It seems to be based on a Swedish fairy tale, which is not popular in our country. And this film is also not to say very famous! It would seem, from the creator of the cult "Adventures of Buratino" and "About Red Riding Hood" - but go to the director's page on Kinopoisk and compare how many ratings "Cap" with "Buratino" and how many of his other films, including this one. I do not pretend to be an expert, I just want to highlight this work, completely undeservedly lost among the rest.
Judging by myself, watching a movie as a child, I was not particularly impressed. I immediately liked the songs, and the plot... a fairy tale! It's just a children's movie! And only after reviewing it with adult eyes, I really penetrated and appreciated it.
The corporate style Nechaev is the universe of anthropomorphic animals. In "Buratino" they live among people, and this is taken for granted; in "Cap" masquerade as people, because there are real animals (cows and pigs) along with werewolf (he-he) and in this film people remain behind the scenes. So the picture looks even more holistic, but this is not the point at all.
The fact is that this is a fairy tale for adults.
Her message about the triumph of the all-conquering truth can well be understood by the child’s consciousness. But only an adult is able to catch, for example, that the fox has its own truth, the Larssen family has its own, Tutta Carlson has its own and even the comically vile hedgehog Niels has its own. It is truth, and truth is one because it is objective. It was this idea that I tried to convey to the main character of the owl Elon. “Wisdom is not justice, wisdom is my curtain” – where can a child decipher such a comparison? By the way, here is another interesting question: what is mind and what is wisdom? In short, not the main, but the core character - owl performed by Tatiana Peltzer - can hardly be appreciated and understood by an unadult viewer. Not to mention the other moral and ethical issues raised in the film! Here every beast, every character is a personification, a personality, an individuality! Consciously do not comment on any of them, so as not to vulgarize the picture, chewing the author's message.
At the same time, with all this Nechaev does not depart from the canons of classical creativity for children, as it was in the same "Cap", shot almost on the verge of modern and postmodern. An integral part of his films is music and songs, the so-called musicals for children. How can you remember the songs from "Buratino" and "Caps" to music Alexei Rybnikov! But are the songs of Igor Efremov from this film so popular and popular among the people? (Except that only about "Echo" sometimes something out there somewhere sounds.)
But here every song - what a song, little aria! - I repeat, since childhood penetrates me literally to goosebumps all over my body. Had I lived at the end of the twentieth century, I would have run around all the famous music stalls in search of a record. Today I would not hesitate to upload to the playlist, or the pleasure of listening to them outside the context of the film – today it is not that much to listen to the song, the film at any time you can turn on!
And so under the light and at the same time heartfelt music at every moment, under the brilliant songs on the skin, adult eyes, adult brains of a sophisticated moviegoer, I pass this film through each time with indescribable sensations. It gives me much more pleasure than when I was a child. I love him more than "Cap" and "Buratino."
Yeah. It is individual, with the music, with the picture itself. I'm my viewer here. “You’ll always find your viewer” – sounded in another film, also one of my favorites. Once again, the question of truth and truth is exactly the truth.
And for me there is Hoffman’s fairy tale “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” and Tchaikovsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker”; there is Hertz’s drama “King René’s Daughter” and Tchaikovsky’s opera “Iolanta”; there is Ekholm’s story “Tutta Carlson the First and the Only, Ludwig the Fourteenth, etc.” and Nechaev’s film “Red, Honest, in Love.”
C'est la vie
I have always appreciated Nechaev’s work. He and Alexander Rowe are the storytellers of my childhood. But if Rowe's films are completely magical, it's as if they were shot right in a fairy tale. The paintings of Nechaev, on the contrary - like reality, in which suddenly revealed fabulous details and characters.
Although I like many of Nechaev’s films to one degree or another, Red, Honest, and Lover stands apart. Perhaps in terms of content, it is the most capacious and at the same time the heaviest. When I was a kid, I was just afraid to watch this movie, because it was so frustrating. I was afraid and watched.
No wonder. The topic that is central to it, to put it mildly, is not childish. If you like, this is a variation of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot theme – is it possible to be just a good person among people, without reservations and stretches.
Dostoevsky’s answers are too bleak, but perhaps Prince Myshkin was simply unlucky. He was largely disliked. And Ludwig was lucky. It turns out that you can be such a person, you can find strength and get out of the abyss of despair, and strength is drawn from the Mystery of the Color of the Orange.
However, here the parallels can be drawn not only with the "Idiot". I think of Oliver Twist and Romeo and Juliet, and those are just aspects of that story. Even for a sophisticated viewer, this is not easy.
However, although the theme in the film is not raised childish, but the manner of presentation is such that the problem becomes clear to children. In fact, the director confronts the young audience with the real adult world through the prism of the perception of the child. A child who somehow managed not to adopt the values of the people around him. And although there are absolutely no naturalistic details in the whole story, it still turns out to be very convex and sharp. In it, scene after scene, contradictions arise, each of which gives a painful injection to the child's consciousness - one that has not yet had time to appreciate the value of impenetrable curtains. And the story of child (!) love here is also very sharp.
What's the point of Ludwig explaining to Tutte why he's sick after a cunning escape from Maximilian? It is no longer just an inclination to be honest or an inability to lie. It is the presentation of the concept of dharma, the inner law and sense of justice.
Traditional for Nechaev’s films, the merit of the picture is acting, including children’s work. Usually they talk about Filozov, Trofimov, Vasilyeva and Miroshnichenko. I won’t say anything, these are high-class acting works, Filozov’s work is just on the verge of reincarnation in the Fox. But I would like to mention those who, for some reason, are not mentioned.
First of all, the whole Larsson fox family turned out very well. This would not be the case if it were not for the children. In principle, they all coped, but a special charm fox family give sister Kutepova. Although they have small roles, they helped create an atmosphere.
Secondly, for some reason, it is not customary to celebrate Tutta Karlsson. In my opinion, however, the character turned out to be very capacious and it was played by Maria Yakhontova surprisingly well. At least not worse than Denis Zaitsev in the role of Ludwig. They really deserve each other in this movie.
Of course, the songs should be mentioned separately. Both music and lyrics. In Nechaev’s paintings, this component is always high. But, in my opinion, it was in this film that he reached the top in the work of the director, although he did not gain such popularity as the songs from Buratino and About Red Riding Hood. Not only “The Orange Color Mystery,” but the song about Echo and the song “Maybe I’m Wrong...” are just great, and others are quite worthy. These songs and music also give a lot to the film, not only in terms of creating an atmosphere, but also in terms of content.
I watch this movie from time to time, now with my kids. I hope when they grow up, they take something out of here for themselves. Now it hurts less to see this picture, I already have curtains. But on some songs I still choke on tears.
10 out of 10
In my opinion, Leonid Nechaev is the most underrated domestic film director.
He is perceived by the audience - and in vain - only as a children's storyteller. But Nechaev created “The Imaginary Sick”, “Teacher” and in addition – several more works, quite suitable for viewing by both children and adults. Among them, I venture to name even this at first glance a purely children's film.
Nechayev and the playwright Polonsky managed to be much ahead of their time, as if they felt in that distant 1984 the decline of the era of state paternalism and began, trying not to be late, to prepare us, children, for the advent of the kingdom of freedom, in which, as we now well know, crooks and swindlers of all stripes live with such comfort.
What is the most important thing in our new kingdom? Yes, to be yourself, even if it hits all the innumerable beasts every minute!
Among the many advantages of the film, I want to note the acting works of Filozov, Nikolai Trofimov, Miroshnichenko; once again Nechaev brilliantly managed to solve the painful task of finding a young talent for the main role. Brilliant intricate script, honestly speaking, even with a young audience, about the difficulties and contradictions of life; a precious find - the image of a wise, but nevertheless deeply wrong owl - this great connoisseur of the omnipotence of curtains.
Sometimes you just feel something not quite accurate in the image of a hedgehog (the actor’s interpretation does not look optimal) and, I think, the naturalistic costumes of a rooster and a chicken do not fit into the glorious Nechaev style at all – here I, frankly, was waiting for a very unpleasant surprise: it is quite difficult to perceive these characters. Perhaps a little weak mama hare. By warning the chickens of danger, Ludwig XIV frames his brother-aggressor. Unfortunately, the talented playwright failed to properly mitigate this serious conflict.
Polonsky is a very responsible artist and one can imagine how difficult it was for him to decide to take over the writing of poems (apparently, Derbenov and Entin were busy). Fortunately, he took the risk, and we all ended up winning a lot. And a wonderful song about the “mystery of the color of an orange” became one of the main decorations of the picture.
“The sun is full of the head,” said one famous artist on a very happy day. It seems to me that after watching the picture, every normal viewer will experience something similar.
The magic of a work of art is that you want to come back to it again and again. And in this fairy tale I want to plunge my mind and heart even after many, many years.
“He will not learn to cheat, he will not grow up!” sounds a cruel warning from the lips of burnt foxes and foxes to the young orange-colored – or even the sun – waving a school briefcase, running across the soft forest cover, coming up with a rhyme to the word “lies.” Crumpled notebooks on cunning, thrown a textbook on deception, shut the door to the alma mater of liars. Ludwig the Fourteenth, the youngest in a family of hereditary scoundrels, does not want to live as “should”: to shrug, cheat, lead by the nose. The established order of things, in which all animals and beasts fit so well, the untranslatable, but intuitively understandable "seeds," saturates his soul. There is turkey, to cover with sheep’s skin, to seek profit in the suffering of the weak and trusting – tired. A daring, ringing "Fooled up!" auking in three pines. A resentful, bitter "Maybe I'm a fool," rustling in needles under my feet. And a sharp realization: not grown - no, not grown - there, inside, but remained and beats.
A metaphor that turns equally well to a small viewer in front, and to an adult - backwards, is as rare in cinema as in life - a hut on chicken legs. Compromises made by the creators of modern children's films would leave Georgy Polonsky bewildered. It seems that the screenwriter playfully, at his leisure, collected from the fairy tales of the Swedish writer Jan Olof Ekholm a universal story about a rebel (if you like – the Chosen One) going against the system. The second bottom is skillfully hidden in every dialogue, in every song, in every detail of clothing and interior. Where children empathize with a peer who wants to be honest, and wonder with interest what next, adults – sprouted with rotten doubt, beaten with a hail of ridicule, wrapped in a mold of excuses – experience a real resurrection.
It is impossible not to believe a boy with brilliant eyes, either from tears or from the light of truth. The wayward child whose questions are so piercingly naive is so gracefully natural. A noble knight whose convictions are made of diamond. Such Ludwigs are in each of us: red flash, hot trepidation, persistent echo. "I'm going to do my best." And the matrix crumbles into zeros and ones, and the conventional forest is filled with animal cries. Indignant teachers, upset parents, cynically mocking brothers and sisters. The first part of the film draws characters and denotes problems: the animal community is represented in all its rigidity and deliberately exaggerated typicality. In the absence of any visual effects and expensive costumes, the actors turned a children’s morning party with dance songs into a feeling – on each note – a story about preserving yourself. Here, people play beasts to eventually capture human experiences. The old owl, like a worn record, pulls its dreary motif and hides from the world behind plush curtains. Hedgehog Niels builds theories of revolutions and conspiracies, but in fact he can only prick from resentment and crawl under a stone. A housewife bunny locks the children at home - away from red skanks - and know it sculpts cabbage pies. What will become of the young idealist in this age-old forest of delusion? Is it not dangerous to run away from home, having only a rhyme behind the sinus, and in fellow travelers - only their own echo?
In the second part, the story is ruled by the plot: an honest fox (“Co-ko-ko-koi?”) gets into the henhouse. The conflict of trust and prejudice (" And how do you know why I came?), the freckles of first love appear on children's faces, are bound - with their own hand-wearing chains of friendship - by the heart of the watchdog and the slandered prisoner of circumstances. The problems so often hanging in a dead loop in psychological dramas, in this children's fairy tale are presented with all sharpness - except that without naturalistic cruelty. The danger lies in the yellow feathers scattered at the secret hole in the fence, in the kind grumble of Maximilian, lamenting the dog life, in the sinister promise of Man to smoke all red beasts from his burrows.
But goodness doesn't end. Still fighting in there. It bursts out with poems, sometimes so sad songs. Once inside the soul, it lives there forever. And so the hunt for foxes - as part of the plot - ends at dawn, without having time to lead to tragic consequences. And hope stretches out a thin web in the morning fog. And Ludwig, in arm with sunny Tutta Carlson, walks on dew. Red, honest, in love.