The story of the national hero and his role in the life of the people About the “Big rear” of the 80th year of release, I constantly heard judgments bearing something like this idea: “The rear is a psychedelic Soviet experimental animation with an overwhelming amount of unjustified cruelty and unclear narrative motives.”
And with the same frequency talk about the cartoon and without the last statement about his motives, just savoring the very presentation of the author.
I saw a complete and complete story about a proud little people and what gave them the strength to continue the struggle for survival (Historical reference: the island of Saaremaa, on which the film takes place, suffered attacks from several powerful medieval states at once: Livonia, Latgale, Germany, the Danish kingdoms because of its wealth and its location in the middle of all the above powers). Tyll himself plays the role of a hero-rich man understandable to any Russian person, which considers it his duty to help his native people in everything he can. The reverse image is the impious Vanapaghan, which, on the contrary, only harms the population of the island. Taking into account the role of this creature in Estonian folklore, its very color in the cartoon, it can be assumed that here he plays the role of a defector, assisting the invaders. The main and only task of Vanapaghan is to “mow down” Tull, depriving the Estonians of their leader, but all his attempts to break the hero by meanness and deception are in vain, because Tyll himself is a real example of moral imitation (for the people he protects, of course), that despite all the serious losses from the machinations of the unclean did not fall from grief and continued to serve his vocation.
But the role of the image of Tyll acquires a real price precisely when his tribesmen, inspired by the selflessness and courage of their elder, make the first attempts to continue his work with their own hands, more and more successfully repelling the attacks of foreigners (compare the first battle with the second and the very behavior of the defenders in them, feel the difference). And it is this temper, received by the people of Saaremaa from Tylle, that makes it the “Greatest” in the history of the island.
In my review, I did not fully describe the whole semantic subtext of the cartoon, but only its main skeleton. I hope that people who are thinking and interested in the question will soon find it for me, and not once again write about it as a “psychedel”.