On the day of her 18th birthday, Maris escapes from her mother and a festive dinner where her eyes look, but not on foot but on a cool bike gift from her parents. Fate brings him to the wedding motorcade and beautiful bride Inese. The impromptu girl leaves the dishonored groom and his relatives, and they, together with Maris, ride his iron horse through the expanses of summer Latvia. Will irresponsible escape from adults grow into more than a spontaneous road movie?
The Summer of Motorcycles is a long journey into the film. Not as carefree as you might think by name. Mutual wariness of Inese and Marisa is replaced by warmer relations, joint experiences unite, but friendship or love is somehow not called. They're too different. Maris is an infantile mama's son who escaped from custody, Inese is an introvert, mysteriously locked in her experiences. They are young and have a lot of problems.
The film is largely a free experiment on stylish black and white film (now available in excellent quality). And in many ways, the experiment was successful due to the correct selection of actors. Very young Peteris Gaudinsh is a handsome blonde with barely breaking mustaches, and a mysterious brunette Inese Jansone, with some inhuman face, combining model appearance and rustic simplicity. The camera frankly admires young attractive actors, hangs on close-ups. In episodic roles will appear famous Latvian actors Astrida Kairisha, Paul Butkevich, Eduard Pavuls and others.
Visually, “Summer of Motorcyclists” is a holiday for the eyes, the picture is on the lookout, the operator and artists have worked for glory, almost every frame can be framed. Natural views and beauties are selected with a soul, rural Latvia in all its glory. Shining motorcycles again! “Hell’s Angels” look bizarre on their stories among the pastoral idyll of fields and farms. There was a place in the film even for underwater filming. Young actors are fashionably dressed, on the rebel bride the fashionable maxi-dress from lace canvas. The musical design is also interesting, although Bach in the scene not a waterfall sounded somewhat bombastic.
Bottom line: The Summer of Motorcyclists is good for everyone - young actors, a beautiful visual, but very symbolic message, and the general melancholy mood seems to be mourning the end of the summer of love.
I never told anyone that for me.
It means. Even her.
Beads hurt, disappearing one at a time and completely
No string hurts.
Today I took the beads off her, and they crumbled.
on the grass.
She thinks I hate her.
Imants Ziedonis
If the gift of a motorcycle is postponed until admission to the institute, an iron horse from the pantry can be simply stolen and unexpectedly received as a gift a river from a picture on the wall, living, reflecting the forest foliage of the shores. If it were the only crime of the day! Who would have thought what would turn out to appeal to the boys - to accompany a magnificent wedding, to fulfill a small errand? They were told that an important person was getting married and that the bride had a beautiful dress brought from Australia. Cheated - what's the dress? Young, strange, stone-unhappy, hiding behind the incomprehensibility of strict beauty all the secrets in the world, not the bride, but the spirit of unthinkable and daring happiness, she took on “weakly”, and how this new theft happened, Maris himself did not notice.
Uldis Browns, the creator of this film story, was born on the land of Kurzeme, in a peasant family – amazing places in beauty, somewhat close to the Russian Pskov region, an ancient culture of place and life. The peasant touches the soil of his land with his hands; as the blind man, he recognizes the earth and the earth, and therefore sees differently from the one who looks with his eyes. This vision is inherited. Browns studied in Moscow, became a director of documentaries, adept of the Dzigi Vertov school. His only feature film is “documentary” black and white, leading from colors to graphics, from color to thing, from appearance to essence. And the experiments of editing are demonstrated in the very first frame of the film, with a lonely horse rushing and as if melting under the hot onslaught of motorcycle groups. His feature film is documentary attentive to the signs of life and time: it is a monument of Soviet times in Latvia. But, unsovietly free and uninhibited, Browns created a film that makes you remember Italian neorealism and related films: Days of Love by De Santis, for example. Although the story of the two Browns “north”, calmer, chaste.
The definition of a “youth manifesto” that has been applied to a film in Internet reference material is both true and untrue. The manifesto, and also the youth manifesto, should be a loud statement, it is another thing that everything where there are young people turns into a manifesto; young people tend to trample on what has been considered right for centuries, to disobey. If so, in the “grouping” of “cool men” on rattling cars, one of which was taken without asking from my mother, of course, there is a protest, there is a challenge, there is good British rocking. However, if Maris lived with his friends not in the Soviet Kurzem, but in the old Courland, he would drive a horse out of excess strength, catching the wind with his face. What difference does it make to run away from a stuffy apartment where the river is only in a bad picture on the wall, or from the walls of a castle? This escape and incorporation into a “other” group is a kind of initiation. The film is about a man who went to a biker herd, considered a pack, but fought off it, became some Latvian gypsy (stolen a horse, stole a girl...) But, of course, the hero of Gaudinsha, like the heroine of Jansone, Europeans, aristocrats in spirit, and therefore daring is combined in them with chivalrous elegance. From the youthful, that is, sharp, adversarial, the film just led to the eternal and ageless. Road Movie, the road epic, was soaked in lyrics, a barely perceptible note of sentimentality, repulsive to any young creature, but normal for an adult. The recklessness of the impulse turned into an awareness of the sacredness and greatness of the connection, which seemed accidental, a connection requiring spontaneous wedding and even baptism. The film turned into a story about how the soul of a wanderer is formed, not a rocker, not a biker, but a seeker. The Seeker, like Parzival, is the Grail that was in his hands, but left, retreated, disappeared, beckoned, raised. In a film about loss, there's no joyful affirmation of fresh and new as iron and loud. Rather, there is a statement about the eternal youth of the present.
Of course, the screenwriter was free to deliberately “put” in the way of couples and raunchy rural holiday, where you can see and catch a look at so many faces, so many human movements, and forgotten by God farm, an island of ancient wisdom. But any traveler in the vicinity of Kuldiga, the birthplace of the director, would see this dilapidated and beautiful, moistened and carved with his feet, a piece of the world, these silver waterfalls of Ventas Rumba and Aleksupite, would see and drop out of consciousness the trifles of ordinary affairs. After all, in life, as in cinema, there is indeed a moment woven from limits and concentrations, a moment in which everything around us serves good or evil fate.
The silver splashes of water, the silver sun on the spokes of the wheel, the sunny face of a dazzling young bride, the little luminaries of swinging flower heads – how beautiful is the light that replaces color! How strange are the shades and rustles of grass, leaves, with the slow sounds of almost ancient music, from the stylizations passing to Bach’s “Ich ruf zu Dir”, and how the people in the frame are alien, then lie on the canvas with faithful silhouettes. The camera rises, revealing the square of mowing and a small white figure, literally and figuratively caught in the labyrinth. The camera moves away to create a Gothic forest cathedral with tree columns stretching into the sky and streams pouring from sky windows. The camera lifts into the sky, descends into a cave, plunges into the ringing cold of the river, where hair snakes in the jets of water, a smile shines. The camera admires the faces, bodies, gestures of two impeccably beautiful, at the bud point, heroes. Looks, promises, fear, anger, bragging, shyness, first desires and victorious chastity – how could one hold on to such a thing and not allow one false note?
How to explain the masterpiece, how to explain the breath of a person, his rise before death, his strange thing that others will want to call love, but they will not dare to speak where it is necessary to understand without words? One hundred white horses should be seen by her before going out to the man, but at the beginning of the film, the only horse melted, as if an apocalypse had taken place on the land of horses. A young woman needs to keep the white dress clean. A man has to grow up. Towards the end, you realize that the film was, from the beginning, a call. The bitter cry of the wounded man who loved, it turns out, not a motorcycle, but, of course, the whistling of the wind in his ears, and the slapping of green leaves, and flying from the mountain down, and the eternal road, and the foreboding of unheard-of happiness. Alas, curse, bless, pray, tear off your throat in a useless cry – Ines! – the great must certainly remain unfulfilled. And a film that has managed to touch the great, you need to remain little known, like a treasure, to be again and again.
I never told anyone that for me.
It means. Even her.
Beads hurt, disappearing one at a time and completely
No string hurts.
Today I took the beads off her, and they crumbled.
on the grass.
She thinks I hate her.
Imants Ziedonis
In ancient times, he, only eighteen years old, already with the marks of reckless masculinity on his face, would drive a horse along the green summer roads of Latvia, dissecting the air smelling of salt; but in the twentieth century, in Soviet Latvia, even in the collective farms, there seem to be few horses left. So he was hoping that his mother would give him a motorcycle for his birthday, and secretly passed on his license. Perhaps not so much in order to join the free, despising danger and gray despondency of the right life flock of friends-bikers. Did he seem special to her for something? He must have loved the whistling of the wind in his ears; she must have loved the wind. The wind flies so beautifully unnecessary veil...
A picture presented to a doctor for a successful operation is the limit of dreams? If the gift of a motorcycle is postponed until admission to the institute, an iron horse from the pantry can simply be stolen, and instead of a picture, you unexpectedly get the same river as a gift, seen from the same point, but alive, shimmering with solar gold, reflecting the forest foliage of the shores. If it were the only crime of the day! Who would have thought what would turn out to appeal to the boys - to accompany a magnificent wedding, to fulfill a small errand? They were told that an important person was getting married and that the bride had a beautiful dress brought from Australia. Cheated - what's the dress? Young, strange, stone-unhappy, hiding behind the incomprehensibility of strict beauty all the secrets in the world, not the bride, but the spirit of unthinkable and daring happiness, she took on “weakly”, and how this new theft happened, Maris himself did not notice.
Black and white. What else should be a film about a bride and groom, united by a stubborn female will and a boy's discouraged submission? However, what else could be the only feature film directed and cameraman Uldis Browns, a documentary filmmaker whose film language was compared to Vertovsk? Latvia is beautiful in color, but how expressively silent the transitions from black to white about its summer colorfulness, colorfulness! There is no variegation behind which details are lost; faces seem to emerge from the shadows, the faces of seemingly ordinary people caught by a camera in real life, immortalized by a feature film in their true being. Silence about the miracle, astonishedly shining through the winded faces of rude collective farmers, will descend into the silence of the farm, hide with a smile in the old man’s beard, in the wrinkles of the old woman, in the calm, understanding movements of husband and wife, who do not remember whether they had love, but seem to imbue with this love every word, the very air of their home, where they conceived, gave birth and raised good children. Without marriage, there will be a quiet celebration of the ghostly wedding, and this evening and this night, two couples will discover the secrets of love and hide them. Silence will turn into majestic, mourning and at the same time sweet – to heartache – music, and music will lead to the forest, the living temple of God, where children of both God and progress at the same time, under ancient solemn sounds, will go hand in hand to their iron, clockwork altar. Silence will lurk in a shell of noise, lift up into the sky, descend into a cave, send back to the past, plunge into the ringing cold of the waterfall, her hair will shimmer in the streams of water, her smile will shine, and a black and white film will become gold from light and silver from youth.
How to explain the masterpiece, how to explain the breath of a person, his rise before death, his strange thing that others will want to call love, but they will not dare to speak where it is necessary to understand without words? How does a road movie suddenly turn into a movie call? One hundred white horses must be seen before going out to a man. But tossing, it seems, is already the only white horse in the world, intimidated and crushed by the noise of motorcycles. A young woman needs to keep the white dress clean. A man has to grow up. By the very end, you only realize that the film was – from the very beginning – a call. The bitter cry of the wounded man who loved, it turns out, not a motorcycle, but, yes, of course, the whistling of the wind in his ears, and the slapping of green leaves, and the flight from the mountain down, and the eternal road, and the foreboding of unheard-of happiness. Alas, curse, bless, pray, tear off your throat in a useless cry - Ines! - the great must certainly remain unfulfilled.
P. S. And Maris, that is, Peteris Gaudiņš, will later play the knight Ivanhoe and the officer Arthur Masham. This film was not the debut of the actor, but in his young hero it is still difficult to guess the future magnificent handsome man. And yet, fortunately, in Gaudinsha’s filmography was this film, in a non-commercial translation, by the way, called “Summer of Motorcycles”. And, of course, it was 1975.
I never told anyone that for me.
It means. Even her.
Beads hurt, disappearing one at a time and completely
No string hurts.
Today I took the beads off her, and they crumbled.
on the grass.
She thinks I hate her.
Imants Ziedonis
In ancient times, he, only eighteen years old, already with the marks of reckless masculinity on his face, would drive a horse along the green summer roads of Latvia, dissecting the air smelling of salt; but in the twentieth century, in Soviet Latvia, even in the collective farms, there seem to be few horses left. So he was hoping that his mother would give him a motorcycle for his birthday, and secretly passed on his license. Perhaps not so much in order to join the free, despising danger and gray despondency of the right life flock of friends-bikers. Did he seem special to her for something? He must have loved the whistling of the wind in his ears; she must have loved the wind. The wind flies so beautifully unnecessary veil...
A picture presented to a doctor for a successful operation is the limit of dreams? If the gift of a motorcycle is postponed until admission to the institute, an iron horse from the pantry can simply be stolen, and instead of a picture, you unexpectedly get the same river as a gift, seen from the same point, but alive, shimmering with solar gold, reflecting the forest foliage of the shores. If it were the only crime of the day! Who would have thought what would turn out to appeal to the boys - to accompany a magnificent wedding, to fulfill a small errand? They were told that an important person was getting married and that the bride had a beautiful dress brought from Australia. Cheated - what's the dress? Young, strange, stone-unhappy, hiding behind the incomprehensibility of strict beauty all the secrets in the world, not the bride, but the spirit of unthinkable and daring happiness, she took on “weakly”, and how this new theft happened, Maris himself did not notice.
Black and white. What else should be a film about a bride and groom, united by a stubborn female will and a boy's discouraged submission? However, what else could be the only feature film directed and cameraman Uldis Browns, a documentary filmmaker whose film language was compared to Vertovsk? Latvia is beautiful in color, but how expressively silent the transitions from black to white about its summer colorfulness, colorfulness! There is no variegation behind which details are lost; faces seem to emerge from the shadows, the faces of seemingly ordinary people caught by a camera in real life, immortalized by a feature film in their true being. Silence about the miracle, astonishedly shining through the winded faces of rude collective farmers, will descend into the silence of the farm, hide with a smile in the old man’s beard, in the wrinkles of the old woman, in the calm, understanding movements of husband and wife, who do not remember whether they had love, but seem to imbue with this love every word, the very air of their home, where they conceived, gave birth and raised good children. Without marriage, there will be a quiet celebration of the ghostly wedding, and this evening and this night, two couples will discover the secrets of love and hide them. Silence will turn into majestic, mourning and at the same time sweet – to heartache – music, and music will lead to the forest, the living temple of God, where children of both God and progress at the same time, under ancient solemn sounds, will go hand in hand to their iron, clockwork altar. Silence will lurk in a shell of noise, lift up into the sky, descend into a cave, send back to the past, plunge into the ringing cold of the waterfall, her hair will shimmer in the streams of water, her smile will shine, and a black and white film will become gold from light and silver from youth.
How to explain the masterpiece, how to explain the breath of a person, his rise before death, his strange thing that others will want to call love, but they will not dare to speak where it is necessary to understand without words? How does a road movie suddenly turn into a movie call? One hundred white horses must be seen before going out to a man. But tossing, it seems, is already the only white horse in the world, intimidated and crushed by the noise of motorcycles. A young woman needs to keep the white dress clean. A man has to grow up. By the very end, you only realize that the film was – from the very beginning – a call. The bitter cry of the wounded man who loved, it turns out, not a motorcycle, but, yes, of course, the whistling of the wind in his ears, and the slapping of green leaves, and the flight from the mountain down, and the eternal road, and the foreboding of unheard-of happiness. Alas, curse, bless, pray, tear off your throat in a useless cry - Ines! - the great must certainly remain unfulfilled.
P. S. And Maris, that is, Peteris Gaudiņš, will later play the knight Ivanhoe and the officer Arthur Masham. This film was not the debut of the actor, but in his young hero it is still difficult to guess the future magnificent handsome man. And yet, fortunately, in Gaudinsha’s filmography was this film, in a non-commercial translation, by the way, called “Summer of Motorcycles”. He was born in 1975.
I never told anyone that for me.
It means. Even her.
Beads hurt, disappearing one at a time and completely
No string hurts.
Today I took the beads off her, and they crumbled.
on the grass.
She thinks I hate her.
Imants Ziedonis
In ancient times, he, only eighteen years old, already with the marks of reckless masculinity on his face, would drive a horse along the green summer roads of Latvia, dissecting the air smelling of salt; but in the twentieth century, in Soviet Latvia, even in the collective farms, there seem to be few horses left. So he was hoping that his mother would give him a motorcycle for his birthday, and secretly passed on his license. Perhaps not so much in order to join the free, despising danger and gray despondency of the right life flock of friends-bikers. Did he seem special to her for something? He must have loved the whistling of the wind in his ears; she must have loved the wind. The wind flies so beautifully unnecessary veil...
A picture presented to a doctor-stepfather for a successful operation - is this the limit of dreams? If the gift of a motorcycle is postponed until admission to the institute, an iron horse from the pantry can simply be stolen, and instead of a picture, you unexpectedly get the same river as a gift, seen from the same point, but alive, shimmering with solar gold, reflecting the forest foliage of the shores. If it were the only crime of the day! Who would have thought what would turn out to appeal to the boys - to accompany a magnificent wedding, to fulfill a small errand? They were told that an important person was getting married and that the bride had a beautiful dress brought from Australia. Cheated - what's the dress? Young, strange, stone-unhappy, hiding behind the incomprehensibility of strict beauty all the secrets in the world, not the bride, but the spirit of unthinkable and daring happiness, she took on “weakly”, and how this new theft happened, Maris himself did not notice.
Black and white. What else should be a film about a bride and groom, united by a stubborn female will and a boy's discouraged submission? However, what else could be the only feature film directed and cameraman Uldis Browns, a documentary filmmaker whose film language was compared to Vertovsk? Latvia is beautiful in color, but how expressively silent the transitions from black to white about its summer colorfulness, colorfulness! There is no variegation behind which details are lost; faces seem to emerge from the shadows, the faces of seemingly ordinary people caught by a camera in real life, immortalized by a feature film in their true being. Silence about the miracle, astonishedly shining through the winded faces of rude collective farmers, will descend into the silence of the farm, hide with a smile in the old man’s beard, in the wrinkles of the old woman, in the calm, understanding movements of husband and wife, who do not remember whether they had love, but seem to imbue with this love every word, the very air of their home, where they conceived, gave birth and raised good children. Without marriage, there will be a quiet celebration of the ghostly wedding, and this evening and this night, two couples will discover the secrets of love and hide them. Silence will turn into majestic, mourning and at the same time sweet - to heartache - music, and music will lead to the forest, the living temple of God, where children of both God and progress at the same time, under ancient solemn sounds, will go hand in hand to their iron, clockwork altar. Silence will lurk in a shell of noise, lift up into the sky, descend into a cave, send back to the past, plunge into the ringing cold of the waterfall, her hair will shimmer in the streams of water, her smile will shine, and a black and white film will become gold from light and silver from youth.
How to explain the masterpiece, how to explain the breath of a person, his rise before death, his strange thing that others will want to call love, but they will not dare to speak where it is necessary to understand without words? How does a road movie suddenly turn into a movie call? One hundred white horses must be seen before going out to a man. But tossing, it seems, is already the only white horse in the world, intimidated and crushed by the noise of motorcycles. A young woman needs to keep the white dress clean. A man has to grow up. By the very end, you only realize that the film was – from the very beginning – a call. The bitter cry of the wounded man who loved, it turns out, not a motorcycle, but, of course, the whistling of the wind in his ears, and the slapping of green leaves, and the flight from the mountain down, and the eternal road, and the foreboding of unheard-of happiness. Alas, curse, bless, pray, tear off your throat in a useless cry - Ines! - the great must certainly remain unfulfilled.
P. S. And Maris, that is, Peteris Gaudiņš, will later play the knight Ivanhoe and the officer Arthur Masham. This film was not the debut of the actor, but in his young hero it is still difficult to guess the future magnificent handsome man. And yet, fortunately, in Gaudinsha’s filmography was this film, in a non-commercial translation, by the way, called “Summer of Motorcycles”. He was born in 1975.
I never told anyone that for me.
It means. Even her.
Beads hurt, disappearing one at a time and completely
No string hurts.
Today I took the beads off her, and they crumbled.
on the grass.
She thinks I hate her.
Imants Ziedonis
In ancient times, he, only eighteen years old, already with the marks of reckless masculinity on his face, would have driven a horse on the fragrant forest roads of Latvia, cut through the air smelling of salt with the body of the beast; but in the twentieth century, in Soviet Latvia, even in the collective farms, it seems that there were few horses left. So he was hoping that his mother would give him a motorcycle for his birthday, and secretly passed on his license. Perhaps not so much in order to join the free, despising danger and gray despondency of the right life flock of friends-bikers. Did he seem special to her for something? He must have loved the whistling of the wind in his ears; she must have loved the wind. The wind flies so beautifully unnecessary veil...
A picture presented to a doctor-stepfather for a successful operation - is this the limit of dreams? If the gift of a motorcycle is postponed until admission to the institute, an iron horse from the pantry can simply be stolen, and instead of a picture, you unexpectedly get the same river as a gift, seen from the same point, but alive, shimmering with solar gold, reflecting the forest foliage of the shores. If it were the only crime of the day! Who would have thought what would turn out to appeal to the boys - to accompany a magnificent wedding, to fulfill a small errand? They were told that an important person was getting married and that the bride had a beautiful dress brought from Australia. Cheated - what's the dress? Young, strange, stone-unhappy, hiding behind the incomprehensibility of strict beauty all the secrets in the world, not the bride, but the spirit of unthinkable and daring happiness, she took on “weakly”, and how this new theft happened, Maris himself did not notice.
Black and white. What else should be a film about a bride and groom, united by a stubborn female will and a boy's discouraged submission? However, what else could be the only feature film directed and cameraman Uldis Browns, a documentary filmmaker whose film language was compared to Vertovsk? Latvia is beautiful in color, but how expressively silent the transitions from black to white about its summer colorfulness, colorfulness! There is no variegation behind which details are lost; faces seem to emerge from the shadows, the faces of seemingly ordinary people caught by a camera in real life, immortalized by a feature film in their true being. Silence about the miracle, astonishedly shining through the winded faces of rude collective farmers, will descend into the silence of the farm, hide with a smile in the old man’s beard, in the wrinkles of the old woman, in the calm, understanding movements of husband and wife, who do not remember whether they had love, but seem to imbue with this love every word, the very air of their home, where they conceived, gave birth and raised good children. Without marriage, there will be a quiet celebration of the ghostly wedding, and this evening and this night, two couples will discover the secrets of love and hide them. Silence will turn into majestic, mourning and at the same time sweet - to heartache - music, and music will lead to the forest, the living temple of God, where children of both God and progress at the same time, under ancient solemn sounds, will go hand in hand to their iron, clockwork altar. Silence will lurk in a shell of noise, lift up into the sky, descend into a cave, send back to the past, plunge into the ringing cold of the waterfall, her hair will shimmer in the streams of water, her smile will shine, and a black and white film will become gold from light and silver from youth.
How to explain the masterpiece, how to explain the breath of a person, his rise before death, his strange thing that others will want to call love, but they will not dare to speak where it is necessary to understand without words? How does a road movie suddenly turn into a movie call? One hundred white horses must be seen before going out to a man. But tossing, it seems, is already the only white horse in the world, intimidated and crushed by the noise of motorcycles. A young woman needs to keep the white dress clean. A man has to grow up. By the very end, you only realize that the film was – from the very beginning – a call. The bitter cry of the wounded man who loved, it turns out, not a motorcycle, but, of course, the whistling of the wind in his ears, and the slapping of green leaves, and the flight from the mountain down, and the eternal road, and the foreboding of unheard-of happiness. Alas, curse, bless, pray, tear off your throat in a useless cry - Ines! - the great must certainly remain unfulfilled.
10 out of 10