Anthology of betrayal or any analogy is always false.
I watched the film Fountain after the review and comparison with the Bykovsky Fool.
And stunned.
Now that we are able to assess the consequences, it creates in me anger and rage, which I have not felt in a long time.
That's good. Probably talented.
But this is pure propaganda. As an analogy, the filmmakers give us absolutely false allusions to the Soviet system.
I will never believe that the elite of the union did not undermine and prepare society for the collapse. This film is the clearest proof of that. Under the pretext of cinema, the viewer is smothered with false images and directly permeated with hatred of the common Soviet home. Sticking thrash-life, which could exist on the periphery under the metaphor of the family of peoples and the Soviet hostel.
Abominable toxic individual types of characters, such as can be found in your yard, and which are poisoning everyday life, added to the film to further transfer the emotion of domestic irritation to the whole country.
All mixed in a wild cocktail leading to one thing - the desire to burn the whole Soviet system and rebuild it anew.
The more I look at the work of the late '80s, the more I am convinced that propaganda in art was planned. Resources were thrown into this: both human, intellectual, financial, and the entire state machine. I also remember the cultural background of that time: Change, we wait for change, Here's a new twist, Wind of change.
And this movie predicted the collapse. Prepared, accelerated and made inevitable.
Feelings of hatred and disgust towards authors. It's like I just had my car stolen or my wallet pulled out.
They did it stupidly and clumsily, like thimble crooks, like gypsies. We've got a roll and there's no country.
It is disgusting and empty inside from viewing. not because of the film. the film performs its task on 5+. It's because society is acting like suckers. And we have to fix it now.
I wish you were assholes. You bastards! I'd love to win!
For some creators, perestroika is a freedom in which you can create things far from art and stuff your works with them, for others - an opportunity to raise the Aesop language to a new level and still speak not in the forehead, but not in the forehead about very much and with a different presentation. These are the movies of the mother. “Fountain” is an amazing phantasmagoria, but everything, literally everything in this film, I’m sure, could have happened in reality. Even the flight of a violinist on improvised wings.
Many in this film see a satire on the collapsed in every sense of the Union. But Mamin would not be a master if the plot was based on such a rather ingenious method, if not primitive. It seems to me that the motive of the picture is timeless. I didn't live in the USSR. In fact, 1988 is a long way from me. But I watch The Fountain and learn a lot of familiar things, phenomena. And not all of this is even expressible in words, this is something, as correctly noted in one of the reviews above, is read subconsciously. After all, absurdity and strangeness, I think, are not only comical, but also frightening. They are frightened by the fact that they are sometimes inexplicable with reasonable words, and that what a person cannot explain and understand arouses his interest and wariness. And so, stunned by this strange effect - the influence of humor and nonsense - you freeze before, in general, the usual picture - the life of a typical Soviet high-rise building, in which, among other things, the roof is at risk of collapse.
History at first glance and really banal - everyday life, current problems. After all, the roof did not suddenly begin to collapse (how appropriate were banners with party slogans). And the fountain in the yard did not suddenly clog. What is there, the railing - and they are tied with wire so as not to collapse into the span inadvertently. We'll do it tomorrow, someday. Until the thunder comes, the rooster will not bite or the father-in-law will not block the faucet and will not lock himself in the basement.
The final scene will be cleaner than the dance of the oprichniki from Ivan the Terrible.
The most interesting thing is that with all the main characters in the film, showing one of their stories would not be enough for the film to take place. Therefore, we are shown such nuggets as a flower glider (just kidding, grow several hundred tulips in a Leningrad apartment in winter!), the heiress of the poet Petrishchev with his marvelous poems (you can admire the fragment in the title of the review), an inspired hang-glider, and, of course, housing workers, officials, caricatured and ridiculous. All this, however it may sound, is a portrait of an era that, in fact, has not gone so far from us. Some of the deeper things, the spirit and the atmosphere remain for quite a long time, just painted over by the events of the new reality.
“Fountain” is probably not the best film of Mamin, but one thing is for sure – with him he broke into the domestic cinema very brightly and brought a sweet mud in it, where non-obvious, sometimes black humor is designed to show, oddly enough, that very mysterious Russian soul. But most likely the director will show it in his other film.
9 out of 10
In Fountain, as in Bull's Fool, a collapsing house becomes a model of a country that is about to collapse, but everyone only talks and talks, not wanting to do anything. The seriousness of the topics raised turns this film Mamin more into a drama than a comedy: there are not so many funny situations, and the “devastation in the heads” causes more frenzy than laughter. As later in “Window to Paris”, the acting duo of Drayden and Mikhailov is designed to show a purely “perestroika” conflict of intelligence and rudeness: two employees of the housing and communal services are trying to stop the irreversible process of destruction of the house. Secondary characters (like a home gardener) would have to look colorful, but look faded: even a hang-glider composer, though bright, and scenes associated with him, are transparent in their allegory, yet it could well be removed without compromising the content.
Also, a guest from Central Asia (I honestly don’t know whether Kirghiz or Kazakh) with his foreign speech looks like a spectacular reproach to the occupants of the house who do not want to save their common home. In The Fountain, Mamin wanted to contrast traditional culture, blown up in the prologue by “Sovietism”, with the socialist system where everything is common and no one is responsible for anything. However, he did not quite succeed: speaking in all senses in different languages (long before the "Cuckoo") heroes can not come to a common denominator, so the conflict of traditional and modern is born. However, the grandfather-Kyrgyz (or Kazakh) falls out of the narrative for a long time, because such a serious conflict interferes with the comedic beginning of the film.
So struggling to make "Fountain" funny, Mamin eventually makes it a collection of sketches, fastened by a common intrigue: the result is neither funny nor quite serious. Always gravitating towards symbolism in cinema, Mamin will take into account his mistakes already in “Buckenbards”, where the allegory of the plot will become global up to dystopian, and the conflict of opposing forces will become not only conceptual, but also style.
They say someone else's soul is dark. I'd add mine, too. I’ve never written a review of a movie that I liked. And on the "Fountain", which I did not like, I wrote. Why? Answering that question is not easy. To do this, it is necessary, following the advice of the ancient Greeks, to first know oneself, that is, to understand what impulses one’s own brain obeys. Who wants to be self-aware? No one else.
In short, "Fountain." Those who lived (or rather survived) in perestroika, everything shown in the film will be painfully familiar. In their brain and then bright rays will flash retrospective memories. The film involves: general devastation, alcoholism, communal apartments, black and white TVs, sewerage breakthroughs, shortage of drugs in pharmacies and other heroes. The Fontana visual is extremely mediocre and without any claims to art at all: the camera simply shoots what is happening in the style of a household documentary. And I must say that this style, or rather, its absence, increases the degree of everyday reliability. This authenticity is diluted with symbolically funny moments: the hero speaks the Tatar language and everyone rapturously claps him without understanding a word; on the board of honor “The Best People” one of the best people is photographed behind bars; the heroes propped up sagging trumpets with posters about the successes of socialism. In other perestroika directors, such a panopticum, do not go to the fortune teller, would have an extremely gloomy appearance and morality would be predictably dull: there is no way out, get yourself killed by the wall, the end of the film. But Mamin, with all the realism of the picture still does not work really sad. You still feel some absolutely illogical and inexplicable unobtrusive positive. He's an amazing person.
But that positive is not enough! We need key scenes that divide the film into before and after. And Mamin for some reason does not know or does not want to highlight important moments. He is not trying to capture the viewer’s attention. The action in the Fountain flows in a monotonous pseudo-documentary stream, all scenes in which are completely equal in their influence. And only in the final, the undisguised burlesque finally breaks free, which previously flashed only spontaneously. And how it's off! Flying into the sky elevator, Rodchenko diagonals, bravura music - a real triumph of revolutionary socialist realism, in a parody, of course, form. But this burlesque is almost not felt, because the film by that time finally tired.
“Fountain” does not look quite decorated, it does not yet have a corporate mother’s style, which will be more clearly manifested in subsequent films.
In a house without tenants - you can not buy famous insects.
Kozma Prut
Wrecked by endless breakdowns and accidents, the Housing Committee enters the apartment of the famous poet Petrishchev ("A, B, B, G, D! If you were assholes). You bastards! It would be nice to win. We love nature, remember?, finds a failed corner and informs admirers of high art about the need to remove wallpaper and strengthen the wall. What immediately receives a verbal fountain of accusations of sacrilege and chronic Mankurtism (“On these wallpaper Ivan Fedorovich wrote immortal poems!”). The timid logical arguments of the communal workers were furiously silenced by the curvature and monkey dances of the bearded intelligentsia. The commission withdrew, the plaque sprawled into cracks.
The film “Fountain” (1989) by Yuri Mamin is Kamarinsky excited from the suddenly found pure oxygen creative intelligentsia of the end of perestroika. Now you do not need to know the Soviet Aesop language, hide figs in your pocket, wrap your thought in the sunset. Everything is simple: a collapsing house is a fatherland; people who patch the trishkin caftan of communal services are apologists for socialist transformations; stupefied residents who vote “for” and strengthen vodka with dichlophos (three pshikas – too much!) – population, the electorate; a musician hovering over the yard on homemade wings is an eternal art that does not depend on the century or apartment amenities. And with a dozen easily decipherable images, a game for the inquiring mind of readers of "Arguments and Facts" sample of the late eighties.
Of course, the black allegory immediately grabbed a heap of cinematic prizes at various festivals. Secondary, really, but multi-vector. Odessa, Gabrovo, Vevey, San Remo, Troy, Kemper, Clermont-Ferrand, Belfort, Torremolinos, Las Vegas. "Golden Cane", "Silver fishing net". Charged in the eyes of everyone, as from the abundance of "Cooruku", "Hershey" and "Yupi" slowly spreading around the country famous insect commercial kiosks. The farce of the colossus on plasterboard legs was appreciated all over the world, the director was noticed, and later helped financially in the production of paintings, where the heroes on the roofs run from dirty gray Leningrad to sunny Paris, where in every restaurant violinists drive a bow between their legs, and pianists play backwards to keys. And then Yuri Mamin, who believed in himself, has already independently created such works as “Sancho from the Ranch”, appreciate the harmony of the name, or the fantasy series “Russian Scarecrows”. You didn't? So let’s go back to our rams.
Is there really not a single positive among the panopticum of characters? Well, why not? Satybaldy Kerbabayevich Kerbababayev (Asankul Kuttubayev), Turkmen meliorator. Inviolable principles and beliefs. It does not matter that one against all – prayer directed to Mecca (for others – to the refrigerator) it does not interfere, leakage of precious water is prevented. Would many of us be able to live in a foreign country, among strangers? It doesn't work out among our own. Chief Utilities Engineer Lagutin (Sergey Drayden/Dontsov) is always dealing with state problems of small scale, and the house is still kept only on engineering supports. Florist Slavik (Anatoly Kalmykov), unlike yard biomass, is really busy with business, trying his hump to jump to a new level of prosperity. But the damage from these glorious heroes comes much more than from other poor fellow citizens. Aksakal destroys the whole poor order, throwing the court into chaos. Good intentions, as they say. The engineer, exhausted by fuss, receives as a reward only a reproach that because of his patches we flounder in the mud, it is crucial to solve issues, and not keep the bouldyg roof on the shoulders. Unlucky entrepreneur, slightly ahead of time, eventually destroys even what little he had.
Caressed at the time of release by critics and gourmets, the picture is now firmly dusted in the far corners of cinema consciousness. Sometimes it is shown on nostalgic channels, sometimes it is mentioned by bearded connoisseurs of the memory of the poet Petrishchev, sometimes for some reason it is weaved in tandem to the film of the same name by Darren Aronofsky. One-time it is interesting to see everyone, to review it is recommended for viewers over forty, who like to draw parallels with the present time and the period of their growing up. The rest, a very significant part will be crushed by the hopeless gloom of what is happening in the socialist leper colony. It's no thicker than the Fool or Leviathan smog, there's just chronistically less green grass.
A subtle, philosophical, ironic comedy. Absolutely ours. The actors don’t play, they live in this movie. I hate the movie, but I love watching this movie. There is something about our people that is beyond time.
The thesis about the talent and non-standardity of the Russian people and at the same time its amazing stupidity, which is now being exaggerated by M. Zadornov, is first shown and revealed in this film, and it is done unobtrusively, kindly, but in the LOB. At many points, laughter disassembles the Homeric. There is just a feeling of genius, as in the best films of M. Zakharov and L. Gaidai.
Yuri Mamin is a unique director, it is a pity that he does not shoot now: after the collapse of American toilet comedies and our pathetic imitations, they would have at least some breath of fresh air.