The legendary grandfather Talash Who among us does not know the famous grandfather Talash - the main character of the story "Drygva" (translated from Belarusian - "Tryasin") the classic of Belarusian literature Yakub Kolas, which formed the basis of this film.
Vasily Isaakovich Talash was born on December 25, 1844 in the village of Belka (now Petrikovsky district) on Polesie in a poor peasant family. He worked hard all his life on the land of the landowner, raised two sons and three daughters. Already on the slope of life, after the revolution, he received his own land, which immediately had to be defended from the Poles. When Polish troops came to his village and began to restore the old landlord order, 75-year-old grandfather Talash took up arms and, having organized a partisan detachment of more than 300 people, fought with uninvited guests.
Now about what wasn't in the movie. When the Polish invaders were expelled, Talash was demobilized. He was elected president of the Novoselkovo Council. Endowed by nature with remarkable strength and strong character, the former red fighter fought banditry, restored the economy destroyed by the war and strengthened Soviet power. In 1928, for active participation in the partisan movement Vasily Talash was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
Jakub Kolas learned about the famous grandfather and wrote a story about him, which was published in 1934. Before the war, the play “In the Forests of Polesie” was created, a feature film was filmed, after which Vasily Talash gained national fame.
1941 he met already at the age of 97, but he did not lie down on the stove: he collected weapons for the partisans, was their liaison. The Nazis arrested him and threatened to shoot him, but the desperate grandfather fled from them and went into the forest to the partisans. In January 1943, he was taken by plane to Moscow, where the chief of the Central Staff of the partisan movement Panteleimon Ponamarenko personally presented him with a duplicate of the Order of the Red Banner, instead of the one selected by the Nazis. The military grandfather became the hero of numerous publications, starred in newsreels, spoke on the radio, met with soldiers and home front workers. After the release of his native places, he returned home, where he worked as a forester. However, he did not have long to rejoice in his return to his home - a year later in the 103rd year he died.
In addition to Yakub Kolas, many writers have addressed the personality of Talash’s grandfather more than once. Nevertheless, the play on the novel “Drygva” was staged only once (in Moscow in June 1940, during the decade of Belarusian art). And after the war, the image of the legendary grandfather Talash in cinema never returned. I have been waiting for this picture with great interest.
Gennady Garbuk, in my opinion, well conveyed the image of Talash himself with a strong, rebellious and strong-willed character. One can argue for a long time about how he got his order (some believe that Talash simply solicited it from the party leadership, throwing petitions and complaints at the CPB Central Committee). It is even said that Vasily was a very proud, unyielding and glorifying man. One of the friends of Yakub Kolas recalled that the legendary grandfather went to the writer for a long time with complaints, threatening him with reprisals for not fully writing out his heroic image, so the writer simply had to hide from him. In the end, Kolas was already not happy that he wrote this story, having contacted such a person. However, do not forget that Vasily himself was at that time in a very old age - not in vain they say: "Old people are big children."
Very well in the film shows the opposition of Martyn Loza (the role of Denis Parshin) and Stepan Busyga (the image of Pavel Kharlanchuk). But there was something missing from this painting. Perhaps dynamism, since the actors simply played their roles, but did not put their soul into it, as they say. Separately, I would like to note the fact that the main characters in this film speak their native Belarusian language (it can not but rejoice) – agree for modern domestic cinema this is a rarity. However, trying to follow the realities of that time as much as possible, the heroes speak different languages: soldiers of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth - in Polish, local peasants - in Belarusian, soldiers of the Red Army - in Russian. Interestingly, only Belarusian actors were filmed in Talash (the principal position of director Sergey Loznitsa). I was pleased that the author of the script Sergey Shulga gave a modern sound to the political relations between the heroes of his future film - soldiers of the Red Army and Poleshuks, Polish legionnaires and local residents, nobility and ordinary peasants.
Initially, the script was written for an 8-episode film, Pilsudski was even supposed to appear in the film, but then it was reduced to four episodes (and the image of the Polish leader in the film never appeared). The release of this film could not take place at all, since, as the director himself admitted, “it is quite difficult to make a script based on the story Drygva – there are no dialogue scenes there.” Therefore, it is unlikely that anyone would take up this case. Nevertheless, the actor Gennady Garbuk, who played the main character in Talash, achieved the production of the picture, he was the author of the idea of creating a film about the legendary Belarusian partisan. Before writing the script, Sergey Loznitsa met with the youngest son of Yakub Kolas, Mihas Konstantinovich Mitskevich, consulting on the script. Filming began in the autumn of 2010 and took place near Smolevichi. In Repin’s estate near Vitebsk, footage was filmed in which partisans capture Poles during a ball in the pan’s estate.
Who was interested in the personality of Talash’s grandfather, in addition to the story of Yakub Kolas, I can advise you to visit the house-museum dedicated to him, which is located in the estate of Vasily Talash in the village of Novoselki, 9 kilometers from the city of Petrikov (Gomel region). On Yakub Kolas Square in Minsk there is a monument to the Belarusian classic, on both sides of which there are two more figures - the heroes of his novels, which brought the writer great popularity (one of them is Symon Music, the other is the same grandfather Talash).
6 out of 10