New Finnish-Estonian Extremity Here’s another movie that was allegedly banned in Russia. At the same time, in a significant area of foreign Europe (especially in Scandinavia and Estonia, which is close to it in spirit), it is a fairly well-caught opus. He got to Uncle Sam, but he, however, did not see in him anything worthy of prestigious awards, although initially he almost promised an Oscar. Someone wants to make everyone believe that our country is a regime object, where everyone is fed the same ballad and where it is foolish to expect that the cells will be held a grid and arrange a mandatory viewing of “The Shawshank Escape”. But be indignant, proudly churning petrels: there is pluralism in Russia! And, in particular, this film could be watched for free in the infamous 2014 at the IV International Festival “Cinema Friends” held with the support of the Department of Culture of Moscow (!).
True, my irony is easily countered by many of the camp, for whom the words "Gebnya" or "Rashism" are not just an empty sound, but a password to the world of freedom of conscience, by the fact that the expression "modern Russia is a regime object" is a sarcastic hyperbole, which serves to make life seem honey to the "regime" and not calmly sleep: instead of resting on their laurels, the authorities should constantly look around them, do not mark them with a brick, broken from the Kremlin wall, which is always against Yablaga.
But not only do I personally prefer not to bother with such inconvenient questions as “I am a hero or a conformist”, but also from time to time I tease those who bother. Although I understand that one day I may take a leak, that right now I am teasing geese (if the time of such geese will still come in long-suffering Russia).
But in any case, the film about morally and physically raped by Russians Estonians, shot in Finnish with mainly Finnish actors, absolutely did not win a box office in Russia not because it was banned for wide distribution. Because we don’t need a movie like that. So in their experience, the distributors decided, and these people are definitely not out of hand to think about politics, freedom of conscience and justice: they have time – money. They thought that silence was gold in this case. Just a business sense and nothing personal. This is not the Russian truth, and therefore one and a half hundred million bearers of the Russian truth are guaranteed to ignore it. The ideological minority won’t make the weather, which is why they were never asked. As I explained above, much in the information society is said and written not in the literal sense: we say "banned" - we mean "obstracised". And ostracism everywhere and always was not the direct order of vile politicians, but the opinion of the majority, i.e., roughly speaking, "for a long time kicked, but no one intervened: got down to business." And the controversy about whether the will of the majority can be a collective mortal sin, I definitely wrap up and continue to write only about the film itself. Especially since I chose it for myself, so I too too – in the well, out, spit?!
This is an adaptation of the novel by the writer Sophie Oksanen - the daughter of a Finn and an Estonian who emigrated to Finland in Soviet times. One look at this woman shows what she's made of. Artists, especially in modern Scandinavia, are, frankly speaking, "Jupiters" who are allowed much of what is not allowed to us, "bulls." But, besides jokes, to get acquainted with their works is an order of magnitude more interesting and entertaining than with socialist realism like the novel “Tough Trial” from the pen of Nikolai Dubov dressed in a respectable jacket.
Here, too, a film based on a book by a real Finnish emancipe really captured me from the very first shots. (He is even, not afraid of the word, endowed with the aesthetic of death: puddles of blood with a metallic glow, flames, carved autumn leaves.) Estonia has regained its independence and has not yet joined any NATO or European Union. A cursed old house, as if in the song “King and Jester”, hiding under the boarded floorboards more than one terrible secret. Living in it, of course, a creepy Chukhon grandmother, grinding no worse than an experienced man and barely grasping a sharp axe. The gun, as it turns out later, also has one. On the glass of her window there is an inscription: something like “Russian kurva”. You can see that the old woman has been through a lot and you can't take her so easily.
In her yard, a half-living fugitive is trying to hide - a kicking prostitute, who is chased by her pimps. It is not clear whether God himself brought her to this grandmother (in Estonia, after all the experience, they do not believe in God: this is almost the only atheist country in the world), or she knew who she was going to. In general, in the abundance of flashbacks, the viewer will easily read the confession of an old Estonian woman as in spirit, and there will be no doubt that the girl really was at the right time in the right place. And the bandits will once again demonstrate the riskiness of their delicate “craft”. It happens that from such troubles came out whole, that the special forces would come kayuk. And here's a miserable peasant from the farm! Who knew Grandma was Rambo? Her photos of disfigured corpses, a pickle and even a barrel will not scare: in her lifetime she saw something worse.
Yes! A man has gone through his whole life, if the lightning does not burn me for such cynicism, with honor. Whatever fell to her lot (torture and bullying, fiasco in his personal life and economic devastation) – she was only thoroughly washed away (hence the title of the work) and dragged quietly on. But you need to look to the end, to the last frame: only the author knows when and how to finish the story about his character.
It is difficult to say what influenced the authors’ choice of such a zigzag finale (the novel and its adaptation end in the same way – this, of course, does not always happen). But one thing is certain. While society in many young (or rather, more than one century old, but almost always in history dependent on more numerous, better politically organized and rich neighbors) nations perceive their past as “genocide” (which I, in one of my reviews of the Czechs, called “picturing the victim”), such plots will be hurried. Good or bad, it's not for me to judge. On the one hand, he who remembers the old - to the eye out, but who forgets - to both of them.