Dow. Three Days – “Sweet Dizziness of Bitterness” The episode "Three Days" begins with the arrival of Maria, a Greek actress and dancer who decides to visit the institute at the invitation of Dau. For Dau himself, Mary is the love of youth, a man who may now open a new perspective on life. The first evening takes place in a calm atmosphere, where Dou timidly shows his house, talks about how his life in Moscow has changed, and what his relationship with his wife is. He confesses how much this life makes him miserable, how tired he is of endless longing. Maria understands what Dow is talking about, because she herself, being an actress and seemingly having a bright light behind her shoulders, realizes that emptiness in her soul. And now, after these conversations, we already see not just wealthy individuals, but people who are full of grief and spiritual despair of feelings.
The dialogues through which the characters somehow try to get in touch with each other, have not just the nature of communication, but intimacy, which is associated with the deep intimacy of their feelings. Through sick talk, they, both pleasant on the outside but broken on the inside, open their souls. Dow, who is always trying to present on his part responsiveness, immediately reveals himself to Mary in what he would not admit to any of those people around him. And Mary, absorbing the bitterness of loneliness throughout her life, at some point also realizes how hard it is to be alone with emptiness. Only tears that leave a dry trail, and hugs, more like figures bound in chains, help somehow release the accumulated burden of loneliness.
Khrzhanovsky uses only the Dow House as the location of this episode, and for good reason. The whole house is a great inner state of the Dau itself. Full of apartments and luxury, in the depths of which lies only silence. Even the rearrangement of things, which the owner of the house organizes one evening, does not contribute to the change that Dau himself seeks. He tries to change the world around him, follow his dreams and understand what happiness is, but everything is in vain. All ideas about the best turn wrong, especially when Dow’s wife, Nora, intervenes. The protagonist, without expecting it, becomes one of the corners in the triangle between the past - the love of youth, and the present - the wife.
Dow. “Three Days” is a picture of illusory freedom, where by imagining in a person from the past an exit into a new world, you can find even greater emptiness in your soul. Khrzhanovsky in his episode explores the type of person who, not having the strength to part with the past, must accept the present in the form in which it exists.
7 out of 10