It was the '90s - and nobody was to blame. . . With the collapse of the Soviet Union, film production died. And what was left, and it was a shame to watch, was not like being in it. All the more valuable are the few glimpses of really films, and not the next two-hour issues of the program 'Criminal Russia', which were often based on the naked enthusiasm of the creators. Well, what if cinema is also a cast of the era, a reflection of its inherent mentality? This will be discussed below.
'Friend of the Dead' - a joint Ukrainian-French film, the film adaptation of Andrei Kurkov's novel "Dear Friend, Comrade of the Dead". Filmed entirely by Ukrainians and Russians in Kiev. Without a foreign investor, it was difficult. In the center of the plot is the translator Anatoly, a typical Soviet intellectual who did not find himself in the new era and a typical hero of cinema of that time. He is both handsome (played by Alexander Lazarev Jr.), and not stupid, but how much is paid to a philologist in a market economy? So the beautiful wife got to her nose and took off to a colleague who has a red car (oh, those fatal guys in red cars!), and who gave a cell phone! Then Anatoly finally understands that his life has no meaning and is unlikely to appear at all - and decides to die. But here's...
Initially, the film can cause boredom: the hero just walks, talks on the phone, looks for a hack, silently watches how he loses his wife, etc. Yes, in this rather primitive way we are shown the amoeba of its existence. But then, perhaps for the first time in his life, he commits an act, albeit very strange, and gets into a real whirlpool of events. Of which will come out, of course, the winner - strange, illogical, but Ivanushka the fool always wins?
Now to the first paragraph - about the mentality of the era. Her aspirations and aspirations. It is funny, but the plots of many post-Soviet films are surprisingly similar: the main character is just a good person, because he did not fit into new times, unexpectedly for himself gets into the events of a criminal and adventurous nature - and no less suddenly comes out of them as a winner, and even the owner of money and power (often, and by that, both then meant crime). And goodness and conscience suddenly evaporate somewhere. Purely killed the Dragon becomes them. ' Lokh - winner of water' with Kuryokhin - exactly from the same opera. In the 90s, as you know, the slogan ': Who was nobody, he will become everything ' became the motto of the time. The fact that on the way to success it is usually necessary to suck out tons of shit, or you can even lose your head, tried not to think. No, you just have to be good, and fate will thank you for it. Alas, it is true that many believed - and cruelly paid for it.
Returning to, in fact, our 'Friend of the deceased'. He's clearly hero-centric. And, in my opinion, tall and handsome Lazarev Jr. is not quite appropriate in the role of such a nerd-intellectual - well, it's true, it's hard to believe that such, albeit a loser, can be abandoned. But he played well nonetheless. The rest are more like furniture. The camera work is simple, the musical accompaniment is quite banal. The arch of the hero, I repeat, in the spirit of the era, but it is too stilted. Well, thanks at least once again to a beautiful wife, a charming child and an apartment with European renovation. Well, an experienced mistress, I guess. What do you think of yesterday’s unemployed intellectual? Oh, yes, about the possibility of abruptly growing from a nerd into a master of fate! From ' Loha...' in ' Buddy...' and the truth is quite a lot: the meditativeness of the narrative, the sympathetic Glasger - and the question is, should one always let yesterday's slave become master? The era of the 90s answered it unequivocally.
7 out of 10.