This story shows remarkable types, each with its own special character and emotions. But all have one thing in common – they are direct and direct, even in their petty follies and follies. Perhaps this trait is inherent in people who live close to nature. From all in this feature differed only the investigator, a visitor, city, and therefore closed, mortally tired of life, with the seal of deep depression.
The most epic episode is with a gun. Very powerful! Biting his teeth. The second most powerful is a declaration of love. It's amazing how cleanly and soulfully played!
The film subtly notes and conveys the ability of women to inspire men, and easily change their intentions. Of course, not everyone and not always, but still.
Another feature of this picture is that in brief dialogues or even replicas of the characters, the whole life of individual heroes, their entire fate, with experienced joys and sorrows, was often reflected.
The movie turned out to be chamber, everything was filmed in one small location, almost at the intersection near the village “drinking”. Thanks to the inherent meanings and skillful acting, it took nothing more to create a masterpiece, and often here only one look cost a lot!
As for the meaning, I don't understand one thing, why did Valentina go with Paul? There may be many different versions, from the most intricate to primitive, but the story shown is silent about this. The easiest answer to this question can be considered “mysterious Russian soul”.
Special. The gardener here is a separate participant in this story. It is needed here only to emphasize the inexperience and naivety of the main character, who does not yet know life and people, so to speak, in full growth. Instead of modest attempts to reach out only to the conscience of fellow villagers, she should have acted more radically (tied with wire, etc.). Especially since past experiences have failed. It is strange that none of those involved in this daily “sacred act” advised her how to proceed more correctly, if only out of pity for a person. Of course, the advice to wave your hand was also wrong.
The second invisible hero of this picture is the song “The Tale of the Batchman”, which regularly sounds in the background. An old song, which is beautifully performed here, and it is a pity that only a piece.
Conclusion. The film leaves complex impressions, one of which is as if you were “in the face” given a bouquet of chamomiles. In any case, it is a very interesting film, emotionally rich, with a powerful intrigue and an unpleasant dramatic ending. The picture feels like a naked nerve of life exposed to the frosty wind.
Vladimir / Rodion Nakhapetov / - investigator, formerly successful citizen, lost everything because of his principled and honesty; is in a state of fatigue and even some depression
Zina (Larisa Udovichenko) – apothecary, mistress of Vladimir, whom he promises nothing, but the woman, of course, hopes for much.
Anna (Inna Churikova) - a buffetress, a wise woman suffering from quarrels in the family, seems a little rude, but in general kind.
Afanasy / Yuri Grebenshchikov / - Anna's husband, a war veteran, all her life blames her for not waiting for him from the war, giving birth to a son from whom it is unknown.
Valentina / Daria Mikhailova / - waitress, a young girl who did not want, like all the youth, to go to the city; decent and kind, in love with Vladimir
Pavel /Sergei Koltakov / - the son of Anna, all his life pushed by his stepfather and, in fact, is a "thorn in the eye", provoking conflicts in the mother's family; in love with Valentina, aggressive and hot-tempered.
Innocent / Vsevolod Shilovsky / - accountant, single middle-aged man who needs a good wife; a regular visitor to the tea room, picky and meticulous
The film is an adaptation of Vampilov’s play “Last summer in Chulimsk”. Once again I admire the talent of the director, Churikova, Koltakov and understand that Vampilov’s creations are a separate kind of pleasure, striking in their depth, authenticity and relevance even today.
The film is made as a film, of course, it is not a TV show. But the fact that this is originally a play is very felt in the abundance of dialogues, in the production of individual shots, in general, in everything. And to watch this in person for me is another kind of film enjoyment.
All the characters are incredibly alive, everyone, even those who play only secondary roles in what is happening, has a sense of character and life stories, and you sympathize and empathize with everyone. Even some nasty act you can, if not justify, then understand, because the hero is shown in such a short timekeeping from almost all sides.
Here's Pavel. He was a bastard, and he did things that were just terrible, really. But only one scene with his mother, only one bitter phrase, and you feel sorry for him, as Valentina experienced her, which destroyed her in the end.
And what a game Sergei Koltakov! He’s definitely one of my favorite actors he’s never played, and everywhere he’s literally getting into his character’s shoes. I saw him in the role of a life-beaten prisoner for whom you feel compassion; and in the image of a criminal authority - charming and sexy; now in the image of a young guy who was not taught to love, who was mashed all his life simply because he was born and reminded of the sin of his mother - and at the same time he is unpleasant, angry, aggressive ... Excellent role. And the other actors, of course, also play great.
Overall, it’s an excellent painting that has become one of my favorites. I highly recommend it.
Augustus Summer's play-breath red. About the beginning of August, her heroes are mentioned. Alexander Vampilov was born on August 19; died on the 17th of August, a couple of days before his 35th birthday.
. . . In the morning Shamanov turns to Valentina, and apparently tells the truth that a long time ago he had a beloved, and Valentina looks like her. He suddenly ' saw'.
Valentina lives by the unintentional purity of her perception. It does not belong to the household circle of interests. Valentina exists in parallel, somewhere behind the openwork carving of the old front garden. The scale of such a personality is much more complex than the drawings ' innocence' and ' lack of experience'.
Innocent Mechetkin, though in ' funny hat' and the integrity of Valentina's nature, understood, saw.
Pharmacy Zina works ' woman' the whole film. In the morning, she shows her night performance, warming up on the balcony of the mezzanine ragged, and addresses the person in the room, but at the same time she watches the street. For the street Zina and says, because from the one who is in the room, there is no reaction. Zina says everything in a row, but so that those in China can hear.
Larisa Udovichenko is too thin, too beautiful, and unusually charismatic for this role. Zina's play is all average. In this film, she is almost innocent and suffers. In the play Zina does not sob his shoulders, but laces cunningly.
You watch the film and it is unclear why Valentina did not react at all when she saw Zina/Udovichenko outside her house. Udovichenko/Zina played such human anxiety that the complete lack of reaction in Valentina looks strange.
In the film perfectly beat ' Dangerous dents'. For example, Shamanov’s emotionally voluminous dialogue with Zina, when Shamanov did not allow her to break through, is his own, strengthening in the subconscious, something light-forming. Like ' sloppy' brushed aside.
Paul. Personally, he is neither a scoundrel nor a fool. In the play Paul, having seized the mother's curse on his head, responds to Valentine: 'Regret? Don't ' Then, smiling, rushes to fix the gate: ' Well, you subscribed, Valusha on this front garden!' It is right that Gleb Panfilov left the moment when Paul openly tells Valentine that Shamanov told him in the morning.
Sergei Koltakov has always been a devastatingly fair game without unnecessary overhangs-growths in the frame.
Typical and the meaning of the game, close, I think, to Helmut Berger. Similar to autonomy, personal space in the frame.
In the film, Shamanov somehow chooses a bad way ' sending a message ' Valentina. Build him another chain, and ' veiling darkness' (Vampilov's expression) on the way to d. It would have been a loss of blood.
With the onset of natural darkness, the atmosphere of the film reveals not only love, but also mutually complex gender mise-en-scene: mastered - with the alien, close - with the stranger. Valentina is approaching Paul. Shamanov talks lively with Zina.
Rodion Nahapetov played the main thing in Shamanov. He neglects the conventions of social life in view of the personal lack of meaning of public subordination in general. I think it’s not because of ' the case a year ago' but more because of his professional qualities.
A distant cyclical hum from the diesel. That's the sound that attracts me in this movie. As the author indicates, the outgoing light in the second half of the film. Bright light bulb, fire in the pupil of the dark eye of the night, hypocenter of the looming heaviest scene. The most difficult scene for all heroes.
My psyche ' doesn't pull ' this is the dialogue in the film. Inside to tears. I don't know why.
B. No, you're not. Sh - Which one? . . B - You are direct and brave.
- Yes? B. - Yes.
She wanted to say he was reliable. That's the point. And people only notice from which side he came in the morning.
10 out of 10
Gleb Panfilov: from revolutionary cinema to film adaptations of Solzhenitsyn (part 5)
Everyone is good with “Valentina” – an attentive, careful to literary material adaptation of Vampilov’s play “Last Summer in Chulimsk” (one of the three great texts of the best Soviet playwright), only cinematography is lacking: long plans, a tangible touch of theatricality, directorial emphasis on acting, minimal editing and almost complete absence of bold stage decisions. But it does not matter, because its main goal is to express the time that has stopped in the province, the human destinies that are collapsing in the swamp of everyday life, it completely achieves. As in “Duck Hunt”, in this drama Vampilov gradually and sometimes openly quotes Chekhov (especially in the scene with a shot bird – an allusion to a similar episode in “The Seagull”).
However, if in “Duck Hunt” the playwright focused primarily on “Ivanov”, here – on “The Seagull” and “Three Sisters”. Panfilov feels very well not only Chekhov’s longing in Vampilov’s play, but also well understands that for this great playwright, the ambiguous comedy of the author of “The Cherry Orchard” evaporates elusively from the “stagnant” Soviet life, becoming an outright tragedy for the heroes. The flawless hit of actors in types and roles (it is difficult to imagine someone instead of those chosen by the director), the saturation of conflict with a minimum of means and the chamber nature of the drama itself makes Valentina a high-class acting film, where even debutants (Koltakov and Mikhailova) work in a sophisticated and nuanced way.
However, Chekhov’s decentralization of the narrative, preserved in the best plays of Vampilov, is not intentionally absent in this film adaptation: it is important for Panfilov to single out one of the host of heroes – a representative of the idealistic type so beloved by him, symbolically not ceasing to repair the fence, even when all her efforts seem futile. That is why the director called the film by the name of this heroine, for him it is the hope that as long as someone stubbornly continues to do something in the name of people, even when it is not needed by anyone, then everything is not lost. Panfilov understands that the dramaturgical material proposed by Vampilov shuns fascinating, it is difficult for them to capture the viewer’s attention: there are neither philosophical dialogues nor a clear plot, the characters speak in erased phrases and are not interesting in themselves, outside the exciting conflict.
The source of Vampilov’s collision, like Chekhov’s, is everyday life, which, like a turbine, like a swamp, sucks into itself and destroys any initiative, any desire for the better. For Panfilov, the Russian province becomes a magnifying glass, through which one can see the nationwide “stagnation”, passivity and depression that have captured people. The character of Nakhapetov is especially curious: he seems to be a handsome and good person, he does not believe that he has a future, circumstances broke him. Also, Paul – although a scoundrel (the performance of a very young Koltakov is close to genius – he works in such detail), but still an ugly child of the province, without which it is difficult to imagine him.
Inna Churikova in “Valentina” pulls (according to the director’s plan, of course) an almost secondary role on the frontline conflict. Perhaps for the first time she plays a rather cynical and rude woman, although not devoid of compassion (piercing in particular her final conversation with Koltakov). Inside, rather narrow types managed to turn around well and Udovichenko with Shilovsky (the latter plays a kind of “resonator”, over which Vampilov does not cease to tease, this is probably the most unpleasant character of the play, a puppet of social clichés). But for Daria Mikhailova, only the scene of a conversation with the investigator, executed on close-up plans, was fully successful: she played a good love longing mixed with shyness, but in other episodes she works somewhat stiffly, monotonously, which, however, can be attributed to age (on the other hand, youth does not prevent Koltakov from working very powerfully, so it is not in experience).
Spraying the conflict throughout the narrative fabric of the play, Vampilov was able to achieve its depressive thickening in the finale, which Panfilov works very accurately (however, such an expressive ending would be difficult to destroy) due to the static shooting of one single scenery. In any case, “Valentina” Panfilov – a movie, not just sound, strong, professionally made, but also fit into the context of “moral film anxiety” in the USSR. This, of course, is not without a miss hitting Averbakh, and sometimes mistaken (as shown by the tape “I ask for words”) Panfilov, but such a directorial approach, as we have already noticed, disassembling his films, works quite cinematically correctly, that is, without failures, not expanding the boundaries of the film language, but also not inhibiting its development.
Something's wrong with acting. Each individually represents a bright character, and the ensemble does not add up. One or two sentences from the dialogue begin to sound in unison – then again dissonance. Acting pitch some averaged, without reference to events, time, place, does not lead intonation and reactions to the meanings of the film, schematic so that from the expectation of production drama or drama of growing up in love — grew moral drama. What kind of drama was able to determine already very close to the end, when the corresponding music went.
The authors could not convey the time described in the film – long guessed what decade presented. Yes, of course, such a story is out of time, but people’s reactions are different, different on the time scale.
For me, this is not a successful film, on the material that could remain, indeed, a moral guide for many generations, and apart from the unsuccessfully executed retelling, unfortunately, I did not see or feel anything. Perhaps this is a personal aberration, although in Letargy I understood and understood from childhood, in The Boys - similarly, but much where else, and here - there is no picture and all the meanings flow through the indistinctness of the story.
4 out of 10
The film adaptation of the play “Last summer in Chulimsk” by Alexander Vampilov – a favorite of Soviet theatergoers and even film directors (although he does not have an abundance of scenery and cinematography). Of course, this is not Panfilov’s best film, but the theme of human loneliness and it is revealed with amazing accuracy, ruthlessly, but with sympathy.
It is based on a semi-detective story and a love pentagon (and maybe more). All the action takes place on a spot of the buffet of a provincial city, which does not have a name in the film, where the drama of three women unfolds (they are still the central heroines, despite the fact that there are more men). Two of them (Zinaida and Valentina) are in love with investigator Shamanov. The hero himself is not in love with anyone - his tragedy is not personal, but naturally social - his business (now it would definitely be called corruption) is "inundated" by the big bosses, and he is completely absorbed in this, as if not not noticing how life flows around without his participation - the eternal drama of the big male world (ambitions, the desire to remake the world) and the small female (the world where there is love...).
It is interesting that art sacrifices the small, and therefore the woman. And in Valentine the same thing happens – and the head of the buffet and Valentina and Zinaida bear the cross of love, in which there is an eternal theme of Russian sacrifice and femininity.
There is also the theme of Russia, in which the eternal “if you can’t, but you really want, you can.” That trying to shorten the path, whether in law, in love, or in society (in this case, breaking down the same board in the fence) will not lead to harmony. Valentine’s attempt to keep the integrity of the path (albeit expressed in the restoration of the eternally destroyed board of the fence) naive, but the rejection of it leads the heroine to tragedy. But, perhaps, only Valentina herself and reacts to her only correctly - by returning to expectation and to everyday work.
However, some hopelessness (no wonder the film came out in the midst of stagnation) to overcome not only fails, but the topic even worsens. The final sawing of the ethnic art of the northern peoples adds mystery and does not add optimism. I recall other Panfilov films, Theme, in which this leitmotif of the impasse is solved within the intellectual class and I ask for words, in which the big on the macro level (the idea of communism) inevitably degenerated into the small (to build a bridge in a few years...). Valentina takes a lower layer and raises the topic of everyday life and work ethics in the Russian province. Is it good there? Hardly. Desperation, in which stagnation is guessed, has a completely cyclical nature in Panfilov - with which everything began, this ended. The same fence, the same planks, the same heroes - free-drinking hunters and self-digging intellectuals and the same women carrying the cross and sacrificing themselves either to men or to the eternal laws of Russian existence.
The film was based on the last play of the brilliant Alexander Vampilov “Last summer in Chulimsk”. The author of such masterpieces as “The Elder Son” and “Duck Hunting”. Cinema, smart and tragic. Despite the fact that the basis was taken not the version of the play, which ended in Valentina’s suicide, and in the final scene, the gardener repairs Shamanov. The fence of this gardener can rightly be called a full-fledged actor of the play. Valentina persistently and persistently fixes it every day, hoping "they will understand, you will see." They must understand, after all. I'll plant poppies here and then... But people do not understand, they are lazy to walk an extra 50 meters, and Valentina always has a place to put their strength.
Tragic in the film literally all the characters. And Shamanov, tired of fighting the system and spat not only on it, but also on himself. And Pasha with his “love as I can”, and he knows how, to put it mildly, not very well. And his mother, who feels a constant sense of guilt for a long-standing betrayal. And a stepfather who loves his wife and suffers endlessly, and therefore, of course, drinks. And even Zinaida, brilliantly played by my any Larisa Udovichenko, loving completely lost Shamanov.
In addition to their personal tragedies, everyone experiences a common “backwater complex”. All of them are bored and bored in this wilderness.
"What good is it? How do you live here? Well, for old people, but for young people? Good in our Chulimsk. One mosquito. Wherever you turn, the taiga in any direction for hundreds of miles. Whenever you think about it, it’s hard.
So people live in this stuffiness, who are their passions (like the Pashka family), who are petty worries, who are simply by inertia. People definitely need a capital shake-up and they get it.
The film is excellent, and must-see, as well as other paintings based on Vampilov's plays.
It is quite difficult to perceive the cinema. Taige village, dark colors, longing and hopelessness of the fate of each hero. A difficult love triangle with three losers.
Valentine. An honest, clean girl who is vegetative in the wilderness, unable to go against the will of her father and leave the village. On one side of the main character is Pavel, a local bad guy who loved her with such force that he is ready to forcefully win her favor, which he will try to do. On the other hand, from Valentina, the city investigator Shamanov: he saw in a quiet waitress Valais that the rest of the world do not notice. But I saw it a little late.
Colorful heroes of the second plan: Paul’s parents are the unhappy Anna and her husband, who drinks from unforgiven betrayal, Zinaida, who tied up an affair with a businessman Shamanov from boredom.
The film is worth watching if only because the theme of the hopelessness of the Russian backwater and its impact on the people living in it is relevant to this day.