Surprisingly opportunistic film under the wrap of intellectuality
The film shows the fascist, justifies his mentality. It puts an absolute sign of equality between the red and brown, i.e., between Soviet Communists and fascists. The only Russian featured in the film is the Princess (!), who, since 1933, has behaved simply as she did, with absolutely no moral obligation. For a formal "right" ending at the end of the film, she makes a "deed". The emphasis in the film is not on the humanistic orientation of the act, namely, that for the sake of Jewish children, the act done "is good." Fascism, on the contrary, is not better than fascism, but the director does not understand this.
There is no need to describe the film long. If you are interested in seeing a kind of “collective Konchalovsky”, i.e. a world where all the characters are himself, then we ask for mercy in a rotting swamp. Yes, you will like the camera work, and your head, perhaps, you will understand the "reception" of the director, but only after watching from the beginning to the end of the film you will be able to realize how conjuncture this spectacle is, and you will also be able to better understand for which films are currently awarded in Europe.
Personally, I find it most unpleasant how a director presents his animal vision of the world as a universal generalization. In the film, an act of kindness is something unnatural for a person, but at every step to become an animal is the norm, for this, “it does not take effort, it is itself.” I wonder how our country gave birth to such an amazing “intellectual” who wiped his feet over it. He has not read the memoirs of the blockaders, and he hardly knows anything at all about how humanity actually manifests itself in war and what is the standard. What is the Nature of Humanity, and that it is Nature.
I am glad that the film is weak and disposable, so this putrid point of view will not spread widely and will not hurt many. Watch a good movie and grow!
You can discuss the stylistic merits of this tape for a long time. Close-ups and cold artificiality, which as accurately as possible give out difficult circumstances in the grip of which the characters of the film turned out to be. Only the choice of the plan in the monologues of the heroine of the tape determines the high ratings of the film. Much is decided by the director’s position, which allows us not only to consider the action, but also to hear the reflective revelations of its heroes. As if the unfolding tragedy is something spontaneous and absurd, like a sports match, followed by post-match interviews. . .
This viewpoint avoids rapid assessments. And it is a great merit of the film that it does not divide the world into 'good' and 'bad'...
However, for all the enthusiasm for the form of performance, the semantic part of the tape seemed to me very ambiguous. Too complicated a topic... There can be too many different interpretations, distortions and misconceptions. Take an obviously heroic ending. I didn’t like it because it was too simple and simple.
But it's a matter of taste. And here the best way to turn to analogues. For me, the subject of the Holocaust was fully covered in 'Sophie's Choice' and one of the novels 'The Decalogue' Kesliewski. Everything there is woven from reflection and humanism, sincere and undisguised love of life, awareness of its value.
Comparing, I understand that Konchalovsky’s tape aimed precisely at the discourse I mentioned. The director did not show physical suffering, he was interested in the human soul. And that's great. But the most important thing is with what message to leave the viewer. Will the will to live prevail or despondency prevail?
It's not an easy question. And I have the impression that, based on some premises and trying to set the most volitional tone, the creators of this film somewhat thickened the colors, giving something completely different than originally planned.
“Spirit alone is immortal—the soul in itself is neither eternal nor divine. When too closely connected with the physical brain of its earthly case, it gradually becomes the ultimate mind, the simple animal and the sentient life principle, the nephesh of the Hebrew Bible.
“But it so happens that even in this direction what at first seemed so easy to me seems impossible today. I was looking for something else, not my life. Thus, since we had to search for where life was—if we had to do so at all—then we had to search not in space or in time, not as a search for some cause or effect; we had to search for something recognizable within ourselves, quite different from space, time, and causality. Count Leo Tolstoy
Oh yes, ' the true man' is "the captive of the body, not the willing tenant-tenant"' and the personality, in turn, enclosed in the body, conditioned and deceived by the material world with its false ideas, delusions, not to mention instincts, is its true jailer. The idea of distinguishing the “moral being” from the scraps of personal experience or “separating the grain from the chaff” from the conditioned, physical body and environment of the personality, in my opinion, is very successful and certainly, in addition to the innovative, is a universal image of the “threefold man”.
Of course, Konchalovsky’s new reception could hardly better convey what we call the post-mortem state (while no one was there yet), but the visual images of deceased personalities, “stunned” by a sudden change, talking “with the Heavenly Father” turned out to be sufficiently informative and accessible to the idea of the immortality of the spirit, in which we believe (or do not believe) according to our inclinations and preferences. However, with age, as personal experience expands, inclinations and preferences tend to change direction, both for the better and for the worse, and therefore, a person cannot be called either good or bad, as long as he has the time and strength to change them.
People, one way or another, become hostage to life circumstances and the variations of these circumstances are so diverse and extensive in their sometimes cruel and even nefarious manifestations that obtaining individual experience for the individual becomes unbearable. And even in these conditions, ragged and tortured, standing on the edge of the precipice “between two eternity”, many chose to put their heads on the block in the hope of salvation. Everything is known in comparison, and without delving into this topic, we will try to understand what Konchalovsky wanted to tell us.
Three individual characters show us that the conditions and circumstances for individual experience and the time for change are different. For example, the collaborator Jules, due to his mental “ossification”, there was no time at all when, as an exhausted and tortured woman, who, instead of a comfortable life and despite the mortal threat, preferred to save Jewish children, it was. ' Every action, evil or good, is a prolific parent, says the wisdom of centuries, and, consequently, for the first, death was a blessing, and for the second – salvation, because of the “spiritual merit” she managed to gain in those monstrous circumstances. But, we will dwell in more detail on SS officer Helmut, since the author wished to describe him in more specific tones.
Superman knows no doubt, Superman is not afraid of death, Superman is self-sufficient. Of course, Nietzsche did not mean an animal personality by his Zarathustra, but given the illiteracy of the German soldiers, the Nietzscheian “superman” fits into the metaphorical context of “building a German paradise”. We were not shown how and under what circumstances this character left the mortal world. The Aryan race, which Hitler had the audacity to add to his ideological chimera, together with the Nietzschean “superman,” gave rise to ideological Frankensteins like Helmut. Being a collective hostage of this “chimera” (of which there are many today), one can only trace the evolution of consciousness, where, at the climax, he in despair recognizes Stalin as an outstanding personality and that, “if he were born in Russia, he would become a Communist.”
The Peace of Versailles and social calamities outraged the young and ardent aristocrat, so much so that his whole moral being was poisoned by it. This is what the “inner man” told him in his deplorable outpourings to the “Father of Heaven”: “What I saw in Germany – the crisis, the decline, the Versailles peace, mass unemployment – all this was disgusting.” Prostitutes 12-year-olds with red lips - it was all scary. I understood that Germany was flying into an abyss, turning into a disgusting swamp. Every good German was in despair. I didn’t know what to do, and no one knew, and the Jews and Communists triumphed – some wanted revolutions, others profited from our insignificance. And it all began so wonderfully when Helmut joined the National Socialist Party: "I remember how it was." It was as if I had been carried out on a wave of dazzling light.
Of course, the moral and moral principles instilled in him by his aristocratic upbringing did not include the possibility that in the future, the aristocratic descendant of Nietzsche, due to his duty to the fatherland, would have to become the inspector of Majdanek, Auschwitz and Dachau, where “true patriots did not sleep for days, burning the corpses of Jews,” until the Russian army “sent everyone on vacation,” while putting 600,212 people dead.
Whether it be called an irony of fate or a fate, when a whole nation, under the vicious roar of civil storms, poisoned by the chimeras of false ideas, legions flee to kill their own kind for the sake of a one-man paradise, inhabiting the space with howling shadows of the innocent, if, with perfect clarity: “No man (or an external material and periodic form containing a spiritual being) can justly be held responsible for the consequences of his birth. He did not ask to be born, nor was he able to choose the parents who gave him life. In all respects he is a victim of his environment, a child of circumstances over which he has no power; and if we examine impartially every transgression he has committed, it will be found that nine times out of ten he was not a sinner, but rather a victim of sin. Life is at best a cruel game, a turbulent sea that must be crossed, and a heavy burden that often cannot be carried.” Blavatsky E. P.
Thus, Konchalovsky’s painting Paradise, which touches on the problem of life and death, reveals in a vivid and convincing form the thesis of personal responsibility to the “Father of heaven”, the holy spirit of the higher or immortal ego – let us call it what you like – is one and the same spiritual essence that reaps the consequences of actions with the burdened matter of the personality or “personal consciousness that constitutes the personal Ego, which must be freed from every grain of gross material plaque before it becomes capable of living ' in the spirit' and as a spirit.
Is heaven and hell a state of mind, or does anyone else doubt it?
The picture is international, the Frenchman is played, the German is German, etc. Everyone speaks their native languages - this gives the power of authenticity - after all, nations are different, often untouchable worlds.
I fully subscribe to the positive reviews and do not want to repeat what has already been said.
Everything is subtle, exquisite, without pretentious drama - even ordinary, but very strongly internally, visually, but without imposing simple answers.
Strong acting.
You understand what leads to the construction of paradise on earth for an individual, family, nation, state.
The film helps to think about the questions: is it possible to build the happiness of some on the misfortune of others?, when a person tries to make himself a superman - what happens to his soul?, what deeds and how affect the soul and its evolution and fate in eternity?
And at the same time, amazingly, all the human characters, and especially in this film, cause sympathy and understanding, although what they do is simply prohibitive and this is a strong contrast - the coziness, comfort and arrangement of personal earthly paradises and at the cost of their achievement.
This film brings some new note-sounding to the understanding of this eternal tragedy of the evolution or involution of the human spirit, so terribly manifested in the history of the Second World War, and evokes an intuitive understanding, with goosebumps, that this illness of the spirit is not defeated and is still relevant, and therefore the consequences of its repetition are already foreseen. . .
The film is heavy, but useful for the soul, it must be seen as a bitter but necessary medicine. . .
After watching the film 'Paradise' in the year of the release on the big screen, on fresh tracks in my diary, I made this record. Since then, my frustration and perplexity have not dispelled.
The Holocaust is becoming fashionable. And from everything that is subject to fashion, blows the conjuncture.
The film by Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky “Paradise” seems to have been created in order to be noted, necessarily nominated, and even the winner, than the devil jokes.
I am not a film critic, this is my private opinion, I share only what touched, impressed, or, on the contrary, caused deep bewilderment and aesthetic question.
I didn’t like the film as a whole. You could say “I like it overall,” but that’s not true. But, still, there were several perfect, impeccably artistic in terms of directorial, acting and cameramanship, fragments. Like fragments from the whole film, like hotel film frames, like rare photos that attract the eye. German (German) dry pure rationality in the construction of some mise-en-scene, as an expressive compositional technique, works perfectly, but fragmentary. The film breaks down into these fragments, heterogeneous, eclectic, nonequilibrium. The introduction of clearly theatrical techniques constrains, restrains, squeezes the natural dynamics of the cinematic movement. Perhaps you need to be a different director, so that something organically whole and original, perhaps like Roy Andersson, was born out of this?
I remember his convincing, talented performance of a young German actor in the lead role. Just shocked and admired Viktor Sukhorukov in the role of Himmler. Julia Vysotskaya in the main role... Very bad impression. No way.
With an annoyance, I want to ask: ': Dear Masters, respected and honored, recognized and called, is it worth mixing family relations with service to Art? Especially since the topic is very serious. That's sad.
The film “Paradise” I did not dare to watch for a long time, because the trailer and the description for it immediately showed that it is not just to have a good evening in the company of friends, but to reflect and reflect on what you will have after watching.
The painting by Andrei Konchalovsky tells the story of the fate of Russian Princess Olga, who fell during the Second World War in a concentration camp, in which she, like everything, is formed with complex situations and intricacies of fate, changing the heroine and forming a completely different personality in her.
The film is very ambiguous and heavy, you can not say that you watched it in one breath, in some moments even monotonous and drawn out. It also seems that you are not looking at an artistic, but a documentary picture.
In addition, for the first time I encounter such a camera or director's move as a still frame: it turns out that the camera is static, there is no movement, storyboards, and the attention of the audience is attracted by close-ups.
But most of all, I was attracted to the plot of the film, which was so deep on the one hand, but on the other – so simple. I felt like I was just watching the lives of the heroes in the camp. Konchalovsky does not resort to any special ways to draw our attention to some dramatic moment, all this is woven into the plot, which goes like a straight line.
In many situations, I was struck by Olga’s honesty and frankness – she does not hide her base emotions and feelings, does not hide her guilt for her actions, so she does not want to be judged for it, on the contrary, there is a feeling of deep respect that a person found the strength to confess his weaknesses.
But the most important thing in the film is that the development of the plot is interrupted by the reflection of the characters about their actions, but in the end it became clear that this was an interview with God.
6 out of 10
Immediately there was an installation, the film is heavy and put the block not to worry much. By my standards, there are great films, after which there is a sediment, they do not give sleep and change something in the worldview at least a little, or give grounds to think differently. There was no such effect. The heroine of Vysotskaya did not hook me. There's a German, that's something. All the scenes with him are strong, symbolic. He is handsome, intelligent, aristocrat, loves Chekhov. And fanatical pedantry. The Germans are a great nation and the sense that order, rules, the superman is stronger than fatigue, compassion, etc. And in that they seem so helpless, pathetic. In contrast, our man who can forgive, humiliate, endure and then still live, compassion and help.
The dialogues that the main characters conducted, revealing their motives, thoughts, distracted me personally. I would prefer to just watch the story, and their thoughts guess from the context.
Artistically everything is very good, all scenes, everywhere depressing order and small details that are terrifying and create an atmosphere of presence.
Another film about concentration camps, which I watched during the May holidays after Sobibor, can be attributed to controversial films. Perhaps, if you compare, I liked Paradise a little more than Sobibor – it is more realistic, although it also caused quite a negative impression. The film turned out to be more chamber, arthouse - I do not like this very much, but this picture did not spoil. I really liked the unusual finale, directing, editing and camera work, but the choice of the actress for the main role is extremely unsuccessful. It is clear that the desire to push your man is ineradicable, but still you need to look more objectively at the potential of the actor, choosing a role for him. This character is too complicated.
My attitude towards the main character changed throughout the film, and by the end of the film it was absolutely negative. At first, you certainly feel sorry for her, seeing the circumstances in which she found herself, trying to justify something, but then you realize that pity is replaced by irritation with her slavish nature. Yes, I understand that people are mostly weak in such conditions, the fear for their lives and safety kills humanity and some high moral standards, but not to the same extent. The authors of the film are constantly trying to show the heroine as a strong woman, but in fact she is weaker than everyone there and is ready to bend under everyone from the cleaner to the Gestapo, let yourself be trampled, take away the most valuable things, spit into the soul and wipe your feet on your honor, as long as anyone looks obliquely, if they hit, whatever happens. She did not arouse any respect from me, and she thought only of her own skin, spitting on everyone she could save and considered important to herself.
I was very sorry for the German who noticed her. Seriously. The guy put everything at stake to protect her, and she turned around instantly, when there was the slightest danger on the horizon. So with the final scene, where she is portrayed as a martyr in the name of the highest good - there was no feat there, she did the same thing as always - hid her head in the sand, not wanting to fight and resist, and the good was a side effect, and even then for a short time. She could have helped these characters by deciding to fight them, and she could have lifted them. But I decided, as usual, to shift it to other shoulders, and as soon as possible “to escape into the bushes.” She just gave up once again, as she gave up in every potentially difficult situation. You can say that you don’t know how others would behave if they were captured – yes, I agree, but films should be made about inspiring characters, not about weak-willed cowards. Such wars do not win.
Interview in front of the gates of Eden, or to visit God is not late
In black and white cinema, Princess Olga lives in Nazi-occupied France, the war is already running out, the Standard Fuehrers sell castles and buy real estate in Paraguay. The heroine is a fatal blonde, spreading her legs with stylish stockings and white garters in front of the right men and women. One day she is arrested by the Gestapo. Concentration camp, gas chamber, Jewish children (I remind you, children of other nationalities also suffered, but directors for some reason in most cases shoot only beautiful Jewish children). Lots of pictures from those years. Beautiful as dawn, the main SS-one-man Helmut, faithful to the last ideals of the Third Reich.
It looks in one breath, two hours flew unnoticed.
The only perplexity - because of the choice of the actress for the main role. After all, friends, cook Julia Vysotskaya is, first of all, a mother. It is impossible to perceive her in the role of Catherine Deneuve, whose sexuality in men blows the roof, and Sharon Stone, seducing the investigator. But Andrei Konchalovsky, who was under 80 years old when he shot this movie, had his own vision. Not everyone has a wife 36 years younger than a grandfather. The whole film was jealous of how she lost weight for the role.
On the one hand, reflections on the topic, how can a person playing the piano, reading A. P. Chekhov, shoot people? Or a great family man, a great father, and tortures people so they can't walk anymore? How can this coexist in one person? What are nature's twists? On the other hand, concentration camp prisoners willing to kill for a pack of cigarettes. People turned into animals because of hunger and deprivation. The desire to survive at all costs. We all have an abyss. And where the limit of humanity will end, it is better never to know. Our soldiers are taught not to be captured. They live in a shroud.
I do not believe in the truth of crime and punishment. That the killer is haunted by the shadows of his victims, hallucinations, crying children and other things. Man does evil and does not remember. How a woman forgets the pain of childbirth. The characters of the film live in the cadaver smell of a concentration camp, in which tens of thousands of people die every day. After leaving him alive, people do not turn around. Many Nazis escaped on rat trails to South America, started families and lived happily out their lives in comfort. Leaving the past to the dead. Because those who keep remembering go crazy. Becomes either a sadist who continues to kill, or a suicidal person, or a monk who repents for the rest of his life. We don't remember our sins. Evil can deceive everyone. We do not want to believe in a God who does not interfere, allows cruelty and death to occur. But can we judge?
Olga Kamenskaya, a Russian aristocrat living in Paris, joined the resistance during World War II, was arrested on charges of harboring Jewish children and sent to a concentration camp. There she unexpectedly meets Schdandartenführer Helmut, a passionate admirer of Russian literature, who was secretly fascinated by Olga before the war, while vacationing with mutual friends in Italy. He tries to facilitate the existence of Kamenskaya in the concentration camp and even makes his maid. However, more and more news of the defeat of the Nazis comes to the Standard Fuehrer, the ideals of the Third Reich seem more and more doubtful to Helmut. He decides to flee to South America and makes documents for his beloved Red Cross. But Olga during his stay in the camp changed the idea of paradise.
The first thing that you feel after watching the 21st feature film by Andrei Konchalovsky is not so much a sense of falsehood as a certain artificiality, calculation, orientation both to the festival laurels and to increased audience attention. Taking all scenes with a still camera does not justify itself here and seems manipulative. Moreover, this directorial move was much more convincing in the non-fiction film by Sergei Loznitsa “Austerlitz” (by the way, the premieres of both films took place in an interval of one day). But Loznitsa has only one operator plan - the average, while Konchalovsky varies plans from general to average, from medium to large, from general to large, and sometimes to super-large. It is as if the ghosts of those who died in a concentration camp (and in general in World War II) stare at the faces and deeds of the heroes, and then scrupulously interrogate them in purgatory to decide where to send them.
In addition, Konchalovsky deliberately stylizes and even aestheticizes the action either under the “document”, then under the old silent cinema, which in conjunction with the scenes in the concentration camp, performed in a slightly conditional theatrical manner, although they increase the emotional degree, but hardly cause unconditional trust and compassion. But use the author of at least a few static long-range plans of the same villa in Italy, where the local “golden youth” is entertained, and the barbed-wire barracks of a concentration camp, half-hidden with clubs of black smoke from the “death furnaces” – and it would be a good antithesis to the paradise put into the title. How not to remember, for example, “The Last Stage” by Wanda Jakubowska and “The Passenger” by Andrzej Munch, filmed directly in Auschwitz. That’s where Konchalovsky should draw inspiration to show the universal tragedy.
And the greatest empathy is caused by just asceticly filmed episodes of interrogations, in which the main actor Yulia Vysotskaya, the wife of the director, who played her best role in Paradise, is extremely natural. However, in flashbacks, her game is still not so flawless. Especially unconvincing is the actress in the scene where Kamenskaya convinces an SS officer that the Germans are the superior race.
One can make a long claim to the director that by addressing the Holocaust, he took the easiest and most effective way to rehabilitate himself for recent commercial and artistic failures. However, it is impossible not to admit that for more than ten years "Paradise" - the smoothest work of Konchalovsky. Even his previous film “White Nights of Postman Alexei Tryapitsyn”, which received, like “Paradise”, a prize for directing at the same international film festival in Venice, is perceived by Russian viewers as a badass mockery of the deprived Russian people, a squeamish admiration for the everyday life of the impoverished Russian hinterland. “Paradise” is made according to the laws of European author’s cinema with mandatory military entourage, deft stylization under retro and a tragic love story, where each of the characters is a victim. It turned out interesting and even touching. No more than that.
6 out of 10
Absolutely stunning picture of Andrei Konchalovsky & #39; Paradise & #39; not about the terrible war and atrocities in the camps, which we usually expect from films on such topics.
This story is more about the transformation of the human soul, about the stages of his humanity. We see three sides of the narrative: a French collaborator, a German SS officer, and a Russian emigrant, aristocrat, and a member of the French Resistance, all neatly intertwined at once. The way each of them changes, while remaining true to their beliefs, views, feelings, makes you think about your own.
For all 2 hours of timekeeping from the high-quality play of each actor, from impeccable camera work, sometimes resembling the hand of Michael Haneke, the mind lives a small, hard, but full life.
There are no nightmares of camp life in the film. We already know and understand this based on how the director conveys this to us. In the film there is the same ' gray zone' blurring not only the hard line between black and white, but making it clear how many shades ' gray' present in this middle. The final picture is expected, but so set himself the author. And that's logical. The picture is completely self-sufficient, because she answers all the questions posed to her herself.
Will I review it? Someday definitely.
Will you like her or not? It's not up to me.
Should I watch it? Absolutely!
Watch the movie correctly.
A film about the very nature of war, here shows its impact on the moral side of human suffering, according to Konchalovsky himself, he was interested in the topic of “moral violence, violence against the soul.”
Paradise shows how the events of the war affected a Russian emigrant, a German SS officer and a French collaborator. How they talk about what happened, in what positions they stood before and in what positions they stand after.
A wide range of topics, from war, morality and religion, make you wonder, how would the war affect me? Could I sacrifice myself at the right time? Would you adapt or remain in the same utopian positions as before?
Konchalovsky, as a representative of the culture of continental Europe, slowly tells his story, smoothly moving from one character to another and makes the viewer slowly think with him.
The film was warmly received both abroad (Silver Lion for directing in Venice) so that the most gratifying, in general, was accepted by us (Nika and Golden Eagle for the best film), and this was what caused concern, given the pseudo-patrioticism that takes place in our cinema.
9 out of 10
The girl who looked for good even in strange places
Before Paradise by Andrei Konchalovsky, I was sure that it was impossible to achieve such a level of piercing - with a minimum of artistic tricks and special effects.
In my memory, only Patrice Leconte and The Girl on the Bridge succeeded. Now there are two such special ones – Lekont and our Konchalovsky, who deservedly received the Silver Lion for directing Paradise. He even in the promotion of his wife do not want to accuse, because Julia Vysotskaya in “Paradise” showed the highest acting aerobatics – played as if not playing at all. In most of this movie, she is thin to exhaustion, shaving her head and literally turning her soul inside out in an attempt to understand whether she was a good person, whether she deserved her troubles and whether it was so sinful to strive for joy and survive at any cost. Konchalovsky used the same technique as Lekont: for most of the film, the heroine sits at the table and confesses, remembering the happy, bright, pre-war time. In her monologue, she does not curse those who have been unkind to her or who have abused or used her. In this absence of malice, there is the highest wisdom: there is so much bad around, and another revenge will definitely not improve the picture of the world.
The heroine of Vysotskaya is called Olga. She is an aristocrat, an immigrant and a member of the French Resistance. She was caught hiding Jewish children from the Nazis. At first, she was ready to do much, including trafficking in dignity, to avoid torture, but then she still ended up in a concentration camp. She and there will have a chance for salvation – in the face of a Nazi who has loved her since pre-war times, only by that time she will feel that there are things worse than suffering and death and stronger than even great unfulfilled love.
P.S. I never get tired of being surprised how different ASA and NSM are brothers and how different directors are.
Konchalovsky's paradise. We have to react. You can't stop responding. I remembered the velvet charm of the Noble Nest, a passionate female duo, when everything had already collapsed. And although the evening did not work out at first, I decided not to turn off the button.
The most brilliant film about concentration camps I consider Life is beautiful Benigni, with him in the lead role. There, the father of a Jewish boy convinces him that the camp is a play, a game, that everyone is dressed up, you just need not show the appearance, play along. This is to prevent the child from dying of fear until he is killed. A completely new perspective, an outstanding performer of course. Konchalovsky is a realist and minimalist. Everything is concise and thought out. There is only the most necessary, no protracted scenes and unnecessary words. And part of this film is generally shot in the form of interviews of his characters. I think it’s very risky and difficult, and it’s even harder to get authentic. But the actors cope brilliantly, everyone looks natural, unstressed, easy. The heroine is a former princess and aristocrat who was sent to a camp for sheltering Jewish children in Paris. Her interlocutor and, as it turned out, a former lover is a convinced Nazi fanatic. Who believes that if Nazism failed to achieve its goals (beginning with the cleansing of the population), then these goals are simply too lofty until they are achieved. That's the key phrase of the movie. Well, even in Demons, the hero says that to achieve general well-being, the people have accumulated too much, 9/10 in general unnecessary. They must be destroyed, by denunciations and “extinguishing all geniuses in infancy.” And this old Fyodor Mikhailovich wrote so. Well, in our century, all this has developed, received new theoretical justifications. What can I say? But back to the movie. The heroine in the camp meets Jewish children she knows, whom she saved in Paris, and tries to help them here. What sacrifices are possible on this path, which is accessible only to crystal-solid and honest people. Aristocratism and the corresponding concepts have been forged over the centuries, they do not arise from scratch. And the heroine adequately represents all this.
For this I am grateful to the Culture Channel. For the fact that this film was accompanied by a program in which they told about the real prototypes that made up the canvas, the basis of the film. Remember a real Russian aristocrat who worked in the French Resistance and was executed at the very end of the war.
The film is very good and professional, I liked it. Congratulations on the award.
A well-formed and atmospheric movie, the likes of which I have not watched in a very long time. Incredible stories of people told by them. Clear and well-assembled picture in black and white, a joy for my eyes. To the smallest detail prescribed monologues and dialogues. Emotions you believe. And such an easy syllable, and a style of storytelling that allows you not to notice the time and everything that happens around. The film flew like a moment, leaving behind a very double aftertaste.
Now I'm gonna dig a little bit. The idea, the script, the work of the actors at the height. The predictability of the finale did not smear my impression of the film. Overall, the film is very distinctive. I am not familiar with the work of Andrei Konchalovsky, and I will not say that the film “Paradise” will make me meet him, but the fact that the film stands out, for sure. His color solution, acting Vysotskaya and history in general. Final, I expected. I didn’t like it very much (it’s personal). But! The movie is definitely worth watching. It will go down in history, I am sure. Recently, this is probably the best of the domestic!
To reflect on good and evil in extreme circumstances.
At the height of World War II, France was occupied by fascist troops. A Russian emigrant, noblewoman Olga, collaborates with the Resistance and rescues Jewish children from the clutches of the Gestapo. After her arrest, she falls in love with Jules, a French police officer working for the Germans. Jules tries to somehow alleviate the fate of a beautiful prisoner, but all his efforts go to waste, and Olga finds herself in a concentration camp. It is there, behind barbed wire, that she unexpectedly meets a man she knew before - once a novice German intellectual Helmut, and now an SS officer with brilliant career prospects.
After death, the main characters of the film will tell the story of their lives in some strange place, remotely similar to purgatory. Actually, this is all that can be said about the plot "Paradise" - not without reason Andrei Konchalovsky said at the Venice Film Festival, where the film took "Silver Lion" that the picture was experimental. Half of the film’s timekeeping consists of the heroes’ monologues at the gates of paradise. This directorial technique becomes understandable if you remember that, according to Konchalovsky, the tape was filmed not to once again remind you of mass murders, but to reflect on good and evil in extreme circumstances. The dramatic plot "Paradise" was transferred to the screen with a square picture and a black and white image - the film seems to continue the traditions of wartime cinema.
The acting of the picture is convincing enough to attract the attention of the viewer in a conversational tape with rare episodes of violence. At the same time, Konchalovsky does not emphasize the horrors of the death camps, but shows enough to understand how monstrous the Nazi “new order” was. Yulia Vysotskaya has completely changed for filming - the contrast between her usual appearance and on-screen appearance is simply stunning. The main characters of the film are Helmut and Olga. The German quotes Chekhov by heart, but do not mind getting his hands dirty in blood, and Olga is a restless soul who believes in the ideals of humanism.
"Paradise" is a highly professional, elite, typically "festival" film, shot by Andrei Konchalovsky more for his fellow directors than for the viewer. A similar feeling is experienced watching Martin Scorsese’s Silence – yes, beautiful, yes, clever, but how far from the everyday worries of an ordinary cinema visitor! “Paradise” is the same – to understand it, you need to know history, have patience to examine the picture to the end, and then comprehend what you see. So if you just want to relax and kill time, watch Viking or Attraction.
World War II. Olga, a Russian aristocrat living in exile in occupied France, is arrested for harboring Jewish children. From that moment on, of course, her fate changes radically. Harassment of a French collaborator, a concentration camp, heavy, exhausting, physical labor and finally a meeting with Helmut - a high-ranking SS officer who once in peacetime was madly in love with Olga.
For some reason, I have not been able to fully experience any new Holocaust film lately. This theme in cinema at the moment, in my opinion, is in a very ambivalent position. On the one hand, no matter how hard you try, nothing new to say still will not work. It seems that absolutely all aspects of this phenomenon have been studied in detail and meticulously restored on wide screens. However, on the other hand, the theme from this does not cease to be acute and challenging many venerable directors who, I fully admit this, do not strive for easy fame, obtained due to a topical and acute problem, but really ' sick & #39; by what they shoot. However, neither the Hungarian film Laszlo Nemes 'Son of Saul' nor 'Paradise' Andrey Konchalovsky and not nearly leave the same miserable feeling of helplessness, as, for example, ' Schindler's List' or ' Boy in striped pyjamas'.
And you can’t say that the film is poorly shot, or the script is not well written. A lot of the cinematic elements here are made great, just all this we have seen many times, there is no zest, no new feature, no desire to take a step to the side. Still the same black and white narrative, all the same characters, all the same hopeless ' black' longing. And, for that matter, I can’t say that I liked Yulia Vysotskaya’s game, especially if we are talking about numerous inlays with conversations with an invisible interlocutor. She was overreacting there. But the German actors, by the way, are good. What Christian Klaus, who embodied the image of Helmut on the screen, that Jacob Diehl, who played a bright secondary character.
In short, it could be a good movie if it came out 20 years early. Now we must try very hard to make something relatively fresh and unlike other films against the background of numerous successful examples from world cinema. Andrey Konchalovsky clearly did not succeed. So, as a thing in itself, the film ' Paradise' pulls to a fairly high rating, but in a global context - only with a great stretch.
What does “Mother Russia” and “Paradise” have to do with it? That's what I mean. This question should be addressed to the director of the film – Andrei Konchalovsky, who owns this phrase. At the same time, it was written in the credits that the film is dedicated to Russian immigrants - members of the French Resistance during the Second World War who saved Jewish children.
It is difficult to criticize a work devoted to such difficult topics as war, genocide, inhumanity and self-sacrifice. Here it is very easy to run into counter-criticism like “Do you support fascism?” Or you are against the heroes of the French Resistance. I will immediately answer that I am not for fascism or against heroes.
But what does this picture have to do with the description of the activities of the French underground organization? No, the word “resistance” is pronounced very often there, in the context that it (the Resistance) is operating somewhere (behind the scenes), which is already enough for the Germans and the French, who cooperate with the Germans. For persuasiveness, they showed someone’s unknown hand with a gun who committed an act of just retribution on behalf of this very resistance. The only representative of the underground organization on the screen is the Russian emigrant aristocratic Olga, who sheltered two Jewish boys, for which she landed in a concentration camp, where people are burned alive in a crematorium or killed in gas chambers. And no resistance to you. Neither literally nor figuratively, no one resists anyone.
The plot of the film is fictional, although, according to the director, it is historical. Such a paradox is a historical fiction. The viewer is waiting for the physical and mental throwing of the main character against the background of naturalistic “pictures of life” of the female block in the concentration camp. We were shown how easily a person turns into an animal, how his will and psyche break down. Moreover, those who stand “on the other side” of barbed wire (the Germans, the French, who are with the Germans) look even bigger animals than the prisoners themselves.
Who is this movie designed for? I don't understand. What valuable idea is the author trying to convey to the viewer? That if you fall into inhuman conditions, anyone can lose their appearance? Maybe. That even under such conditions a person can preserve his soul and be capable of self-sacrifice for the sake of others? But here you can argue, in the sense that it is shown inconclusively. Yes, the heroine of Julia Vysotskaya at the end of the picture commits a spiritual feat, but the motives of her action are as follows: “I have no one to live for...” What if it was for who? So you wouldn't sacrifice? Well, it's her personal choice. And a little earlier she regularly gave up for lipstick and cigarettes (not for a piece of bread for hidden children). Then in some ecstasy she praised the Aryan nation. Are you excited?
From this film, the viewer does not learn that even in terrible camp conditions, people were capable of resistance, escapes, uprisings, and not only the looting of the corpse, the old woman who had just died. The viewer will not be aware that in the French underground there were about three thousand Russians and thousands of people of other nationalities who, among other things, escaped from the camps and took up arms. That the French partisans were called Maquis, that they killed the fascists and their accomplices, helped the escaped prisoners of the camps, engaged in anti-fascist propaganda. Why show fiction when you can describe the real story of someone’s feat of the time, as was done, for example, in the movie “Schindler’s List”? Here we see the reflection of rich people who think of themselves as aristocrats, but not as such, despite the “irresistible” love of Chekhov, classical music and high social status.
The film is shot professionally, camera work at a height, but it does not add to the essence, being only the external side, a fantasy.
And more. One fact turned out to be important, which surfaced after watching, or rather, thanks to watching Paradise. I had to read more about the sources about the French Resistance, about the concentration camps in France and when they appeared. To the horror it turned out that the actual participants of the Resistance were many times less than the accomplices of the Nazis (collaborators), many times less than the French who became under the arms of fascist Germany and fought against our country. The last were tens of thousands of people. This in no way diminishes the very activities of the French underground. On the contrary, honor and glory. But it makes you think a lot.
And the concentration camps? It's terribly simple here. Many of the camps were set up by the "freedom-loving" government. The French Republic before the Second World War, before the German invasion and occupation of France. And they contained people who sought refuge in a democratic country from the regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and just immigrants. These people were not criminals, they were not tried, they only became displeased in France. And it wasn't just Jews, it was Germans, Spaniards, Belgians, Italians, etc. After the German occupation, the number of camps increased and French citizens of non-French origin became prisoners. Again, it wasn't just Jews. An uncomfortable topic that is silenced by the “freedom-loving” public, but information on it is quite accessible.
Against the background of these facts, Konchalovsky’s film looks one-sided, if not weak. The Russian “Princess Olga” does not pull on the French Joan of Arc. And Rosia-Mother has nothing to do with this.
I’m rated 6 for a very simple reason, the film was not bad, but it didn’t hurt me. The task of such films is usually to show suffering, experiences, to show what makes them heroes, and what makes people rats, cowards, etc. I couldn’t see anything like that, the chronometers didn’t merge me with the actors and that’s even though the main character and my wife have the same names and surnames and I should have had some extra sympathy because of this coincidence.
Specifically:
I didn’t understand why we had the hero Jules, the French policeman, why not Rosa or anyone else, I didn’t find any semantic load in him.
I do not understand why ' rinse' Chekhov's name and what conclusions I should draw from the fact that German officers love Russian literature!
In general, there are many questions, emotions from the picture are not enough!
So only 6 out of 10.
For the first time, Konchalovsky did not like it. After watching a lot of films on the Holocaust, including 'The Pianist' and in the course of the film 'Paradise' you begin to catch yourself thinking that all this has already seen somewhere. The film is secondary, both in cinematic techniques and in script moves. The black and white style of the film is painfully reminiscent of ' Schindler's List'. But there it was justified by a purely visual decision, and here? Moreover, such a visual solution was in the film “I Stay” by Karen Ohanesyan. There, too, when in a coma, everyone was in gray clothes. Coincidence? I don't think so.
There is also some sense of artificiality of what is happening, which describes not the real events that could be happening during the occupation of France, but some fantasies of the director on the subject of this occupation. The main character is Russian (!!!) I didn’t understand the director’s message. Why? Is the hero of the resistance only Russian? A kind of Russism that causes unnecessary associations. The actions of the main characters of the picture are stereotypical, here you look and understand - now she will do this, he will do this. It has been, has been, has been...
The French collaborator is as perfect as the collaborator should have been. A collaborator. A collaborator without flaws, every act is his essence of collaborationism. As if Konchalovsky is teaching us: this is what a collaborator should look like! And his family is a standard collaborator! Step to the right, step to the left - an attempt to escape from collaboration!
Too ' honest' in his views, a German officer. True Aryans, who believed in their infallibility, were few and far between. They either went crazy or they went crazy. Some people just started helping the Jews. The tragedy of the Holocaust lies in the fact that in addition to the moral decline of the German nation, there was also the moral decline of the Jewish people, as evidenced, for example, by the film "The Man in a Glass Box" & #39;. It's not that simple. It's straightforward here. This one is bad, this one is bad, this one is good. It is clear that they give an interview to the Apostle Peter. It seems that Konchalovsky puts himself in the place of the Apostle Peter and himself pronounces the sentence. Is this sentence that correct? As Dostoevsky wrote, a writer should ask questions to which the reader should seek answers, and here Konchalovsky himself gives answers for all.
Cinema is not for the mind, not for the pleasure of the eye. He took his wife in the lead role again. Technological film for obtaining film awards, which touches on a “sharp” topic, is very moral and absolutely empty, does not trade for the living and does not make you think.
Having set out to see the new film by Andrei Konchalovsky, I deliberately did not read the criticism and tried to look at this subject as unbiased as possible and based on my own, and not suggested by anyone thoughts. It is difficult to say how much I managed to do this, because it is very difficult to get rid of information noise.
The theme of World War II, collaboration, Nazism, the Holocaust and #39; Russian & #39; participation in the French Resistance is not that I have studied very well, but many aspects of it are quite familiar to me. From the point of view of the historical film Konchalovsky weak. Actually, the historical background is written indistinctly and leaves a feeling of the background. Similar events could occur in the USSR of the 30s or 50s, in China during the Cultural Revolution. There is almost no specific time and place in the film. It's very common. Very much pulls from this background 'Mikhalkovshchina'. Even in the way the characters wear costumes and how they hold weapons, you can see the alienity of these items to them.
If we talk about the main characters, they are cardboard and stilt. Their suffering is hard to believe. Suffering is more like showy tantrums. They pronounce the text thoughtlessly, without living it, and emotions do not fall into the right places of the text. There is no aristocracy in him or her at all. These are ordinary modern actors who are stuck in life, dressed in clothes that are not organic for them. They have no sense of truth. Even when I looked at their hands, I couldn’t help feeling the rejection of them as aristocrats. Are the dancing idiots on the old tape aristocrats? Slutty Milfa is ' Russian Princess'? Everything is like Zhvanetsky:
Very difficult for filmmakers. The biggest, most terrible difficulties of filmmakers. You don't know. Requirements for reliability have increased, but there are no old tanks, there are few Mausers. The people have forgotten how to wear the coat. Boorishness and rudeness in Siberia just get nothing, and education in St. Petersburg is not going yet. Aristocracy in St. Petersburg is not yet going. If the hero just sits - nothing yet, but how to open his mouth - so far does not go. Or, there, your own dignity, this untouchable personality. . .
I feel like he's been told. Maybe they demanded, scolded, deprived of salaries, did not pay for sick leave. Well, for him to play that sense of dignity. And, apparently, he wants: he raises his head, and on tiptoes, and drinks to strengthen himself, but he does not yet know how.
And most importantly, it's meaning. What is the main idea of the film? Why was this whole garden built? A holocaust story? Try an unexpected angle? It doesn't get cold from the whole picture inside. And a painful hopeless depressive is not born inside either. The movie doesn't really hurt. And ' hero' heroines some sluggish and ' worthless' and ' showy'. And the hero's stoicism, except for the meaningless pathos on his "Pseudo-Aristocratic"' face gives birth to nothing. His fanaticism is more playful and infantile than real. Not God's poker, not God's candle.
The secondary characters were no less upset. The disgusting Himmler/Sukhorukov also cannot portray anything meaningful. It is not Sukhorukov himself who is disgusting, but the image of the cardboard Himmler he portrayed. It would have been hard for a baby morning. Comparing it with the Partaigenosse from Moloch (Himmler is not there, but the types are written filigree and their nature is quite visible) or with Prokopovich from ' 17 moments' or with Bershadsky from ' Blockade' or with Tiede from ' Liberation' or Neutain from ' Bunker' I can see how much he ' did not get ' into the image. And the maneuvering field was... The servant in the house of the main character left a painful feeling of artificiality. The well-fed faces and bodies of the inmates in the camp did not add to the plausibility either. The bluish friend of the main character, though believable ' hangs ' in an alcoholic frenzy, but also pathetic in his crunches to portray a front-line soldier with PTSD who became an executioner. Is it Steiner from the Iron Cross & #39? The commandant is also empty and not infernal. Between him and the main character, the confrontation is cardboard and ' unmade'. Whether the director intentionally passed by such a rich ' confrontation' or simply did not see it, is not clear. The Frenchman came out second. Although, kind of, he should claim a place close to the main characters, but, again, he is fussy and apparently designed to portray ' Ordinary' Evil. This dual position makes him a passing character, secondary and his appearance in 'purgatory' clearly far-fetched. It was as if it was deeper, but then it was cut. . .
Well, and a strange text of dedication ' to the fighters of the Resistance who saved Jewish children' All the way we see on the screen the Germans, the Russians, the French, who lived and died only to save the Jewish children. Not their own children, not people in general or children in general, as a symbol of the future, but Jewish children... well, somehow too straightforward and strange. Children of a huge number of nationalities died in that war, and the resistance fighters did not set themselves such one-sided tasks, whether Russian or French. Of course, I risk being accused of anti-Semitism, but I rather see anti-Semitism in such a straightforward treatment of historical material.
In general, all this pathos of the end of the film is very straightforward and schizophrenic. We do not leave room for reflection and reflection, although it seems that the film claims to be material for reflection, and as a result the ending of the type ' well, everyone thought and being'.
To summarize, the film left a painful feeling of idle shot and wasted time. No costume film historicism. No drama in the suffering of heroes. No burden from the despair of the painted environment. No horror of the crimes described in it. No sympathy for survivors. No awareness of righteousness ' the great sinner' None of this is here... Momentum ' appeal to God' the main character, also artificial and cardboard, ' on camera'... Anyway, don't watch this movie. Save money and time.
The film tells the story of three completely different people: a Russian aristocrat who finds herself in a concentration camp, an SS officer and a French police officer working for the Nazis. It was very interesting to look at the events of that terrible war from different points of view, to understand and see the motives, feelings of such dissimilar heroes. I also liked the idea of showing the monologues of the characters in the film: the audience was able to better understand what the characters were experiencing at one time or another, what they were thinking. But still, in my opinion, the work lacks a more coherent plot, vivid scenes, active actions. I also believe that it was possible to reveal the image of the French collaborator Jules, because the role is controversial and very interesting: on the one hand we see a caring head of the family, a loving husband and a caring father, on the other - a cruel and unscrupulous accomplice of the Nazis, involved in the torture and execution of innocent people. In addition, Jules has no sympathy for the Nazis, but he is willing to give up morality for the sake of various benefits for himself and his family. More active participation of Jules, in my opinion, would enrich the plot of the picture.
Very interesting and unusual movie, I was glad to see it!
This film was recognized as the best of all and received an award for Best Director, and Best Actress. But is that true? Does the film deserve to be called the best? This can only be understood after viewing.
The film ' Paradise' is a very complex and heavy military drama that combines the stories of three heroes: a Russian prisoner, a French police officer and a German officer. The picture is black and white and it is done correctly for this format, because it is an author's film, a long, boring and boring film. For the first half an hour nothing happens. On the screen, we see only monotonous dialogues of interrogation, unemotional interviews on camera (for the viewer), and empty home conversations about nothing. But then the further development of events acquires a more fascinating color. Scenes of horror in concentration camps, their own confessions, candid conversations, hints and ordinary human relationships. The heroine seems to be Russian, and in the film they constantly talk about Jews and good and bad and again about Jews.
The film itself is almost entirely in a foreign language.
In the film there is absolutely no back-to-back music. In the frame, only sometimes you can hear the hero playing the piano or someone listening to records.
In the film, almost all scenes are static, many one-frame stories, only occasionally interrupting from the general plan to the average. Almost no close-ups. The scenes themselves are very long and stretched on timekeeping. Sorry, but for the author's film timekeeping is more than two hours, it's too much.
Of course, the acting is very impressive. Everything looks natural and natural, as if we are not the actors, but the real characters of those times. Actress Julia Vysotskaya is really quite worthy of the award. But as for the best film, I disagree categorically.
It's not the best movie. Best director, maybe, but not a movie.
As Medinsky said: 'Hollywood will live without your movie ticket, but our Russian cinema really needs you' I just want to ask, who will watch such films in this context, in this style and in this narrative? Author's (director's) cinema is mainly shot for certain persons, for a small circle of the audience. So how can you compare ' Paradise' with ' Icebreaker', with ' Duelist' or with the same 'Crew'? It's the same if you play a bard song on the evening dance floor of a big disco.
But if you remove all the dryness and monotony of the film, add internal colors, music, effects, it would be very (really very) interesting and strong story. It would be a movie that tens of millions of people could see. And so this is another author's project, a director who boasted to his and received praise. But the main task of the director is to shoot for his own or for the audience, for the people, for the country?
Yesterday I watched on TV "Paradise" by A. Konchalovsky. ..
The theme in the film is eternal and very important: the confrontation of humanity and inhumanity. Inhumanity sophisticated, ideological and total, as fascism.
The theme is global, the director is a highly experienced master, and the film personally “did not hook me”, although I have long been over 60 and have seen everything. And those who are 15-20, he probably will not see, and if they look, then I am sure that he will not hook them.
So who's the movie for? For Oscars, lions, nick and other premium rattles, for a personal “feeling of deep satisfaction” or, still, for ordinary spectators or even shorter, for the people – is this a global theme?
I don’t want to go into details and take bread from critics, and the weak details in this film are enough. But I think I’ll stop at one.
To make a decent puppet scene for children, you need a script, preferably a good one. In order to solve global (and very real) themes-problems in the cinema, scenarios of the same level are needed, and from the film Paradise, for all the creative tricks of its author, only one “mythical realism”, which is clearly not enough here to fully disclose the topic, is thwarted. And the obvious reason is a weak scenario.
Examples when a weak script, made a film masterpiece, I do not remember. “Paradise”, of course, is not a masterpiece, but for the stated theme, it, unfortunately, is not just an average film, it is unsuccessful, since “mythical realism” in art is no longer enough to fight real fascism.
What's this movie about? About the soul, about how a person changes in terrible, critical conditions, which remove one by one the fig leaves of the past life from the executioners and victims. It hurts to watch this film, because you begin to understand that the meaning of life is not in likes on the Instagram page, not in another culinary masterpiece or a glass of wine, not in beautiful designer rags, rest on paradise islands, but in a race for success, almost disappeared Soul. Surprisingly fell into the role of my unloved Julia Vysotskaya and unfamiliar to me Peter Kurt. Surprisingly not a commercial project. Surprisingly piercing film, going against the cultural mainstream. Not everyone. To watch only people who are tired, after work, endless traffic jams, problems and addictive life, no, no, but will raise their eyes to the stars and think about the Universe and themselves, about their role as a particle of the universe.
The two main incarnations of Cain and Abel of Russian cinema in the person of Nikita Mikhalkov and Andrei Konchalovsky seem to have finally transferred their personal confrontation to the big screens. The more successful and prolific younger brother has long been the envy of an older brother who tries to replicate his success. Konchalovsky as the creator of the last decade throws in different cinemas synchronously with Mikhalkov, who is trying to shoot chamber author's stories, understandable at times only to him, then dumps on the audience indistinct sequels of "Burnt by the Sun", which he shot, and for some reason was ashamed of everyone.
Konchalovsky also did not lag behind, then shocking the audience with the surreal “Gloss”, then shooting in Hollywood an absolutely talentless and empty family blockbuster “The Nutcracker and the Rat King”. Both brothers, despite the constant mutual creative struggle, have another beautiful unifying feature - they love to drag relatives into their films. Mikhalkov - daughters, Konchalovsky - wife. But the main, finally binding feature of their cinematographic style is the painful grandeur and the attempt in almost every tape to present themselves not just as the creator of an individual work, but also as a demiurge of an individual art or, perhaps, even the whole world. The painting “Paradise” is the brightest example of this manic sense of creative pseudo-superiority.
The plot of Paradise focuses on the fate of the Russian immigrant Olga Kamenskaya, who left for France, who for the shelter of two Jewish boys gets into a concentration camp. Her life path is intertwined with the former lover Helmut, who rose to the impressive rank of head of the SS’s Jewish extermination control service. The tape tries to simultaneously tell both the personal fate of the characters and show the general background of the Holocaust tragedy.
The main problem of the film, as, in principle, and the whole Russian cinema, pathosly calling himself an art house - the irresistible desire of the author to show the viewer his intellect and outlook, sometimes forgetting about the most important, in fact, about the cinema itself. The film loses in everything, starting with the unusual concept of presentation, ending with the very semantic content of what is happening on the screen.
“Paradise” is shot in a pseudo-documentary style, when almost half of the film we see characters who, sitting at a table against a gray background, confess to the camera, telling about their main fears, dreams and sorrows. Very soon, the viewer realizes that the heroes are long dead, and the people he sees are souls who are trying to justify their lives at the gates of paradise. These scenes-prayers, scenes-crying, probably the best that is in the picture, and if the film consisted exclusively of them, becoming almost a chamber, theatrical action, then the claims to Paradise would be much less. But once these interviews begin to intersperse with game material, the narrative collapses right before our eyes. The scenes of the heroes’ lives are so dissonant with the other part of the film, they look so insincere and clumsy that all this pseudo-documentary begins to acquire notes of a real farce.
There is a Russian TV series “Real boys”. So “Paradise” is the same boys, only about the Holocaust, with insincere tears Vysotskaya and stunningly littered with dramatic episodes. Characters who so sincerely confess to you, looking straight in the eyes, you stop believing when you see their real life. How can you make a movie in which the “interview” actors sometimes play simply brilliantly, and in game scenes resemble a serial cabbage – a huge question for the director.
The fact that the history of the Holocaust tragedy consists of fragments pulled from European and Hollywood paintings does not add optimism. For example, scenes with mountains of glasses from Schindler’s List, the violence of escorts against women, taken straight from the Night Porter. Konchalovsky even managed to steal the idea of a woman who goes to bed with a German for salvation from Bondarchuk’s Black Book or Stalingrad. The fact that almost every scene has references to Solzhenitsyn, who, however, did not write about German camps, should probably be kept silent.
Absolutely unoriginal plot the author is trying to fill to capacity with his own intellectual inserts. The Germans here are all nobles and aristocrats who adore Russian culture and literature and take Chekhov’s volumes from looted Jewish houses. They talk about Byron’s poetry, listen to Stravinsky, drink schnapps with a mandatory cigarette, and say that Stalin is an extraordinary man, like Machiavelli. Concentration camp prisoners on their background seem like a real beast that is ready to kill for a plate of soup, leans to lesbian sex for a couple of cigarettes and sends children and old people to the gas chambers instead of themselves. This is a true view of the Holocaust tragedy. The final scene, in which the German confesses his complete rightness and the elevation of the superman above other races, seems altogether irrelevant in the tape, which chose such a sensitive theme for its basis.
Konchalovsky, of course, is worthy of his brother. Only he can continue to make absolutely snobbish, worthless movies in 2016, similar to salted soup from the images and ideas of more talented directors, passing all these thoughts as his own. What can I say, Nikita Sergeevich at least imagined himself in his films as a tsar. Konchalovsky in his new work encroached on the title of God. It is a pity that such films are put up for the Oscars as an example of good Russian cinema. After all, with such a heavenly gatekeeper, as Konchalovsky imagines himself, I want to go straight to hell. There is a better society, and more interesting.
The world may not be saved, but the individual can always be saved.
In his Nobel lecture I.A. Brodsky reveals in detail the theme of salvation through aesthetics and, in particular, through good literature. What, after all, is paradise but ultimate salvation?
Some reviewers reproach Konchalovsky in some sterility of the picture space, in the lack, God forbid, of the camp black, and other undersides of the most terrible war in history, and this, of course, is nonsense. ' Paradise' - this is a purely anthropological film. First of all, it is a film about people, and in the second, and even third, about war. 'Paradise' - a film about people, about different people, and why they become so different. And it is insanely ironic, but 'Paradise' is a film about the fact that most of all we are just in the profane plane, that is, in sin. And until we stop desperately differentiating and differentiating, nothing good awaits us, nothing promised to us.
Another point that is not on the surface, but certainly important, is Death. When we are told about paradise, of course, we all associate it with something subjective, again DIFFERENT, but inevitably positive, and completely forget that, in addition to the deeds of life, the main ticket that we have to present at the entrance is life. In fact, this is our little human tragedy, which is very difficult to comprehend while you have a pulse: even if you are beneficent, you will not get to heaven, because everything that is the notorious You will remain on sinful, hostile, smoking earth. No matter how many new ideologies, religions, or political systems appear, no matter what they promise, universal, one hundred percent prosperity on Earth is impossible by definition; whoever builds it, paradise cannot be achieved by us, it is impossible ontologically. But we can believe. Doing something positive and believing. We can even die for it, and we will be a little less, or not at all afraid, because when we are gone, something else will enter Paradise: purified, good, worthy. Something better than we are now.
Well, apparently, we are quite distant from the twentieth century, which was almost entirely devoted to the conduct of mankind on itself very specific experiments. And in the world, cases of comprehension by artists, philosophers and artists-philosophers of the phenomenon of mass slaughter of human individuals have become more frequent and deepened in quality. It turned out that on an individual level, the average person is still driven by three basic natural instincts - the desire to survive, to be satisfied and to reproduce. And all that man has had over the past few thousand years, falls under the influence of these instincts easily and sometimes with pleasure. In the remainder, after the dehumanization, there remains only the ability not characteristic of the animal world to convincingly substantiate the metamorphosis that has occurred to itself. Here is where the layman divides into two large, approximately equal parts. The first justifies his fall by caring for his offspring and other relatives. The other is the joy of the happiness of neighbors in a broader sense (compatriots or humanity as a whole). There is no fundamental difference between these mass categories of ordinary people - both dehumanization is not worth the effort and even brings a tangible dividend. However, if these two mass categories are combined, we will not be able to reach 100% of the population. Left unaccounted for the descendants of the inhabitants, who have accumulated a little more human, but enough to cherish them. Confrontation with conditioned reflexes is given to them hard and not everyone succeeds. The dividend is not provided at all. At least in life on earth. And as it is after it, the remaining ones have no knowledge, because faith is denoted by this and no other word. The more valuable and significant the feat of preserving a person.
In the finale of the film, everything sounds the same and more beautiful and simple: “...Evil grows without help, and to have good always requires effort.”
There are a number of directors who have proven themselves on the world cinema stage. Their new films almost immediately put forward in the category of “classic”. Konchalovsky is definitely one of them.
The continuing interest in the theme of World War II forces an increasing number of directors to turn to this topic. Here is another side, of which the same number as the human destinies that affected this global tragedy, was shown in the film Paradise.
Three views of the Second World War from the faces of the main characters: a Russian emigrant living in France and during the occupation, hiding Jewish children, a French collaborator who sees nothing wrong in his actions and leads his quiet family life at that difficult time, and an SS officer who so standard and zealously believes in the unbearable of Germany throughout Europe that it seems that this simply could not be.
The fates of all three heroes, who talk about their lives against a completely faceless background, in their classic version intersect. The amazing thing about this film is that there is not a single shocking or previously untold fact about that time. I can’t say it’s not interesting to watch. You still look at faces, listen to monologues and dialogues. You expect some important strings to hit you right now, but the movie doesn't really touch you. You can only remember a couple of piercing and successful scenes, and everything else looks almost ordinary. Yes, of course, people’s life during this difficult period, even if it was in a concentration camp, was terrible, but gradually it became ordinary. If in peacetime a person works, leads a household, creates a family, raises children - and all this constitutes his daily life, then in a concentration camp everyday life is taking care of himself, children, if lucky and they remained close, endless exhausting work and doom, which eventually becomes what a person lives.
You can hardly call any of the characters in this film fake. All the characters in the film are thought out to the smallest detail, as are their stories. Like the whole script. From the ideality of the film itself becomes a little scary, it is made with almost German precision. This doesn’t mean that any World War II movie has to tell something new, in fact all the stories are a bit similar: even if not from the beginning, then at the end it all comes down to human grief and tragedy. Each was touched differently, but it is hardly possible to speak of a greater or lesser degree.
The characters of this film are sure that they did everything right, even if doubt slips in their monologues, which unites them - confidence in the correctness of actions. They can be morally and ethically condemned, but should they?
Okay, cut film, where everything is sterile, as in the operating room - the play of actors, the thoughtfulness of the characters, the script, shooting, in the end seems empty, in which even in the final you wonder how it went and banal you can finish such an opus.
5 out of 10
I watched Konchalovsky’s Paradise last weekend, but I decided to write only now. I’ve been trying to find the right words for this lie for a long time. Yes, that's right, Andrey Sergeyevich did not cope with the context, and issued a rather pathetic movie, which you want to believe only in those moments when on the screen Vysotskaya is the only one who is worthy of praise.
No, of course, in addition to it there is an interesting camera solution that gives the film a flavor. But even this does not save from the gloss and “expensive”, which well do not fit with the pictures of such subjects. Too sterile and polished scenery does not fall into the setting of the concentration camp, where shit, lust and death are everywhere, and people are sometimes painfully satisfied with their situation.
Curiously, after viewing there is some understatement. In the sense that some interesting moments did not have enough time to reveal their plot potential. Some people will call it laconic, but in reality it is just a soulless approach. For example, the topic of confession, which skips along the course of the plot, is played too coldly in the finale by everyone except the aforementioned Vysotskaya. She was the only one who managed to imbue herself with her image, tell the story of the heroine, competently spreading the palette of feelings, and carefully bringing her story and the film as a whole to the end. Otherwise, the narrative is too quiet for the topic of genocide. Situations that should put certain characters in a bad light are too mild, and even pity is a feeling that always wakes up in films of this kind, and it is absent.
Yeah, something didn't go too well. I wanted to say that the subject of war and all the suffering that follows it should be more personal. The stories of the characters are deeper and stronger in terms of the message to the viewer, and the inspiring actions of the characters cannot be made sudden, they must have prerequisites and motivation. Death must be death and life must be life. And here everything is some Oscar, sweet, and telling all that we know from the history books, only more boring and indifferent.
But now try to imagine a more indifferent narrative than that of a history textbook, and this will be the clearest description of Paradise.
This last sentence sounds strange.