For those who believed and hoped, there is great news. For those who were afraid, hated and engaged in artistic Smerdyakovism, there is terrible news. Although this is the same news.
The big Russian cinema and the big Russian cinematic style are back. After decades of timelessness, “imitations” of Hollywood, for some reason almost always small-scale, absolutely “for the poor.”
The Russians have arrived. And they made a movie. About Russia. Without withdrawal and embarrassment for the “chains of the past” and other “dark kingdoms”.
The Russians made a film about who they are and where they come from. Why, how and for whom was the country created, today spread over nine time zones. And, most importantly, at what cost to the Russians themselves, whom they adored to call either Soviet people or Russians, did the creation of the country stand up.
The film “The Heart of Parma” is released on the screens – that’s right, with a lowercase letter, since the hill overgrown with forest is mentioned, with which the Permian land is so rich. Not a city in the Italian province of Emilia-Romagna .
The adaptation of the bestseller of the same name by Alexei Ivanov, published at the turn of the epoch (the first edition appeared in 2000), dragged on for more than 20 years for understandable and very prosaic reasons.
Resources were required to lift a block of a novel of almost half a thousand pages. Not only financial, of course, but also intellectual, based on the experiences of the country and its people even in recent years, not to mention the centuries that have elapsed since the 15th century, when Moscow , or rather the Moscow principality, having felt how the Horde yoke was weakening, began collect land. To create a country out of the lands and people who lived on these lands.
The one that we, its citizens, who love it, and those who fear us and who do not love us, are familiar today.
Leaving for a while the military component, the history of battles and other details of the battle canvas, it is worth noting that, probably for the first time in the last almost half a century, the topic of what Russia is in the spiritual sense, what Russianness is made up of and what the value system of Russians is based on, “The heart parma” shows without hiding, without hiding, without anger and predilection.
And for half a century, because the only director who managed to analyze the Russian idea by means of cinematography was Andrei Tarkovsky . In the film “Andrey Rublev”. It was at the end of this masterpiece that Trinity soared up from blood, dirt, torment, fires, love and betrayal, duty and a sense of faith and disbelief, hope and hopelessness.
Great and eternal is created at the cost of no less great and equally endless suffering. And this price is best known to Russians.
The creators of “Heart of Parma” – from producers to director, from director of photography to actors (the choice of performers even for episodic roles could not but be more accurate and creatively justified), from artists – and those who created the scenery, and those who invented the costumes , and those who drew makeup – of course, they are aware that Tarkovsky is not that strange gentleman who shot “long and boring”, but the one who told about Russia. And for a long time, but vigorously – because Russia is just a very large country, living at its own separate historical pace. Obeying the course of the clock of their civilization, and not someone else’s cheerful rhythm.
There are not so many direct references to “Andrey Rublev” in the film, but they place the necessary accents. The black hood of Bishop Jonah, his sharp look of heavenly blue eyes (unforgettable Yevgeny Mironov ), his dialogue – both with himself and with his spiritual children – this is after all the shadow of the icon painter Rublev (performed by Anatoly Solonitsyn), flying over the Permian forests.
The burning cross falling from the temple during the battle and Jonah, already with another cross, dragging it to the dome on his shoulders in order to save and save it, is the shadow of Boriska, the same one who cast the bell for the belfry of the temple in Suzdal , all in the same “Andrey Rublev”.
Just as the Russian land does not stand without the righteous and the martyrs, so does a church in Russia not stand without a cross on its dome. And no bell. In the belfry.
It took Russian cinematography half a century – and also, by the way, at the cost of incredible losses and suffering, balancing on the verge of losing selfhood and independence, in order not only to understand this truth. But also to explain. And not to someone there, like the smartest and most refined metropolitan cinephile, but to an ordinary viewer.
This explanation turned out to be convincing, first of all, because the screenwriters (Sergei Bodrov Sr. and his co-authors) managed to tell the story. First of all, a love story. And about love. And that it often contradicts duty. And that, torn between these two feelings, you can quickly slide into betrayal. Faith helps to refrain from the latter. But faith can also be tested for a break. Then hope comes to the rescue. And if little is left of hope, faith and love, courage is born. And here it pulls the person up. To heaven Because courage is the ability to sacrifice. By yourself. And first of all, just yourself.
From the interweaving of battle scenes (and we have already forgotten our once famous canon of equestrian battles, introduced and fixed for the entire cinema world by Sergei Bondarchuk), hot love scenes, the most cruel bloody, but justifiably naturalistic confrontation, when no one and nothing is spared, when the mind is blinded by revenge, before the eyes of the viewer is born (or rather, to this viewer, if he is attentive, grateful and open, let down) that same modern Russian idea that was forced to be kept in Russia (including in order to please the West, what hide it now) under wraps.
That’s how she is. From blood. From an unthinkable number of victims (and it is not true that we did not remember this). From overcoming, which is very difficult and very painful, weakness and fear. From the desire to save and preserve – even at the cost of compromises that are hard to imagine today. But what can we do if this is our history? We cannot, realizing what the rejection of our own past threatens, throw it all into the trash, even if it is beautifully and modernly called the “system of common European values.”
By the way, about these very values, about all this pacifism, about the unwillingness to fight, the protagonist himself, Prince Mikhail, declares (a grandiose work by Alexander Kuznetsov).
That’s what he says: “I don’t want war.” But the choice of the path, the road that leads him and his warriors into the distance, makes pacifism ultimately impossible. For love, for shelter, for your own, you have to go into battle. And shed blood.
And in this battle, in the end, alas, lose. With dignity. Receiving shackles and flour.
Compromise, when the fate of the country turns out to be more important, more necessary and more weighty, becomes as a result forgiveness, renunciation of revenge, and, therefore, humility of one’s own pride.
Therefore, the finale of the large-scale saga “The Heart of Parma” is logical: labor, when you need to plow and sow in order to have bread, even on the battlefields soaked in blood, becomes a symbol of the rebirth of man. And the people. Farming with a wooden plow to which horses are harnessed, who have already forgotten the cries of warriors, is like salvation. In the Christian sense of the word.
Tarkovsky’s “Trinity” rose up from the smoke of conflagrations and the howl of pain, signifying the immortality of the idea of Russianness.
With Megerdichev, the Russian idea descends from heaven to earth to help revive the country, returning it to itself and the people. In which every language that exists in it – and the grandson of the Slavs, and the Tungus, and the Kalmyk, and the Permian, and the Tatar – feel like a part of Russian civilization. At the same time, keeping yours in it too. Calmly. And carefully.
This is precisely the main and most powerful blow of the empire, which its enemies were so afraid of and so afraid of.
The film “Heart of Parma” closes the long cycle of returning from heaven to earth and the return of the earth. The return of people. And the return of hope. Faith and love will follow.
There has never been a more timely and modern film in the recent history of Russian cinematography.
“Heart of Parma” and its authors can only wish grateful viewers and a good rental. And to say thank you – for making those who come to see the picture, accomplices of an important, necessary and difficult reflection on the fate and history of our country, and therefore each of us.