he got tired of the fact that nobody cares, even volunteers who return a child to parents of alcoholics. Dmitri can't change anything except...
The ending of the story can be interpreted in different ways. Svetlana Proskurina leaves the choice to the viewer who will come to the film not for fun, but ready to find a way out of the gloomy forest of our reality and will not put up with despair.