A museum that doesn't exist I saw the film at the festival “Russia” in Yekaterinburg.
And if literally the day before I had not swallowed Brodsky’s monologues in the five-part film of the channel Culture, I would hardly have ventured in the middle of the day to break out on this two-hour narrative. But he came out and did it for good reason.
First, timekeeping is justified. The camera for several months, together with the repair team, participates in the restoration of the apartment where Brodsky lived with his parents. This is a communal apartment, in one of the rooms of which the neighbor of the Brodsky family still lives (therefore, a full-fledged museum is still not open - the neighbor turns out to be from all proposals for resettlement and does not give the opportunity to transfer the apartment to a non-residential fund).
Gradually and almost imperceptibly, she becomes (perhaps contrary to the original intention of the authors) the main character of the film.
First, she gets into the frame as if by accident (here she takes the readings of meters, here she is going to the store), then, as if familiarized, checks the work of the builders, carefully examines the brickwork, which separates her room from the future museum, dives with the builders. She's restrained, but she's categorical. “Old age is when you stop being considered.” The work goes on, the museum opens for one day, with a temporary exhibition.
The poet's daughter, Anna, is coming. The camera follows Nina Vasilievna, who looks at what is happening in the yard from the second floor window: “Is this his daughter?”. Anna walks around the room, examines the exhibits, takes a few bars on the piano, communicates through an interpreter.
One and a half thousand people passed through the “room and a half” that day. Repairs have resumed, the ceilings are being changed. Nina Vasilyevna argues again - now with a representative of the foundation. “You don’t even have registration, you are a rolling field, today you are here, and tomorrow you are in another place, in another city.”
They sit against each other in the midst of construction junk. “Now I will find a poem dedicated to you...” – and the young man plays a recording from his smartphone. Brodsky's voice reads "Don't leave the room..." This is the last shot of the film.
On the way out of the hall I was caught by two girls with a recorder. “Do you think she’s right or not?”
There was nothing to say. Nina Vasilievna is the same part of the Brodsky Museum that does not exist. By and large, we are all neighbors in the communal area. And somehow we have to live with it. That's second.