I love these movies, as if they were in life. They, like a drop of water, reflect our recent history: on one pole – suddenly rich former Komsomol members, on the other – just as suddenly impoverished and moved to the class of servants, representatives of the Soviet intelligentsia, and between them – crowds reconciling new values.
The film is deep and true. It doesn't have black and white heroes. Everyone is interesting and paradoxical.
The heroine Ii Savina, prickly and inhospitable at first, turns out to be a man with a big heart. And her son is a strange, restless musician with whom she constantly argues and who, with his skepticism, tries to cool her ardor, also turns out to be right in his own way.
Amazing is the main character of the film – Nastya. I have never seen this actress anywhere else. I don’t think she’s an actress at all. It seems that the filmmakers first met her in life. We were surprised by its purity and originality, its absolute fullness of being, which absorbs the bitterness of the illness of a nephew, for whose operation there is no money, and the joy of creativity, and the calm acceptance of the demands and whims of a rich employer.
We were surprised and decided to make a film about her. They wrote the script and persuaded her to play herself. I have no idea how to achieve such a degree of certainty. .
Nastya is completely devoid of selfishness. Because it serves Music. What for others is emptiness, silence, nonsense, for Nastya is a deep, mysterious and incomprehensible world. It is not tempted by its superficial, vain part.
The oxymoron “Listening to Silence” sets the viewer to go beyond the ordinary. A film about how one clean man changes the world around him. Returns to others what they lost in the pursuit of ghostly happiness, the memory of the main thing in themselves. And the desire to reconnect with your soul.
And the metamorphoses that occurred at the end of the film with the main character - a cynical and saturated businessman, played by Dmitry Maryanov, are perceived as absolutely natural, gratifying and irreversible.
It's also about how much we've changed. Because time already feels like the past.
I saw the picture, like many others, quite by accident - I came across it in some rating.
In my opinion, the film is not about music and not about a provincial who came to conquer Moscow, and not about an oligarch who foolishly burns his life. A picture of participation and compassion, where the suffering mother of a sick child, so earthly and real, is contrasted with a refined lady composer, denying everything but pure art. She denies life itself. How coldly she tells the main character Nastya that the problems are problems, but it is impossible to be late for a music lesson, because this is the main thing in her life. She is demanding to the point of tyranny, including herself. This is what prevented her from becoming great. And it turned perhaps the talented composer Robert into a useless alcoholic. That is why he tells Nastya with such desperation: 'Go, love, live!'.
Nastya doesn't. Why, because music is really the main thing, it is what it lives, what it breathes. Even love is secondary, less important, less interesting. Nastya is ready to abandon it, and it even gives her relatively easy.
But everything changes when a child dies in the hospital. An alien child, but his own, dear, is also here, and can also die at any second. The realization of this turns the whole world of Nastya upside down. And now she is sitting on the edge of the oligarch’s bed and, swallowing tears, begging him for money. And does it really matter that the oligarch is in love with her? For her, it is still a deal - love in exchange for money.
That's why she's leaving. Drops his music, drops his mentor. Their final dialogue is perhaps one of the film's best scenes. It most clearly traces the main message, which I spoke about at the beginning of my review - the contrast between life and pure art.
The film is also interesting because everyone can see something in it. Someone, perhaps, will see a love story, someone - the story of a collapsed power, symbolized by the rotting skeletons of once mighty ships, someone - the story of a tormented and desperate woman, one of many of her own kind, useless, unprotected, struggling from the last strength. The film has many meanings, many layers, and all this is not moralizing, which is also an undoubted plus of the picture.
In general, I definitely recommend watching. You won't regret it!
Everywhere the principles of non-interference.
Instead of gold, they melt tin.
But there is a good thing:
I love you, that's great.
Nikolai Noskov
Not everyone can resist temptation. Someone closes his eyes, turns away, pretends as if he did not notice, and someone succumbs and makes an insecure step towards, licking parched lips. A modest guest from sunny Uzbekistan could only dream of playing the piano, and, being alone with the instrument by chance, she saw a lacquered piece of her love. A delicate, fragile, tender feeling in Nast would be enough for ten – a composer’s talent arrived for cutting in the walls of the Moscow Conservatory. However, a callous reality in the face of a grumpy admissions committee has adjusted plans, and the grief of an older sister nursing a sick son has defied idealistic dreams. Nastya saw a completely different life, full of pain, bitterness and indifference. New rules have to be studied externally, and a discovery awaits: rapid rhythms of the heart, it turns out, set not only symphonies.
In the center of the plot is a very simple, unpretentious story, capable, not without reservations, to adventure in reality. The picture is not distinguished by complex directorial dialectics, rigid connotations or soulless formalism. There is something else: a slight touch of fabulousness, not in the least obscure the discouraging contrast between the worlds for the poor and the rich, and the overlap of melodic phenomenon with an explanatory feeling. According to the laws of the sentimental genre, sympathy is born between the simpleton-self-taught and the businessman-lovelas. Nastya and Dmitry belong to parallel dimensions: in the first people care, affection and support, in the second – loyalty, benefit and calculation. The housekeeper and the respectable owner have very little in common, they live with different worries, and if a girl cannot live without music, then she rather interferes with a man. A piano standing in a prominent place is like an altar of dreams, to which a person turns from an unbearable desire to be heard. "Play, angel!" cries cheerfully forgotten about time Nastya drunk in smoke maiden, who is destined to become another notch on the oligarchic tree. And the angel will play — last, until he gives way to the rapidly growing provincial.
The screened Moscow is not just glamour and big money. It is also a poor life for those who are much less fortunate. The decoration of the children's clinic, where desperate mothers can not pay for operations for their children, for the hundredth time reminds of the vicissitudes of fate and what selfless love looks like. For five years, the older sister Nastya is trying to cure the child, while someone spends leisure on yachts, eats in restaurants and changes foreign cars every six months. Of course, death is the same for everyone, but even it is more willing to invade disadvantaged families, splitting hearts from suffering. There is no justice in the world, but is there any kindness left? Director Kasatkin with his film gives an affirmative answer, and the magnificent acting ensemble echoes him. Dmitry Maryanov transformed the stencil type of a high-aged major into a very charming and not the most ugly person in the world. Alina Sergeeva is beautiful in the role of a simpleton with a golden heart and a mature mind, and most of all Maria Zvonareva is remembered as a persistent mother whose accusatory monologue in the investigator’s office is a slap in the face of an arrogant society where too many have forgotten how to understand and compassion. So far from being called playful and sweet, how true and natural were the images of the characters, each of which can be found a prototype.
What about the music? It is certainly beautiful, sublime and touching. It must be listened to, felt and perceived. Only a few are capable of this, and it is no coincidence that such a severe disposition went to the heroine Ia Savvina, an elderly teacher who brings a nugget. The teacher does not give descent to anyone, including himself, sincerely believing that only the rejection of the harsh prose of circumstances allows one to merge with art, becoming part of it. The theory is beautiful and fair in its own way. But what remained unthinkable for the most experienced mentor was available to the creators of the bright film: silence is no worse than music. Not every one, but the one we enjoy when we contemplate the serene sky, the sleeping child, or the skeleton of the ship on whose bridge the old captain was keeping watch. I want to listen to that silence endlessly. And trust the hopes that the unfulfilled happiness will manifest in something else, and the coming new day will give the meeting with the dream.
' Listening to silence' I looked at my aunt's advice. In fact, I rarely trust the tastes of other people, but this film brought me a logical link of things. It all started with the fact that I subscribed to uznews on Instagram. Once flipping through the tape, I came across the record ' flamingos flew to Lake Sudochye' I was wildly impressed by this and I added Sudochye to the list 'mast visit' and in the meantime, I made approximate routes to the west of Uzbekistan and read the notes of travelers. So I found out about Muynak and saw surreal pictures of rusty ships. Muynak also made my list. In fact, it became a dream that may not come true, but warms. I told my aunt about it, and she remembered about ' listening to silence'. I couldn’t help but look after the mention of Muynak, and the title of the film is very catchy.
I like silence. To make TV and gadgets work less, so that people talk less. So that my thoughts flow smoothly one after the other. No revolution, no rebellion. Just keep quiet and think about something simple. My dad and I were walking along the lake for half an hour. It was good. And in this story, a state of silence helped the main character Nasta compose music. She grew up in the quiet Muynak, where once there was a sea. Very sensual, vulnerable, clean, as if inside her porcelain world, where you need to walk very carefully. And he plays in the same way, maybe not quite professionally, maybe provincially (as critics said), but sincerely, transparently, from the heart.
She finds herself in an environment where she is considered naive, exploits her simplicity, tramples her fragile little world with rough shoes.
It’s a very sad story about how much noise and dirt there is, especially in big cities. And how hard it is to stay clean, especially someone like Nastya. It’s definitely not a success story or a movie where you want to live or your brain explodes. But light, melancholy and filled with beautiful, from the point of view of the operator, shots. I even took screenshots of some moments and added to the folder 'composition'.
I remember when I was 14, I gave my father two CDs. 'Mermaid' Anna Melikyan and 'Listening to Silence' Kasatkina. And so in my 19th I quite accidentally remembered him and I wanted to reconsider, as the plot I did not remember.
A pure and immaculate girl faces a choice between something sublime and something far removed from the pressing and harsh reality of life. Her soul is like that of a child. Naive and fragile.
Arriving from a distant hinterland to the capital, she believes that all people - ' people of the world', but quickly dispels his assumptions.
This picture reminded me something 'Amelie' but within the framework of Russian realities and within the framework of Russian (as it seems to me already classical Russian) cinema. Sad, sublime and inspiring.
A separate place in the film plays the soundtrack. I do not take into account any club tasteless tracks that surfaced in some shots. Namely music. She is so beautiful that it seems that you are this fragile girl who stands with her back to the camera and touches her velvet young skin.
Also noted color correction and the work of the operator. Some of the individual images are incredibly beautiful. Overall, the picture is very tasteful. I liked that the pictures were short. And there were quite a few dramatic interesting solutions.
The film causes more positive emotions than negative ones, if only because after watching the film ' Day of radio' for the most part was sure that Dmitry Maryanov will cope with his role with a bang.
Probably, as in any melodrama, there is nothing that could prevent us from getting to the meaning of this picture, but at the same time the film makes us think that we live in a world of pain, cruelty and tears.
The main character from childhood overcame the hardships given to her by fate, and at the same time her soul was in a state of balance, because she heard music in silence, but the big city took away this ability from her, you can not live here as a free artist. Moscow makes our souls stale. So Nastya, having learned the imperfection of the world, where every day children die, no longer hears music.
7 out of 10
There was such a fun children's cartoon "Volt". There, a battered street life cat teaches a pretty dog to get food - make puppy eyes, wag his ponytail, cheerfully tilt his muzzle - and melted hearts of people will provide a piece of sausage daily. In principle, the genre of melodrama is also worked out over centuries ways to evoke ordinary human feelings - sentimentality, tenderness, sadness. Feelings rare in everyday life, and therefore revered for light. Especially for the mistresses of the television screen, our beloved women. Bollywood charges with dances from unhappy love, Latin American TV series extinguish unshared passion with blazing heat, domestic paintings are sad about provincial women and sick children. And then there's Hachiko and the Twilight Saga.
"Listening to silence" accumulated a triple system of penetration into the shower pantry. The immortal story of Cinderella, a dying child, pure music. A naive orphan girl comes from the outback to enter the capital's conservatory. Sacrificing eternal music, she saves her nephew by giving him her kidney. And the prince, well, businessman, where to recruit all the aristocrats, Dmitry Maryanov (quite loaded, I must say) sees that money, vodka and women will bring him to the zugunder or bullet in the back of the head, and there is still spring love in stalled shoes. In general, only a cynic can throw a stone at a picture, and even that of the male sex.
The heroine of debutante Alina Sergeeva is hardworking and unquestioning, looks at the world with two lakes of bottomless harmony, which is not confused by patches on clothes and the cold of others. Every day in the hospital is like a miracle. The rich have their own problems with small pearls. An old teacher (one of the last roles of Ia Savvina) desperately tries to replace the world with piano suites. A handsome investigator is ready to tear up a sewn case for justice. And everything seems right, and tragic, and lyrical, and painful.
But, women, girls and a few percent of particularly sentimental representatives of the strong half will forgive me, all this was according to the laws of the genre and not a step to the side. I had no doubt that the bourgeois, evil on the outside and good on the inside, would split with his passions for the sake of the undisturbed Nastenka, a composer from whom, of course, would not work. And all will be well, the bullet will not reach, the suffering mother will find peace, and so on. Of course, it could happen differently, but other genres (drama, tragedy) have already been allocated for this. We can be a little happy for our heroes, to worry about them. Also slightly. It is unlikely that they will remember not what, in a week, in a couple of days, displaced by other events, fictional and real.
But there are works that leave a much deeper trace in the mind, and, for this, acting is not necessary. Think of the “Girl with Matches” or the “Grave of Fireflies.” Having been vaccinated with these, not so childish, cartoons, you can already more calmly follow the vicissitudes of a provincial musician or the experiences of a rude nouveau riche.
Director Alexander Kasatkin, like many of his colleagues, could not subsequently surpass this debut film. Having shot about a dozen more snaps (the almanac “Moscow, I Love You!” was used poorly, where the young filmmaker had five minutes on duty), he predictably dissolved among other producers of serial melodramatic paste. The years are short and everything happens.
And while classical music pours from under the fingers of our Cinderella, and thousands of women wish good to a modest girl, habitually trying on themselves in her place. Former romantic Alik Raduga (there was such a children's film with Presnyakov singles) stubbornly turns his Mercedes and flies to his fate. And they'll be fine.
Since I have already decided on five films for my program, I can now see what other festival participants have found. So, the March Russian program really interested me. From there I saw only Alexander Gordon's "Lights of the Dinner". I will definitely get to know the other films later. And I will start, perhaps, with this work Alexander Kasatkina.
I wonder why there is a melodrama in the graph? Usually everyone has an association with a love movie in the first place, which can be misleading for some viewers. It's an author's drama. More profound than the next fairy tale about the provincial Cinderella who went to conquer the capital. This Cinderella is not looking for a prince and does not want to get married. She's just making music. In our time, natural talent is not enough. If you want to live, you can spin. Naive Nastya will hear in the capital not invented music, but the real melody of life. These motifs are not always beautiful and romantic, but they catch on much more. Look at what happened to the main character.
Well, I strongly disagree with the opinion Nasty. There are things in the world that are more important than movies and music, but how would we live without art? I don't think it's useless. If you think about the fact that every minute in the world someone dies or needs something, you can go crazy. Yes, it does not bring us material help (I am not talking about commercial projects that are created for the sake of future profit), but it helps us spiritually. The problem with Nastya is that she saw the world through rose-colored glasses that broke when she arrived in the capital. You can't be so naive. It is impossible to remain a Turgenev lady in the XXI century. I don’t know what disappointed her more, love or circumstances. I hope it's the second.
I was more hooked by my sister's line Nasty. That's an interesting image. Yeah, rough and sharp. But life made her that way. Would you have done otherwise in her place? I like the quote Elizabeth Stone: “God can’t go everywhere at the same time, so he created mothers.” I was very impressed by the game Dmitry Maryanov. I just believed him. An amazing tune they played together with the main character. I'll be looking for the soundtrack. But I didn’t really like Alina Sergeeva. I didn't believe her. Not because she didn’t play well, but because the character is theatrical. But I liked the ending. Everyone will choose the final to their taste. I already did. Now it's your turn. And the most important thing is to listen not to music or silence, but to your own heart.
7 out of 10