The topic of small nationalities, raised in film art long before the advent of the era of validation and inclusiveness, has gained unexpected relevance. Today, when the world has already invented these and many other terms designed to manifest the importance and necessity of each person, each social and national group; When deviation from a powerful majority is no longer an obstacle to normal life, and the term “minority” ceases to be an expletive. Today is the time to discover a magical little world almost buried under a thick layer of commerce and popular culture.
Alexei Fedorchenko’s film “Heavenly Wives of Meadow Marys”, based on the novel by Denis Osokin, is not so much a screen embodiment of the people themselves (since it is difficult to suspect the documentary accuracy of the authors); rather, it is a look from the outside, an image of the unfamiliar world in the eyes first addressed to him, who first saw its departing beauty.
The film is built as a series of short stories, each of which is called the name of the heroine, beginning necessarily with “O”; there are 22 such short stories. In the center of the story is a female character - a girl, a girl, a woman, an old woman. The author schematically depicts her life path, or in detail presents one bright episode, framing it with colorful and often frightening traditional rituals.
The film is stated as a work in the genre of “ethno-tale”, in one of such genres, which, sometimes, are invented by authors for a specific work to combine its main features. The filmmakers turn to the folklore tradition of the Mari people, look for the most spectacular, cinematic aspects of it, flaunt and artistically embellish some sacred rituals. At the same time, they characterize the genre in which they create, the word “fairy tale”, probably to emphasize the convention of what is happening on the screen. This point is extremely important for the perception of the film, since the elements of folk culture and pagan beliefs introduced into it as a filter are imposed by the authors on a completely modern picture. All the characters of the film live in our days, and the interweaving of the realities of today’s world with forest monsters, ghouls, tree deities, conspiracies and so on creates a discouraging impression. However, if the viewer took all this at face value and counted on a documentary narrative about the life of modern Mari people, he would inevitably be disappointed.
Despite some criticisms from Marie representatives about the inauthenticity of the film, this work is certainly created with great love for the people, their soul, their irreconcilable naturalness. The film was shot entirely in Mari language. Russian-speaking actors involved in the filming were required to play their roles in the language of the characters, for Russian-speaking viewers there is a dubbing - a monotonous translation superimposed over the voices of the actors. The author of the translation and, in fact, the owner of the voiceover is Denis Osokin, who wrote the script for the film. His speech fascinates the viewer as much as it irritates with its artlessness, lack of shades, some features of diction. However, in combination with bright, sometimes wild images on the screen, the soundtrack acquires new colors.
You can not ignore the visual design of the film. The general spectacle is facilitated by the abundance of elements of traditional culture: colorful ethnic dresses, a detailed and even grotesque embodiment of “evil spirits”, characteristic rather of really fairy tale films than documentary folklore. Staging the frame in scenes of a kind of “union with nature”, in various forms reflected in the novels. It seems that most of the episodes unfold against the background of a gloomy overcast sky. The general “autumn” fog persists until the last frame, but the brighter are the episodes permeated with blinding sunlight, the more colorful the summer lawns and colorful ribbons on costumes look. The greener the coniferous branches, laid according to tradition in a white coffin, next to the untimely departed young bride.
In the film, beauty never remains by itself, the viewer is not destined to freely admire nature, romantic history. The edible objects appearing in the frame do not awaken taste buds, since the viewer’s appetite is still spoiled every time by a sudden appeal to physicality.
Each episode of the film responds to a query about the wild, original. Exploring the human body, enjoying life, respecting death. Different manifestations of life and different forms of acceptance of death are what the film declares loudest.
Individual episodes can make the viewer feel uncomfortable, they have a lot of sensuality, sexuality, but there is no idealization, which is used to the consumer of popular culture. In Heavenly Wives, sexuality is simply a part of everyday life, man is his body, the first thing that was given to him and that he struggles with all his life and that always conquers him. The characters of the film do not run from physicality under the roof of morality, for them, the recognition of their nature does not contradict spiritual values. Body problems are covered in the film in the context of married life, growing up, experiencing the death of a loved one. A woman calls her antecedent body “beauty” and wants to convey the beauty to her niece, a man goes into the forest into the clutches of a monster to cure her spouse from an unknown intimate disease, a girl trumpets into the horn, announcing the first “blood” and much more. Allegory and metaphor are mixed with the straightforwardness of the narrative. The viewer with his head is immersed in a fabulous fake world and suddenly pushes himself out of there, with bewilderment discovering its excessive naturalness for a fairy tale.
Not without the film and some caricature: one of the episodes, for example, parodied a common story about a provincial singer, seeking to conquer the capital. The authors use quite traditional mechanisms, depicting the life of a mediocre artist in the downtrodden and full of self-serving people world of “show business”, while preserving folklore characters and the general stylistics of the ethno-fairy tale. The discrepancy cuts the eye, leaves the viewer with a sense of discomfort ... perhaps the same as when two worlds - old and new, fairy tale and reality - collide. In this very reality, the viewer returns an episode in the library, where the author of the script plays a small role and reads a poem dedicated to his beloved. This is the only episode in Russian and in which the heroine herself does not appear on the screen. But the author’s speech sounds like an independent statement, just demonstrating this view from the outside. The author does not try to enter the world he describes, he stays aside, observes and glorifies it.
The film is recommended for viewers who have reached the age of majority, but not all of them will be satisfied with what they saw on the screen. This film should be recommended to those who are interested in tradition, ritual practices, those who are not indifferent to the problems of a living person left alone with himself and his nature, those who in the modern world and in adulthood have not lost the ability to see different worlds, unlike the one in which he happened to be born and live. For those who are not afraid that the invented world will not turn out to be quite a fairy tale, this film will be useful, and maybe even pleasant.
In general, I really like the writer Denis Osokin, and this is the case when the film adaptation coincides with the book. It could be better, probably, and those who do not have enough reading of Russian prose and prose of small peoples, this film may seem complete game. And I will try in this review to say why Fedorchenko did everything right.
(1) Preservation of the mythological basis. Our cinema very rarely fails to slide into the lubok or into the black Russian chthony. In Osokin’s book, there is much more chthony, but one that is unlikely to be visualized. Mari peoples are very inventive in their cults and rituals: female trance dances naked to attract the groom, the meeting of the deceased from the cemetery (who comes into the house straight like that, legs), love magic, encounter with the spirits of the forest - and this is just a small list that has entered the cycle of short episodes that make up this film. And this is very interesting to me as a philologist and folklorist.
(2) Dreaming language. There are so many different ‘languages of cinema’, but I would call Fedorchenko’s style in Heavenly Wives dreamlike. The space of the film is organized in such a way that at some points the logic of the narrative is completely lost. Perhaps this is a minus, since the director does not manage to preserve the logical connections of the myth, some details are simply not read by a simple viewer and seem strange, and sometimes wild. But for me personally, as a reader of many books on folklore, everything is clear. Moreover, due to this loss of logic, and recreated, as they say, the color of the area.
(3) Preservation and transmission of language characteristics. One of the biggest advantages of this work, because it was very important to convey the features of the speech of the Mari people. In many short stories, a purely Mari speech is given, somewhere - a characteristic speech, similar to the speech of the inhabitants of the northern peoples. And it is one hundred percent hit in lifelikeness.
(4) Magic and mysticism. It can be seen that much work has been done to study the specifics of the ritual among the small peoples of Russia. Grandma whispering on threads, etc. I went to the village and saw it happen. And everything in this movie is transmitted with such authenticity that it is better not to do it.
(5) Semi-professional actors. In this case, it would look strange and ridiculous if such a movie was played by professional actors who have already become familiar with Russian cinema. From professional actors: Yana Troyanova, Alexander Ivashkevich, Mari actor Vasily Domrachev and several other unused persons. Troyanova was still little known then, besides she is from the Sverdlovsk region, and it must not have been difficult to get used to the role of Orica.
Of the minuses:
1) Sometimes the director really rolls into game, which Osokin does not have or which is smoothed out in the book by the special poetism of the narrative. This game is mainly about physicality. For some reason, the corporeality is very savory, turning the picture into a “lub about the pubic”, that is, the director simply slides into vulgarity. I had the impression that for the film adaptation, in general, those parts of the text that relate to the physicality of the characters were deliberately taken.
(2) Poor operator work. Just out of hand bad: there are places where it resembles shooting on the phone: the camera shakes, focuses not on what you need, stands, where you need to move and all that.
(3) Sound. I don’t know, I’ve watched this movie on my computer, on my TV screen, in different versions, and I haven’t found any version where the sound is normal. Well, very quiet. Perhaps I just did not find the normal quality, but the feeling creeps in that the sound there is really trouble, and it is not my technique that is to blame.
(4) Smeared narrative. It could be made more compact and this picture would not lose its charm. The costs of dreaming language? Don't know. But sometimes it was hard for me to look into the void. It's pure taste, of course, but still.
In general, the cinema is atmospheric, as they say. You can perceive it as a Russian art house, not interesting to everyone. But I am a connoisseur of such things.
It is difficult to write about such films. Because they are completely metaphorical and fascinate primarily not with a storyline, but with a special atmosphere. You either get in here or you don't. I got in! Very much!
If you try to describe what the movie was about, it is 23 novels showing various superstitions and rituals of the Mari people. Each story is named after a woman. But more deeply, it is about traditions and the deep connection of people with nature. Reverence for life cycles, female power, household magic. All this appears to civilized man as a theater of the absurd, devoid of the usual causal relationships. But there are corners on Earth where a policeman, seeing a suspicious person, takes out not a gun, but a talisman, where you can not make love next to a birch and where a formed girl trumpets into a horn on a high hill, reporting with pride about her maturity.
For those who are fond of traditional cultures, mythology, ethnography to watch. I don’t know how accurately the filmmakers collected Mary’s beliefs, but I do!!
The film is based on the book of the same name by Denis Osokin, in which 38 novels, when in the film there are 23. The script was written by 2004, but work on the picture began in October 2010.
The film consists of 23 novels, lasting from one to ten minutes. The main character of each of the novels is a young lady from 14 to 45 years old, whose name begins with the letter O: Okai, Osulai, Odocha, Oshvika, Orazvi, Orapti, Odarnia, Ofrasi, Opi, Onyavi, Okalce, etc. According to Mr. Osokin, the tape shows the life, traditions, culture of the Mari people from the 1970s to the present day, however, I came across an article that had a direct relation to this film (to tell the truth, it is difficult for me to call this joint brainchild of Mr. Fedorchenko and Osokin a film or other word related to cinema). The article was written by a young woman who was born and still lives in Yoshkar-Ola. Her “flattering” comments on this “brilliant creation” shout that she is deeply offended by the way her people are morally exposed here.
Of course, I do not have the slightest idea about the life, traditions and life of the Mari people in general, however, I am more than sure that the women there are quite adequate, balanced people, and not concerned, thinking only about the base instincts of individuals, as Mr. Alexei Fedorchenko showed them in his “film” with the help of the so-called book of his fellow mind Denis Osokin.
I want to end the review with the words of one person who lived among the Mari people and treats these people with all respect and deeply respects them: Comrade Osokin asserts that Mari women think they only want sex, no matter with whom or how. Traditions are only the basis for perverted interpretations of sexual needs. Where is the heaven of these wives? I really feel sorry for the viewer who, after watching this movie, decided that this is the way things are.
A fairy tale movie for adults. There is a feeling that can be described as “the feeling of seeing from another planet”: it does not leave during the whole film. Decent author's film.
If you watched the film, but did not read Denis Osokin’s book, on which the film of the same name was shot, then I send you to do it without fail, even if the film is “very fu”. There are several reasons for this.
The first reason is . Cinema will never replace the image formed only by one channel of perception, where the imagination of the reader is free to create more unique (in comparison with cinema, which, as Sokurov correctly noted, “imposes” and “determines perception”) images.
The second reason . The script is "tight" in the film. My subjective impression was that cinema did not allow one to feel the main important element of the idea – the female image and its antipode in the “that world”, perfectly depicted in the book. I'll give you the beginning of the book here.
“And other things are also important: here you do not understand where poetry is, and where prose is, where the fairy tale is, and where the story is, what happens in the antiworld, and what happens in the everyday world, although it is not quite familiar to us and ordinary.” Denis Osokin paints strange pictures, and in these paintings the living and the dead come to life in a new incomprehensible way, because there is nothing dead either in this world or in that.
Take a look: “Where is the fairy tale, and where is the story” – the film does not give (a) – sufficient completeness of each image, (b) – the boundaries of the worlds are still felt when viewing, moreover, the fantastic world is wedged into our perception. And I must say that the author has a very rich syllable. I would call it "figuratively parcelled."
Finally, the third reason. In the paragraph above, I talked about the dullness of images of cinema compared to books. That’s right, just need to specify an additional and very important point. The creators were not stupid and did not make a common mistake, trying to redraw the book in their own way. One of the critics of Osokin’s work correctly noted that the film “I” and “I” are incomprehensible moments in the book. It's important. Visual and auditory perception allow you to more clearly convey the binding to the ethnic group of Mari, and not some other; to show video that would destroy the style of the text.
The book and the film create a whole, as if two different parts of the same creation. Like an opera libretto. The book sets the backbone, without which the film is perceived, but much is not understood.
This collection of novels does not try to become an excursion into the ethnic depths, it too openly entertains the viewer with its certain, perhaps imaginary, originality. Sometimes makes an obvious credo in the art house, in order to seem intellectually loaded, but still, every such attempt is reduced to over-the-top humor. Also aggravating the general situation is the fact that the director completely forgot to reveal the main intrigue - this fiction, or really bare tradition, with a touch of local folklore. My healthy curiosity was not satisfied, and a purely cinematic high easily escaped.
But the main problem is that no story arouses a single ounce of interest. There are a couple of them that can boast a decent timekeeping, even plot integrity, but there are no more than two, so easily lost in the total mass. I was surprised by the presence of very short sketches, at first glance, as well as all subsequent ones, devoid of any semantic message, but frankly, with this tight and in aggregate.
I will not recommend the film, so the aesthete is none of me, but it is really some phantasmagoria, endowed with an axe fantasy, and the alleged cultural touch makes this spectacle even more invisible. Don't waste your time!!!
Not the most successful implementation of an interesting idea
From the film, based on the mythology of the Mari people, which is completely unknown to a wide audience, one could expect a lot. I wanted khthony, I wanted a gloomy phantasmagoria, when watching which you really feel the rotten, mysterious smell of swamps.
Alas, it didn't. Twenty-five years ago, this film, no doubt, would have become a deafening sensation, but, unfortunately for the creators of the picture, interest in the study of the mythology of the Russian hinterland has long dried up, and eroticism of such a place in the video salon, somewhere next to “Little Faith”. At the same time, this film is exclusively for a local film festival, for a tick on the section “cinema in the Mari language” (which, of course, should also be).
In some places, the film is curious to watch, the folklore basis sometimes saves, but no more. The message of the author is completely unclear, an interesting composition of 23 stories of Mari women subordinated to the goal, which remained a mystery. This is neither journalism, nor the study of mythology, nor psychological drama. The film, it would seem, is about people and nature, but the understatement remains about both topics, and it seems that the reason for this is not a conscious artistic technique, but the lack of a clear concept from the author.
This is probably due to the paucity of knowledge in the field of Mari mythology and customs, and I may well assume that a connoisseur of folklore material could see the hidden meaning of the narrative. But we don't have a hundred people like that outside of Mari El. The rest will see the film as a collection of ethnographic rarities. Like a napkin with national embroidery: beautiful, curious, but unlikely to remain in memory.
I try to argue with critics who saw in “Heavenly Wives...” the chanting of native nature and native people. Some scenes (e.g., dancing in quichela or a bed scene with a dwarf Gena) are evocative, if not disgusting. The life of people is reflected, to put it mildly, peculiar. I don’t want to offend my fellow Mari citizens (who, I’m sure, are wonderful people with an interesting, original culture and certainly not guilty of the film’s shortcomings), but the film is unlikely to arouse the desire to visit a wonderful republic. Rather, it will contribute to the fact that Mari El gets into the list of the last places that a person would like to visit.
The only thing that does not raise the hand to give a negative review is that one of the main goals of the film, after all, achieves: interest in the mythology of Mari will inevitably appear, and perhaps for someone the film will become a door to the magical world of beliefs of this people. I, for example, have already enriched myself with some information about the Mari pantheon and know who Ovda is (by the way, the scene with Ovda is not a combined shooting, the height of the actor is really 2.16 meters!).
I can’t definitely recommend or not recommend it. Or, more precisely, so: for viewing I recommend, but we should not forget that "Heavenly wives of meadow Mary" - exclusively author's view of the life of the Mari people, not giving a complete picture of the life and beliefs of one of the many peoples of our Russia.
I’ve watched this movie a long time ago, I’ve watched it many times and I’m very happy to watch it again and again. And this is not momentary enthusiasm, or "getting under the mood." This is a well-established opinion: for me, Heavenly Wives is definitely one of the best films of Russian (post-Soviet) cinema.
I'm not from Marie-El. I grew up in Bashkiria, but with pleasure I saw these wonderful landscapes of the middle Volga region, snow-white snow, enchanted groves, amazing hills. The authors of the film sing this nature, this land, sing the unique beauty of this region. I haven’t written a word about women yet, but I don’t think the film is about women at all. A film about beauty in its original form, about the natural unique, pagan beauty of nature and people living with it as a whole. Legends of the Mari land, which is impregnated with this film, are legends about the beautiful in its original form.
The film is fresh, unlike anything else, made gently, with warm humor and great love. Fairy tales, rites, conspiracies, divinations, put on the modern life of the Volga national village create a unique atmosphere.
And the ending of the movie is just amazing. So far, I have not given any film this rating:
In the finale of the film Heavenly Wives of the Meadow Marys, three male archetypes appear: a peasant, a craftsman and a warrior. It was the grown-up guys who heard the call of the maiden trumpet. And we did. Tradition lives on. And in the 21st century.
Denis Osokin and Alexei Fedorchenko continued the mystical comprehension of modern Russia. In Oatmeal, the authors addressed the now non-existent historical people of Merya. The viewer, together with the heroes, made an imaginary funeral journey to the country where the souls of the dead go.
In the “Heavenly Wives of Meadow Marys”, the authors refer to the existing historical people, recognizable from historical chronicles as “Cheremis”, in modern history known under its self-name “Mari”.
“Mari” in translation from Mari means “man”, “man”. It was about them, people and their pagan ideas that Denis Osokin and Alexei Fedorchenko told the world.
As philologists note about folklore heritage, the more absurd, illogical, incomprehensible history, the more ancient it is. The same can be said about folk traditions.
Mari is the only people in Europe who have preserved their pagan traditions to such an extent. Many Marys claim that paganism is their original faith, and can be Orthodox. Or atheists. This is how Mary live in a world where ancient paganism is intertwined with historical Orthodoxy and modern civilizational thinking.
In this amazing world and invite the viewer the authors of the film “Heavenly wives of meadow Mary”. In the mythological space transformed by the author’s vision, contemporaries live, for whom myth and everyday reality are closely intertwined. Stories from the film are improbable and unlikely in everyday life. However, they are true and recognizable from this everyday life. This is a paradox.
And like any “natural” (or ecological, as they would now say) people, the physical, closely associated with survival and prolongation of life came to the fore.
The intonations of this bodily in the stories are only different: comical, scary, lyrical, creepy, romantic, ironic, serious, epic, kind. A lot of intonation. It's not just evil. Because it's based on surprise and interest. Interest in the unique life of the pagan tradition in the Orthodox culture of the modern civilized world.
I liked the film and was very close. Perhaps also because I have Mari blood in me and have lived all my life on Mari land.
The score is good.
From their own experience, the Mari people in most regions are not known as a separate people, and if they meet face to face, they are always mistaken for Russians, which is not surprising, the classic Mariika is a girl with large breasts, blonde, blue-eyed in addition and stately - Russian as is.
Of course, there is no Mari Republic, but someone will remember it as a place with many prisons. This is a stereotype - prisons and mosquitoes.
Even tourists from neighboring regions know perfectly well that there is nothing more cozy than Mari pine forests, linden groves with a stupefying smell of honey.
But there are Maris. Strange, wondrous forest people. And the forest to the brain, these are our Russian druids, by the way. For them back in the 19th century, cutting down a tree is either a tragedy or a desperate sacrifice, for which they asked the gods of forests, wind and lakes. Yet the surrounding peoples, the Chuvash, the Mordvins, the Tatars, the Udmurts, say that the Maris know spirits. People are taking this seriously.
Even the most powerful Tatar witch, sheds before the witch of Mari. That's what they say. They do. They believe that the most powerful magic is given to marijkas in terms of affairs of love - if a witch makes a love spell, everyone she wants will be tied to herself or to someone else firmly. Don't break that spell.
Therefore, in the novels, of which 23 are presented, the main line is love, passion, love spells. And just pure tenderness.
And it's all done differently. There are playful, there is with a bias on mysticism, and there are simple household ones, where even sex is shown deliberately primitively, which would cause laughter.
And there is a piercing, burning moment when the girl will be put in the coffin, and on the handles will be mittens, with such a native to us, red, Russian ornament. And they will lead the girl on an eternal journey and ask the spirits for her to keep her peace. And the viewer will understand that love and death alas go side by side. People were playing, smiling, and there could be a tragedy. Life.
And it will become clear how close we are, how intertwined our peoples, history, customs. Orthodoxy merged with sincere popular belief in other, no less just beings. They do not conflict with the main God, do not interfere with him and each other, they help him.
And again, the director, as if having regretted, or maybe actually having pity on us, gives interesting plots, but it is easier when you can breathe calmly. It opens a strange world of femininity, almost pristine. But not wild, no. It is the pristine – the druid, when faith in the outside world does not seem ridiculous, but at the same time fervently and lyrically woven into people’s lives.
Mari is perhaps the only Finno-Ugric people living on the territory of Russia, which consistently preserves its language and culture, passing them from generation to generation. A person interested would be interested to get in touch with the life and lifestyle of this people. Extraordinary Russian director Alexei Fedorchenko gives a chance to get to know the Mari people better in his picture-almanac “Heavenly wives of meadow Marys”.
Synopsis The main characters of the film - Okai, Orapti, Onyalcha, Orica, etc. - ordinary Mari women who are looking for one thing - simple female happiness. Someone turns into an old midwife, someone calls devils, someone calls relatives from the world of the dead, and someone just lives a normal life. They all have one thing in common: culture and language, which they do not forget.
It is quite difficult to assess the performance of actors, given that the film consists of 23 unrelated novels. In addition, an experienced viewer will be able to notice even purely visually that most of the film involved non-professional actors. However, some of the performers still managed to catch. First of all, I would like to note the play of Julia Aug, who played the role of Orapti, an unhappy woman who fell under the curse of the forest witch Ovda and was forced to accept the fact that her husband must make terrible Ovda love to lift this curse.
Director Alexey Fedorchenko has a unique creative look and his special author's handwriting, which distinguish this director from the rest. At first glance, the viewer may have a question, and with what message the director actually shot “Heavenly Wives”. Indeed, we see several unrelated stories in which heroines constantly think about sex. However, it seems to me that sex in the film was only a means to hook the viewer, because otherwise we see the culture, life and just the ordinary life of Mari women. To make the viewer interested in the Mari people, the director filled the picture with mysticism, which is present in it literally from the very beginning, when one of the heroines kills a cruel husband with just a touch.
As mentioned earlier, the script of the film consists of 23 novels of different duration, designated by the names of the main characters. In one novel, the heroine asks Mother Nature to cure her of moles, in another - the heroine tries to get along with a cruel husband, in the third - the heroine moves from the village to the city to become an opera singer, but a man in love with her sends damage to her, etc. The novels themselves are replete with erotic and sexual themes, which can not help but confuse, because it is already clear that the Mari culture is not built only on sex. However, the heroines are not concerned, but simply looking for their happiness, and for this they turn to the customs of their ancestors.
“Heavenly Wives of the Meadow Marys” will probably be able to understand only those who are interested in the culture and language of different peoples, because this film has a clearly expressed documentary character. The film, of course, is embarrassing only because of the abundance of sexual themes, to think, there was nothing else to show. However, overall, the film made a pleasant impression, and you will want to see it again.
9 out of 10
Amazing movie! Not a single story, but a scattering of charming, sometimes creepy, sometimes funny, but always fascinating with its integrity and beauty stories, in the center of each of which is a girl. And her personal lesson of pagan wisdom is how the world works, how to act in order to live right and happy. It is useless to accuse the inhabitants of this world and the creators of the film of obscurantism (those who wish are) - the pagan in us still grows out, because a thousand years of implanted religion is nothing compared to the ancient knowledge of the world order, which is many times older than it.
10 out of 10
For casting and costumes, for nature and interiors, for idea and embodiment, for music; finally, for courage!
I don't know how to write as above. To compare and draw some parallels, especially. I was just looking for something hot. Turned on clean 'check' on rewind. Not a fan of art house, but a couple of things, was the case, watched. What to say from the movie... After the first minute of viewing, I could not be taken away from the screen (not because I found hot). The atmosphere, the spirit of paganism interspersed with Christianity, living, real people, unity with nature. It was so close to me that I didn’t have time to wake up before the movie ended. I must say that I am deeply rooted in Mari El. I learned about this not so long ago, 3 years ago. I don’t know the culture, the religion, the rituals, but why the hell did this movie get me so hooked? If someone says that the film is vulgar and insults Mari El, it is not. Remember the words of my grandfather and father, their attitude to mothers, wives, sisters. Personally, I saw only the beauty of my ancient culture, its good power, its most beautiful features, for it is the very essence '. Infinitely happy to see, the film was a great discovery for me, thank you to the author.
I’m not going to give you an estimate because who needs it at all? Just put a +.
I got my hair cut.
- I can't see anything.
- If you marry me, you'll see.
The Heavenly Wives of the Meadow Marys is a film where there are a lot of girls whose name begins with "O." This is a film where each of them tells its own story, which vividly conveys not only the beauty of these women, but also the beauty of the small Mari people, lost in Russia and miraculously preserved their customs. And finally, this is a film where every naked girl looks like she came from paintings by Raphael and Rubens.
Already from the first shots, when red-haired Okai asks the gods to rid her of moles on the body, it becomes clear that nothing ordinary in this film is not expected. The assumptions are correct: for almost two hours, unrelated stories flash before your eyes, completely inexplicable mystical phenomena arise, an unfamiliar language sounds, and then and then naked bodies shine with their natural whiteness.
From the first 5-20 minutes, it may seem that there is complete chaos on the screen and arthouse cinema in Russia - this is something that is better not to start watching, but gradually get involved, and then the most interesting things begin. First, horror creeps into consciousness. Not the one that arises when viewing fake American “horror stories”, but the very real – primitive horror of the unknown. After that, the film begins to envelop its amazingly lively atmosphere, and now it seems as if I am standing in front of the mighty Avda, as if I am considering the huge forest mushrooms in my basket, as if I answer in a soft voice: “Spring will come when you eat the worm apple”, as if I am raising a skirt for intercourse with the Wind.
This film not only showed the life of an individual small Mari people, but also described the female essence, presenting it as it was conceived by Mother Nature. After watching for a long time remained that proud feeling that I like to be a woman, like to spread in the arms of a man and give to him not only the body, but also the soul.
I know one thing for sure: when the film leaves such an aftertaste that you go to bed and desperately make love, and strange magical chants of the Mari people continue to sound in your head - then the picture was shot well and deserves to be reconsidered.
This work is not ordinary and understandable – no, otherwise cinemas would be full, and no place would be empty. But who says life is understandable? This is exactly what Fedorchenko wanted to show. Life in all its colors.
That’s what I’ve been looking for in Russian cinema. The action takes place in the region, not in Moscow-Peter. Heroes are not office workers. The story is not about Russians or stereotypical Armenians. The main characters! Heroines! They are many, they are beautiful: a woman who kills a domestic tyrant, a girl who loudly announces that she has become obsessed, a wife who checks whether her husband has cheated on her, a girl who has sex for the first time, a deceased bride, a sick girl and cheerful old women.
I don’t know if Fedorchenko intended it, but the whole film is a great anthem for healthy female sexuality and a woman’s body. No condemnation or contempt. The novella about the singer is a great example. The girl goes from the village to the city to be an opera singer, leaving behind the hahal who watches her. In the city, she has an affair with a teacher, and the hahal sends a dead man dug up in the cemetery after her. What do you think? You think a dead man punished a girl? He was caught on the way by a policeman with a talisman and sent back to the owner. There should be no punishment for the dictates of the soul. Such heady freedom in every minute of the story. The heroines are free to explore their sexuality and enjoy everything that nature has measured them, which is also a heroine participating in the film on a par with all women.
My favorite novella is very short. The girl picks mushrooms. He pulls out one and says, “Here would be my husband.”
10 out of 10
And life. Exotics are full cowards. Snow, wooden houses, barns, cattle, village witchcraft. Signs of civilization: plastic basins and buckets, old clunkers, but mores of a thousand years ago (reconstructed?). Especially revered among the Maris, as well as a number of other related peoples - birch. You can’t sin under it, but you can ask the tree to make extra birthmarks. Well, you can still admire how naked Mari brides bathe in a sacred river, how to determine a betrothed by a coin so that a small mariichon is born, how to make a girl the necessary bulges (“move the beauty”), sharing her husband’s towel; how to excite a man or what to do if a forest monster claims to meet your husband; how to find a moose on a swamp; how to chase a netopir, about playing a hoop, well, and so on. And all this in quite collective farm scenery. Folk songs, landscapes of meadow Marys (and there are still mountainous)
He shot this movie, or rather a series of short films, united by a cross-cutting theme of Alexei Fedorchenko. The pseudo-documentary film “The First on the Moon” glorified him, and after “Oatmeal” the director was accused almost of cultural corpses, for demonstrating funeral rites of the Merya tribe. Well, in "Heavenly Wives" naturalism is enough. Marijukas sometimes look completely shameless, but they, in the film, undoubtedly dominate the male sex. Such a pagan matriarchy is obtained. The director again brought on his head polar assessments.
The film is built on the contrasts of life and mysticism and it is quite interesting.
The film is very emotional and expressive. It is difficult for me to describe my purely aesthetic perception. I will tell you about the images and meanings I saw. For me, this is the first film in which I saw mysticism and shamanism penetrate into the consciousness of a semi-savage but reflective person. You have to ask yourself the question ', why?'. Why did I get sick, why should I do it or not? Trying to answer ambiguous, contradictory or simply wrong questions often leads to devastating consequences. And their picture of the world becomes even more chaotic. Without answers to their questions, guided by their instincts and sensuality, people doom themselves to extremes.
Excerpt from ' Black Obelisk' Remarca (Isabella - patient of the hospital for the mentally ill):
39 I remember Isabella’s exclamation: “Where is my first face?” My face is full of mirrors? Yes, where is our original face? - I think.
. . .
Do we still have any knowledge of this? Or we are caught in the net of concepts and words, logic and the deceiver of reason, and behind them are the original flames, to which we no longer have access, because we have turned them into useful heat, into kitchen and stove flames, into deception and certainty, into bourgeoisism and walls, and at any rate into the Turkish bath of sweating philosophy and science. Where are they? Are the elusive, the pure, the inaccessible, behind life and death as they were before they became life and death for us? Or are they now burning only in those who live here, in the rooms behind the bars, who sit on the floor or steal silently, staring at themselves with an invisible look, feeling in their blood the native thunderstorm? Where is the boundary between chaos and order, and who can step over it and return? And if he does, who can remember what he saw? Does one not quench the memories of the other? And who is mad, marked, rejected, whether we, with our closed and fixed conceptions of the world; or those, others, in whom chaos rages and sparkles with thunderstorms; those who are sacrificed to infinity, as if they were rooms without doors, without ceilings, as if they were chambers with three walls and into which lightning falls and storm and rain bursts, while we proudly walk through our closed apartments with doors and four walls and imagine ourselves higher than those only because we have escaped from chaos? But what is chaos? And what is order? Who's wearing them? And why? And who will ever be able to escape?'
For today’s man, whose mind has already been combed by modern culture, it is very difficult to watch and interpret this film. Events in it are spontaneous, and it is difficult to find their causality. When I try to understand someone else’s ' delusion' I focus not so much on concepts as on connections.
I can't say for sure how much this movie fits the spirit of the Mari people, its traditions, its female role. But since I'm writing about him, he definitely deserves attention. We can without exaggeration, without stretch, call this movie genius. It's just a titanic job to collect all these stories and tell them to us. To tell subtly, with humor, with sadness, with wisdom, with beauty.
At first, as a donkey, I wasn’t thinking about the stories themselves, but how they could be assembled, described and played. It is necessary to live, it is necessary not just to know, it is necessary to feel. Amazing.
These are a bit naive stories that have nothing to do with our smothered and contrived civilization. It is either paganism or nature, real, pristine, unfictional.
Evaluation is pointless. The film is unique, self-sufficient and self-valued. To watch or not, everyone decides for himself.
Ethno-erotic almanac is the best definition that I can give to the new film of the creative duo Fedorchenko. Osokin (director-screenwriter) "Heavenly Wives of Meadow Marys" (" NZLM).
“Mari Decameron” – so defined the genre by the authors themselves. Every word in the title of the film “NZLM” is not superfluous and stands in its place.
"Heavenly" - because certainly not earthly, but heavenly women live in the Mari village. Wherever you spit, you will get either into an evil witch or into a good witch.
"Wives" - because it is women who are the main characters of all 23 novels, which pulls to call erotic, if they were not permeated with rituals of paganism, or rather animism (that is, belief in good and evil spirits). All the novels are titled with female names on the letter “O”: Oshalge, Okanai, Oshaniai, Oropti, Ovda. The letter “O” stands as a symbol of the completeness of the female nature. Remember at least the ancient figures of fertility goddesses with melon-shaped breasts and lush buttocks.
"Meadow Marys" - because the film tells about this people, once inhabiting our Volga-Vyatka interfluve, in contrast to the Mary Mountains.
Almanac this film would be fair to call because all the novels are almost not connected plot, and they can be viewed in any order.
But there is a certain dramaturgy in the arrangement of these pieces (from one minute to ten minutes) different in meter. If the director put the toughest of them at the beginning of the film, not all the audience, but especially the audience, would sit until the end of the session.
Especially impressed by the novella, in which the Mari woman, played by Yulia Aug (dead Tanya from the previous film by Fedorchenko “Oatmeal”) refuses some forest woman, whether Baba Yaga, or a snowman, in a request to sleep once with her husband, and she for refusal puts in her vagina a small screaming bird avdotka, which whispers every time the coveted place touches her husband. Stranger men checked - and nothing, the bird is silent, and when the husband climbs to caress his legitimate wife - there is such a cry that I was thrown in the chair of the cinema!
To save a sick young mother, whose breast milk is also missing, the husband goes to the forest and does what the terrible forest nymph planned. As a result of intercourse, she gives birth to a hedgehog, and the woman happily enjoys marital sex. But the curse of Mari nature catches up with her in bed. The moral is clear - against nature you can not fight!
No less terrible is the novel about the girls clinging to their future husbands, and to whom perfumes come out, taking the form of guys. Guys throw a pig hoof to the girls, and the one who grabbed him is doused with quilt and forced to dance naked in this liquid, more like a male squirrel.
I thought that in the definition of the film genre, in addition to “ethno” and “eros”, it would be necessary to insert the definition of “necro”. The subject of death in the film is devoted no less time than sexual experiences. No wonder the film was assigned the age limit of 18+
That's how he's funny - a small Finno-Ugric meadow people!
After the end of the film, I specifically waited for all the credits to crawl through the screen to the sounds of Mari “techno”. The thing is, judging by the faces, like an axe-cut drunken carpenter, I decided that most of the characters play real marii. But in one novel clearly flashed a new actor's "star" Yana Troyanova ("Top, Kokoko) I saw her name in the credits. There were other less famous actresses in the credits, whom the director forced to learn an ancient version of the Mari language. But in the phonogram of the film, they still had to be voiced in authentic village voices.
In one of the novels, the only one neither about death nor about sex, one of the authors of Oatmeal and NJLM appears. Denis Osokin, who reads his own text.
In the end, I give the film a strong “five with a minus”.
“Minus” only for the fact that for the hour and a half that there is a film shot in “pure” Mari language, Basurman sound of tightly knit words tired me.
In eulogy, he goes immediately after the creak of the foam on the glass.
I decided to watch this film after I became interested in Osokin’s work after watching Oatmeal. The very idea of two dozen stories about women was intriguing.
The film didn't disappoint me. I just couldn't get away from the screen throughout the movie. Especially impressed were the stories ' Oropti' - about the woman who did not share her husband, ' Osika' - about the search for a blue moose in the swamp, ' Ormarch'--so, as I understood and at all the climax, the crown, the nail of the whole film. If before ' Ormarch' the viewer gets acquainted with the mysterious, beautiful, a little (and maybe not a little, some will seem too) lustful, enchanting world of the meadow Maris, then throughout the story of Ormarch there is the most that neither is the exposure of the sexual component of Mari culture - evolved into colorful customs of the instinct of procreation.
I understand perfectly well that this film is not a documentary, and it, of course, leaves room for artistic fiction, and there is nothing wrong with this - on the contrary, any customs can scare anyone away with their nakedness, stern simplicity. Therefore, artistic fiction in this film is so organically intertwined with the basics - customs, rituals, beliefs, nature, that it is impossible to break away from the screen. It is also striking that girls in national costumes do not look dressed up, that ancient rituals, holidays, problems and ways of solving them organically exist against the background of unusually beautiful nature, electric poles, cars, rural shops.
Separately, it is worth noting the work of the operator. The operator is a genius. Nature, faces, houses are filmed incredibly, but at the same time natural. It seems that the flowers are bright little, but very catchy. Musical design also deserves attention. Starting with Mari pops, ending with the wonderful sounds of instruments unknown to me, which give goosebumps.
I watched the movie in one breath. I liked it because it gave me some old feelings: smells, sounds, childhood memories of trips to the forest. Plus, I was interested in the Finno-Ugric peoples of Russia, albeit on the level of curiosity. That's what I wanted, it turns out, to bring back memories of that forest magic, a sense of endemicity and fabulousness.
This film is not for the mass audience, it requires a certain preparation and understanding that this film is fiction, not documentary. Natures vulnerable and refined, do not accept even the mention of shameful deeds and, God forbid, organs should not watch the film. I recommend to those who liked to read fairy tales in childhood and felt them with their whole body.
I hope that I will be understood correctly, a pleasant viewing. Be as excited as I am.
I have a rather strange dream: to collect on social networks the types of faces of all peoples of Russia, but certainly with specific names, so that you can judge who looks and what characteristic endings whose surnames are inherent. So if you, dear reader, say, Tofalar, Selkup or Ket, hide your photos in a private, until the evil Russian sorcerer Kukki and you did not count (reading the fairy tale of the Norwegian writer Alpha Pruysen and (or) watching the corresponding cartoon will understand)!
So I've already explained why I was personally curious to see a Mari film, in Mari. Why did you watch that movie? Yes, you, who so fiercely scolded and does not claim any commercial success, by some miracle at all made it to the festival recognition from a pile of three absurdist comedies of the new Russian life (there are numbers of smoked, almost self-made films like “The Female” – the whole budget of these, I will not be afraid of this word, the film goes to pay for the participation of more or less noticeable artists, and the point is that, because the money you can only buy a box of bottles of cool viscar, and fans, including the Internet audience, do not hesitate to place the last spirit in the village! You're not a brazen man who will say that he expected from "Heavenly Wives..." the ethnicity of "Andrey Rublev" or the atmosphere of "Nymphomaniacs"! Not a fool who doesn’t know what he’s going for or what drive he’s buying, and then cries that cunning marketers have lured him out of money for some mura! Admit that you watched such a film consciously, it is your choice and you are ready to accept such creativity. And since you really wanted to watch a strange movie about a non-trivial people, you must say thank you to the crew: even if they did not succeed, they tried, and to surpass them in this unique field still will not work, because no one did it properly!
In general, if you honestly confessed to yourself that you can appreciate the unusual and, what to say, bold creativity of the authors of Oatmeal and Heavenly Wives, let’s think about what we have here. The Mari people, which has already effectively dissolved into the Russian nation. But which continues to attract fans of gray antiquity and just polyethnic exotics. Yes, the interest is purely scientific, and God forbid anyone from Mari to protrude his specialty, to work his native Mari language as a weapon against the Russian language and, thereby, against all Russian! But they don't do that. Wise people, descendants of fearful forest hunters and gatherers. In fact, neither Mari nor anyone else on the expanses of the sixth part of the land, there is no need to oppose themselves to everything behind which, for some historical reasons, the name “Russian” (or, which sounds somewhat clerical, “Russian”) was fixed. There is no need for an autochthonous language. Well, except that while you are still a baby and your mother sings to you your relatives, Tabasaran or Nanai, lullabies, tells tales about the characters of your native, mountain or tundra, epic. And then the employer deeply does not care what kind of tribe you are and from what ulus, farm, camp or village you are. In Moscow and St. Petersburg, the less they know about you, that you came from somewhere, the better! And what happens when a certain people starts to stand out from the general Russian mass on a political level and naturally put themselves above the Russians, we see everything perfectly in the example of Ukraine. The danger that the revenge of Russia in this case may be terrible, in recent centuries (albeit not always peacefully) has already been realized, it seems, by all peoples who fell to live under the rule of Russian rulers, but if the proud mountaineers and brave Turks resisted longer than others and sometimes resist until now, the peace-loving Finno-Ugrics never claimed anything but to seek their place among the more numerous and rich Russians. Well, now some Finno-Ugric peoples even have nation-states, even if they are imprisoned on all sides in the Russian Federation. Here's what we know about Mary and their native Mary El.
In Western countries, as always, everything is much earlier than in Russia. Long before our giraffe realized that it was possible to make films simply on such an unusual topic as the life of autochthonous peoples, they had films about Indians and pygmies - sometimes creepy (the Holocaust of cannibals), sometimes funny (the Indian in Paris). The apotheosis of such films was, of course, Gibson’s Apocalypto. Without daring to be cunning, the former Max Rokatansky gathered in Mexico cheerful guys who want to play on the screen the medieval life of the heroic Maya, dressed them in all sorts of savage outfits and offered to savage in front of the camera, and they are happy to try! The millions of Mayans and descendants of the Mayans who are now living in Mexico have been twisted just by the temple, but we like it! And if people do not have a wonderful exotic color and a glorious history, what is left to show about it? That's right, shameful stories! So let's see how Mari women fixate on this one! And what about the fact that, trying to recreate the appearance of the not quite Russian people, people with slightly less Russian faces were invited to film, but in fact not with Mari, but with Baltic, Mongoloid or Jewish roots. What if the Mari customs and beliefs shown here are not very different from those that exist in any village of vast Russia? Marie means Marie. Marie is human, and nothing human is alien to them.
Among them are girls, girls, old women, even goddesses, in all the diversity of life.
Typical Russian art house. The director is recognizable. A film for a certain audience, as they say, “not for everyone.”
At some point it was hard for me to watch. For me, what was happening on the screen at times was too naturalistic, the degree of “no embellishment” reached “too much”. I, like a subtle aesthete at heart, still prefer the grace of movements and retouched sports bodies promoted by Hollywood.
If you don't take that into account, the work is very interesting. A good chance for a resident of the metropolis to look at life from the other side and learn more about their country and its people, their customs and beliefs.
The painting depicts the Maris and their celestial wives as an inextricably deeply connected nation with nature. Mysticism and religiosity, rituals and prayers, customs and simplicity - all this is clearly represented in the film.
Undoubtedly, eroticism in the picture is present, but there can be no talk about some “hard porn”, about which some “cinema critics” persistently insisted. Naked bodies reflect nature rather than sexuality. That is, if suddenly my underage child wants to see this film, I will not object.
It's worth watching. Impressions from him remain quite warm and pleasant, although not all the stories in it are bright and kind. Not every day, but for general development, I recommend it. To ensure that Russian cinema did not finally perish under the aegis of obsessive degradation.
Once Father Onufry, walking around the vicinity of Lake Onega, found a naked Odocha.
The new film by Alexei Fedorchenko again collected a rich harvest of prizes, not only from critics, but also from the audience. But the festival audience is ordinary. At an ordinary session, ten people silently contemplated how Fedorchenko and his co-author Denis Osokin changed the Mari fables about carnal, and not only carnal, pleasures into their own way. And I also did not say a word, only “cracked and scratched my turnips”, – I must assume, about this would describe my condition in his “Treasured Tales” Afanasiev.
Trying on the erotic theme in the previous work – “Oatmeal”, where two men, as you probably remember well, were brought to bury Tatiana, the wife of one of them, who had “All three holes were workers.” And it was I who printed them. Well, not me, of course, but the husband of Tatiana in the film. But I was distracted... So, trying on, therefore, to this important topic, Fedorchenko and Osokin began this time in droves to print one after another holes of female charms. Well, not literally, of course, you understand, but more and more purely metaphorical, I would even venture to say – allegorically and symbolically.
Twenty-two novels (or 23: some were so short – about a minute, you will not have time to notice) are entitled by the names of the heroines, each of which necessarily began with the letter O (Osendai, Oshvika, Odocha...). These simple sketches from the life of the Mari people, I believe, have little to do with how and what this people actually live today. The authors almost clearly mystify the viewer, wishful thinking, as in Fedorchenko’s debut work “First on the Moon”. Filming the seemingly modern Mari life, the director ritualizes it to such an extent that it begins to seem that the Mari follow exclusively pagan laws and live an isolated and separated diaspora from the rest of the world. Critics have already dubbed this movie an “erotic necklace”, the director himself prefers to call his creation nothing but “Mari decameron”. Same option.
But personally, this movie was more associated not with the creation of Boccaccio or Pasolini, but with the erotic performances of Marina Abramovich, who, for nothing, caricatured recently in “Great Beauty”. So, Marina has a stunning short collection of novels called “Balkan Erotic Epic” (included in the collection of art porn Destricted) – about traditional sexual rites that are allegedly still performed in her homeland. Abramovich is also prone to hoaxing, and the format she uses has the full potential to do so. Fedorchenko in this sense is not far away from Marina (and one of the scenes where the girl raises her skirt and opens her womb to the wind, even literally repeats Serbian practice) and what he offers in his “NZLM” is also more performances than cinema in the usual sense.
“NZLM”, filmed in the Mari language (which I honestly am not sure), which is spoken here, including famous Russian actresses – Troyanov, Ekamasova, Aug, gathered in the whole country five thousand spectators. And the fact that this project, a priori doomed to commercial failure, was partly sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, which issued a million dollars from the budget, indirectly indicates that in its financial policy, despite criticism, it is becoming more flexible and liberal. And in a good way, this collection of pagan rituals about sex and death should be viewed not in cinemas, but in local history museums of the Republic of Mari El. Look, people are going there too.
I will say right away – the film seemed to me a disgusting parody of the life of the Mari people, a pathetic attempt to “create” a new movie, throwing a fog into the plot, flooding the screen with unretouched female bodies, high-soundingly calling it all art house, cinema is not for everything!
I was born and raised in Yoshkar-Ola. My whole life I was surrounded by Mari people – I learned the Mari language in school, studied the customs and culture of the people. Respect, this is what I feel for this small ethnic group of Central (yes, yes, in many reviews read that it is almost Yeti) Russia.
After watching the film, I had a lot of questions, but the clearest one was: Why didn’t a screenwriter from Kazan write about Tatars? They are also very interesting people and I have no doubt that their customs can amaze the inexperienced viewer. So why did he choose Mary?
All right, I chose it. Then what did they do to him? Why did you have to include so much pornography?
After watching, I was really uncomfortable and even hurt. High art should perpetuate something meaningful, valuable, beautiful, but in reality only complexes of creators are obtained.
But you know what the worst part is, it's all naturalistic. Filming took place in real villages of Mari El, in the houses of local residents with preservation of the atmosphere. The plots are based on legends that have been transmitted for centuries.
And what happened on the way out. Mari women think they only want sex, no matter with whom or how. Traditions are only the basis for perverted interpretations of sexual needs. Where is the heaven of these wives? They are the fifth point of the earth, which is difficult to imagine.
I really feel sorry for the viewer who, after watching this movie, decided that this is the way things are. Who shouts that it is more than anything. Who saw a commercial vein among the people, which just sounds exotic and little familiar to European, and Russian viewers. And I sympathize with the director and screenwriter who failed to see the beauty in the culture of the Mari people.
For any resident of the Republic of Mari El, the premiere of the film was very much expected. It is interesting to look at yourself from the outside. How we saw and see the creators of the picture. Yes, we are like that, just like that – we walk in strange clothes, sacrifice animals and pray for Orthodox icons. It's funny, but I saw a scene being filmed in the cemetery. It’s nice to see your hometown and your hometown on the big screen. May the filmmakers, experts studying Mari culture and Finno-Ugricists, be forgiven for some inaccuracies of rituals, but in the film the mythological component, in my opinion, only illustrates the female nature, and is simply freely interpreted by the author. It's a movie about us, about women. Yes, we are, we can be incomprehensible, naive, stupid, believe in nature and higher powers, shy and insidious, libertine and at the same time chaste. Here it is ' The Beginning of the World' and the final chapter of 'Ulysses' - a girl standing on a cliff with her wind lover running between her legs.
No wonder the film causes ambiguous reactions, someone categorically likes, someone comes out from the middle of the film without watching it. In my opinion, a new genre was born, a new direction in filmmaking - phantasmogoric realism or subjective realism. The picture is so real that it is as if you watch documentary films, recognizable places, life and faces, but the actions of the characters and the essence of what is happening cause bewilderment and shock, it seems that in their actions there is no logic, complete strangeness, and conspiracies, but each novella essentially reflects part of the female essence and female age. On viewing experienced the whole range of feelings and emotions from fear (the episode with the forest woman Ovda) to fun (husband playing the bagpipes), sadness and detachment. Yes, yes, you fall into some kind of trance from music and video. At a very lyrical moment, it would seem that in it such a man reads something like a poem, even a poem does not look like, just monosyllable sentences, but for some reason he touches and touches to tears, as well as those women who listen to him in the library.
In my opinion, the author coped with the task if he wanted to show the viewer who women are, taking as an example a small people - Mari. I would also like to see the film adaptations of Mari writers (Chavain, Krupnyakov), a completely empty niche of Russian cinema, because there are so many nationalities in the vastness of our country.
10 out of 10
This movie isn't for everyone, that's for sure. While watching this almanac, the audience gradually began to leave the already small cinema hall, but still most of it remained! The hall laughed, rejoiced and worried with the heroines.
Each story of the almanac is a difficult life of a red-haired mariika. All the characters speak the Mari language. These people live in Russia, and we know so little about their culture and customs. Thank you to the creators of this film for discovering the amazing, bright, and sometimes very scary world of Mari beauties.
This almanac is worth seeing, at least, to find out who the Mari people are. But I assure you, there are those who will appreciate the film. After all, the audience coming out of the cinema enthusiastically said: "What a good movie." I heard I think so too.
It is difficult to put a score in points, but it is definitely positively colored.
15 minutes ago I left an empty room. Those who wandered into the movies with me, namely the two couples that happened, escaped in the middle of the story. And nice. I love watching such fascinating films alone, so I watched “Live” Sigarev, so I was conquered by “Marking” by Julia Kolesnik and “Sacrifice” by Tarkovsky. “Heavenly Wives...” as well as the above-mentioned paintings, are permeated with a mad contrast of love of the mystical, almost erased modern integration of a soulless city and an original, superstitious outback. The folklore background of the magical culture of the Mari people reveals the unthinkable boundaries of the fossilized consciousness, the archetypal inner self. And even if I do not belong to the mentioned part of the population of Russia, but imbued with the idea of the film, I awaken the sensuality of my own roots, thrift for traditions and rethinking their values.
I will keep silent about the presentation of the material, namely its erotic side, I will only note that the film did not seem to me at all a vulgar presence in the frame of erotic content. It serves as a frame, saturates the natural ritualization and authenticity of the cultural features of Mari El.
I advise the picture to traditionalists, aesthetes, as well as people who believe in the fabulous aspects of love spells, female charms and the essences of the restless winds of a wide steppe, filling with the noise of moderately flowing somewhere rivers and the fluttering leaves of endless forests of those places over which they sweep and where their riot is born.
I will be looking forward to the release of the DVD, and tomorrow I will go again to the empty room ... to fill and tear again.
10 out of 10
I like arthouse: movies that make you think, reveal the hidden corners of the human soul. After such films, the aftertaste of smart cinema remains, and a person learns something new about the world.
So this movie is just fabulous nonsense. You look at it and you don’t understand how the author even came up with such insanity. The feeling that the author tried to show with a smart face complete nonsense, so that people thought that there is some deep meaning.
What deep meaning was hidden in the minute display of cutting a dish by grandmothers?
What did the author want to show with the scene where a woman had a bird in her vagina, after which the woman hanged herself?
Or what is hidden in the scene where the girl has sex with the wind, and the guy who saw it, shot without understanding?
What is the moral in a scene where a girl lies under the elderly & #39; producer & #39; and a man who loves her digs up a corpse and sends him for his beloved? And every policeman in Mari El wears amulets against corpses?
And so in all 22 scenes. They say it's the new Tinto Brass. I don't know if it's more disgusting to shoot eroticism than in this movie. It causes only a feeling of abomination and disgust.
I wanted to bet 0 out of 10. But there's a plus. This film reveals the widespread in Russia, but neglected process of combining pagan rituals with Orthodox traditions. Although the deep paradox in this worldview is not revealed, it is shown that people do not even see anything illogical and terrible in it.
It was created for the vast minority of Russian viewers. One of the goals, the filmmakers definitely achieved, because after watching there is an irresistible desire to learn more about the Mari people, their culture and customs. It’s good that the movie is in Mari, because when you hear it again! Special thanks to the writer, many scenes are very exciting. The film deliberately created an atmosphere of hypersuperstition, even the absolute lack of education of the characters, the drearyness of society, which is annoying at first, it seems that the authors are so dismissive of the people living only 650 km from Moscow! But gradually, you immerse yourself in everything that happens. In my opinion, it conveys the connection of traditional culture with the modern way of life. It’s good that such a movie has appeared. And I liked the casting.
“Heavenly Wives of Meadow Marys” is the second joint work of director Alexei Fedorchenko and writer-screenwriter Denis Osokin. The first and quite successful fruit of the work of the Fedorchenko-Osokin tandem was Oatmeal - a film caressed by critics and the jury of film festivals. The new film continues the line “Oatmeal” by the number of nude nature in the frame, but no more.
Heavenly Wives is a collection of twenty-three mini-novelas. Novels, dressed in folklore clothes (in this case, legends and traditions of the indigenous inhabitants of the Republic of Mari El) and seasoned with primitive, absolutely natural eroticism. Like a kind of screen adaptation of myths and rituals with the corresponding bright visual images.
Although the novels are not related to each other, they are united by the Mari language spoken in the film. For those who do not own it, there are Russian subtitles. Each sketch is given a Mari female name because the main characters are women. Thin and not so, young and middle-aged, prodigal and modest.
The tape can be safely called a practical guide to bewitching men. Although some novels look very shocking in their naturalism. It makes no sense to retell them so that there are no spoilers, but it is worth a look. Fedorchenko quite conveyed the spirit of Mari folklore, not particularly resorting to special effects or pretentious costumes.
Here modernity is intertwined with antiquity, and beliefs and legends come to life and play with new colors. In the picture there is a lot of eroticism and demonstration of the naked body, but such an abundance does not cause rejection at all. Great balance between naturalness and provocation. If Alexei Fedorchenko continues to lead the delights in this direction, it will become a Russian Tinto Brass. The director is quite capable of filling the empty niche of Russian eroticism.
In fact, this film segment in our country is almost absent. There are some films with explicit scenes, but nothing more. Let us assume that this film is one of the first swallows of the new time. Perhaps this film, as well as the scandalous film “Intimate Places” will become the vanguard of Russian high-quality eroticism. By the way, the tapes are united by the play of the same actress Julia Aug.
In the “Heavenly Wives of Meadow Marys” “lit up” a new generation of Russian actresses: in addition to Aug, this is Daria Ekamasova, Yana Troyanova, Yana Yesipovich, Olga Dektyareva and others who vegetated in various series and second-rate crafts. All of them are beautiful in the new film by Fedorchenko, largely thanks to the excellent camera work of Sandor Bekeshi.
Summing up, we can safely say that the film is for an amateur, but its viewer will definitely find. If you are not a hypocrite or a prude, but an inquisitive person and are interested in foreign culture and mythology, then you need to definitely go.
8 out of 10