New Year's sawdust: why Russia was left without cinema
Postman Pechkin from Prostokvashino stated: “In our time, what is the main decoration of the table? TV! And he shows you a web.” These words are more relevant than ever in the New Year. Salads and TV - what else do you need for a holiday? True, it happens that someone decides to sparkle with originality - and then rushes into distant distances... However, the coronavirus has greatly corrected this story. So - mostly - they stay at home.
And here a dilemma arises: you can, of course, use the TV exclusively as a monitor, as a screen and watch movies and TV series downloaded to the media, but you can still try to scroll through TV channels. The second lesson, despite being somewhat archaic, nevertheless has not gone anywhere - and many people often act in the old fashioned way. I myself am one of those who will gladly watch something decent on TV. Once a year.
But! What to see? I have already spoken about the low quality of New Year's programs. What about cinema? Of course, what would New Year be without “The Irony of Fate”? Not showing Eldar Ryazanov’s film on channels and not watching it at least, as they say, with one eye is comme il faut. But! Are there any alternatives in principle?
It so happened that I worked these January days to the accompaniment of TV channels - that’s why I studied their content well. In my personal rating, the winner - and this is not an advertisement - was the Mir TV channel, which did an excellent thing: it showed, one after another, the best Soviet films, diluting them with an imported product, but also popular in the USSR - “The Gendarmes” with Louis de Funes. It turned out quite light and dignified.
How did other TV channels compare if we are talking exclusively about films? Mostly Western films - like the Harry Potter saga or The Nutcracker with a strange African-American. Thus, in essence, we have a confrontation between Soviet cinema, the old school, and modern Hollywood, diluted, however, with old-school sketches (Channel One, for example, loved films with Marilyn Monroe).
How did it happen that for decades we have not been able to film almost anything that can and should be reviewed for the New Year? Create a feed that is not necessarily festive, but atmospheric. Of course, in general there were classic works: from the epic “Brother” through the grotesque “Peculiarities of the National...” to social statements like “Fool”. However, what could be declared as an absolutely New Year's movie - like the same "Irony of Fate", "Gentlemen of Fortune" or even "Home Alone" - never appeared. And I don’t think that this is purely a matter of habit: they say, we want to review “Ivan Vasilyevich” for the hundredth time. It’s just that, as a rule, there are no alternatives.
New Year's saga “Christmas trees” turned into sawdust.
I'm afraid this is a diagnosis. Moreover, not only to Russian cinema, but also to what is being palmed off to us under the guise of modern Russian culture. We didn’t see anything new, fresh, powerful - and the New Year holidays without adequate cinema of our time once again confirmed this. The hyped “Yolki” turned into sawdust.
There were times when it was possible to make a movie in Russia using either heroism or bandits. Then the Russian government seemed to come to its senses - and allocated huge funds for the most important of the arts. However, this gave quantity, but not quality. And if the same Balabanov approached his films exactly as the last word taken to convince death, now it has become exclusively a matter of business - and nothing personal, nothing creative, nothing at all.
Perhaps this is the final stage, in which they fall to the very bottom in the hope of pushing off. Or waste away. And perhaps, a more optimistic view, is an intermediate stage for creating something real and monumental. But one way or another, the time has come to create quality. Because you can say, of course, “I don’t watch TV”, “it’s just a movie” and whisper other self-soothing mantras - but they are only harmful. After all, cinema has long been one of the most effective components of the so-called “soft power”. America, which exported hundreds of aggressive stories through Hollywood mass culture, fully illustrates this thesis.
Yes, we are not talking about creating Russian cinema now, which would promote the necessary maxims into the international intellectual, cultural and spiritual space. But we are talking about much more accessible things - creating something that we, Russians, can watch during the holidays, and just for fun. Something that could compete with the “damned West” and the “no less damned Soviet Union.” After all, this is how they tell us about what they themselves feed? It's a paradox, though. Which definitely needs to be resolved.
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