Perhaps you need to approach the viewing of the picture with some life background, developments, within which you no longer live, do not suffer and do not suffer, switching your own experiences from your ego to compassion for others.
When you are even from the edge of contemplative to yourself and sympathetic to others, then, perhaps, someone will feel what I felt: I liked myself, letting the heroes and understanding the picture unconditionally, i.e. Without conditions – time, place, appearance, characteristics of heroes, personal matching experience, etc. Perhaps the sympathy for oneself associated with accepting others is what one lacks. This is the first reason.
Do you know what it's like to be a man with a bunch of responsibilities, a sense of guilt for all the imperfections that are happening, to be the only one who will try without hesitation to make the life of loved ones a little easier? If not, this is the second reason.
Often, the excitement is expressed as follows: I have so many emotions, so many emotions! But not here. In the movie time of “Hunter” there are several emotions, minimally several. They are transparent – to “see” reality, velvet – to “feel” clearly, tightly, but delicately, and absolutely silent – so as not to be distracted by the usual verbal tinsel of detailed answers “who feels what, who wanted what, who is doing what and how he spent the weekend...” Bakuradze made it difficult to learn from the back. No words, from the back. Such a challenge is impossible to miss if you consider yourself not a callous person with imagination. This is the third reason.
Is the visual-sound series complicated? Contain yourself, do not be distracted by the background (here I am talking about squealing, of course) and “decoration” (the ordinary conditions of people’s existence): irritation with reality can be more outrageous than concentrated misfortunes. Alas.
Three reasons for a passionate observer of life (without entertaining overtones), with a few articulated emotions, in collaboration with an honest, harsh, compassionate and responsible creator to spend 124 minutes so.
And there are many reasons to feel even more personal aftertaste.
Interesting feelings were after watching: at first the film was terribly disliked, everyone thought: “What is it about?” Some carcasses, bodies, screeching, slush, and no plot... And then the film gradually began to "reach".
Of course, everyone will take something of their own, but for me the main idea of the film was a kind of “click” on the nose of me, a typical urban resident. A person who is used to drive and Hollywood: if blood - then elbow, if love - then suffocate, if hunting - then exclusively on a dinosaur.
But in fact, the real life for most is not like this: it is simpler, quieter, but not without its human dramas and joys. People live in their city, go to work, maintain their house, and not that they do not want anything more out of laziness or stupidity, but simply live as they imagine to the best of their own considerations about happiness and life. Although this film is not a documentary, for me it is closer to the description than the narrative. It is as if the viewer looks out the window and, unnoticed, looks at a piece of someone else’s life.
In his second film, Bakur Bakuradze remains within the framework of the former ascetic film language. Unhurried "Schultes" at one time won the sympathy of the jury members "Kinotavr". A few years later, at the Cannes Film Festival, in the program “Special Look”, “The Hunter” was presented, in some ways its antipode, and in some ways a relative.
From the uncomfortable outskirts of Moscow, Bakuradze is transported to the village, straight to the pig farm of Ivan Dunayev, a “man-man” who prefers to express his opinion with actions rather than words. The synopsis of the film describes him as a collective image of a patriotic hero during a peaceful calm, who raises agriculture, takes care of his family and loves his woman. Dunaev is the ideal gender model of a Russian man. And even his fascination with his workwoman from a neighboring colony should emphasize his masculinity, which consists in his inability to resist a woman. The description of this idyllic portrait is the plot of the “Hunter”. Of course, the picture is complemented by a lot of flattering details to Dunaev, which will make the most inveterate skeptic show sympathy.
Bakuradze, moving away from a pessimistic view of Russian reality, remains in line with modern trends aimed at achieving visual realism. At the same time, its main characters, Lesha Schultes, Ivan Dunayev, are devoid of real negative human characteristics. They are also devoid of simple human weaknesses. Adultery hunter becomes almost the only real cinematic event in the tape, which against the background of measured life of the farm seems a real death. Carlos Reygados did the same in Silent Light, forcing his religious hero to cheat on his wife, and conveying his inner throwing through natural effects. With the same plot and in a similar style, Andrei Zvyagintsev works in Exile. However, all these comparisons seem superfluous, if you pay attention to the duty with which Bakuradze demonstrates this segment of the life of his hero. His hunter holds all emotions so much that the viewer has to be content with only a couple of static scenes in the car and in the motel room. Was and was. Ivan Dunaev treats everything philosophically, not arranging transcendental tantrums like the men from the films Reygados and Zvyagintsev.
Although the models of behavior of Shultes and Dunaev do not differ, it is implied that in one case we are dealing with a free, useless person who builds an image of peace and communication almost every day due to lapses in memory, in another case we are faced with a person tied to numerous duties and norms. Unlike Schultes, Hunter no longer seems to be an honest fixation of the hero’s events, circumstances, and reactions. It seems that this time Bakur Bakuradze has prepared a visual guide, “what should a man do when ...”. We found that at least he had to be phlegmatic.
Coming out of the thicket, a man with a hunting rifle saw the beast and, raising his weapon with one hand, as if wanting to complicate his shooting in such a sophisticated manner, shot. Approaching the shot boar, poked his bleeding head with the barrel, after which he did not change his facial expressions at all, reloaded the gun with one hand and, after being silent for a minute, slowly smoked.
This unpretentious episode serves as the finale and culmination of Bakur Bakuradze’s second film The Hunter. Following a well-known rule, the gun, present in the frame from the beginning, fires. But the viewer’s hopes for an unexpected plot denouement, fed by the adulterous circumstances of the script, are cruelly deceived. The final shot is not at anyone, but at a wild beast in full accordance with the purpose of a hunting double-barrel. However, not distinguished by an exciting scenario solution, the new film Bakuradze is an excellent example of conceptual cinema.
It seems that already in the title of the film, the author, in Heideggerian listening to the language, catches the semantic nuances hidden by the everyday use of words, finding in the “hunter” related to “willing”, “desire”. It is the overcoming of the animal irrational element of desire that is symbolically accentuated in the final scene with the dead boar. The same scene provides a reference “assemblage point” for interpreting the entire film in a psychoanalytic way.
Ivan, the main character of the picture, fully corresponds to the image of the Freudian authoritarian Father. He is the incarnate psychoanalytic Ego, the subject acting on the principle of reality. The overwhelming power of this principle is wonderfully conveyed by the way in which the daily work on the pig farm owned by Ivan is depicted with almost documentary accuracy, where everything up to the shedding of animals is turned into a measured production routine.
The situation changes with the appearance of Lyuba, an elderly prisoner from a colony-settlement, who becomes an object of desire for Ivan. The film perfectly shows how irrational sexual impulse takes over the actions of the hero. The struggle between the unconscious instincts of the id and the moral norms of the super-ego that unfolded in Ivan’s life is transmitted by a number of symbolic images. Symbols of Id (the lake that swallowed the downed fighter, embrasure of zota, sausage shop, a bullet-shattered light bulb) are interspersed with images reminiscent of the requirements of the Super-Ego (the memorial of A. Matrosov, the cross on the grave of the deceased pilot, the medical procedures of the son). A magnificent scene in which an old man and a boy lower on a wire from a boat into the depths of the lake (unconscious) electric lantern (consciousness) in search of a sunken plane (superconscious).
“In place of the Eid there must be an Ego,” this principle formulated by Freud is best illustrated by B. Bakuradze’s new work. The author’s film statement leads to the assertion of the priority of conscious duty over unconscious impulses. And this outwardly conservative conclusion is actually quite revolutionary against the backdrop of the cult of desires and pleasures that is fostered by popular culture.