LYUDMILA SAENKOVA-MELNITSKAYA
Oh unexpectedprinciples and patterns
The Minsk International Film Festival “Listapad” 2023 was unexpected in many ways. This year he lived his own life, not very loud and not very open. I wouldn’t say it was behind the scenes, but you can’t call it mass either. Despite the fact that every time they tried to talk about its unprecedented geographical breadth, we can recall that in previous years the number of countries represented was very impressive – from South America and Australia to Georgia and Uzbekistan with Kazakhstan. Not to mention Russia. This year the bias was again towards Russian cinema. In any case, the main prizes in the fiction and documentary film categories went to Russian-made films. Some are hard to agree with.
The film “The Tailor of Brooklyn” was awarded the Grand Prix of the festival. It looks like this project was created by a family contract. Scriptwriters Evgeny Serov, Elena Serova, director Evgeny Serov, composer, performer of the song and one of the roles Vasilisa Serova. The producer of the film was the famous Russian businessman and theater figure Yuri Vaksman, who also played one of the main characters as an actor. The name itself, willy-nilly, refers to another film from the 90s, “The Ladies’ Tailor.” The film is old, but I remember every detail. And how slowly and understandably life went on in the house of the wise, good-natured Jewish tailor Isaac until the city was occupied by the Germans, and how the Jews began to collect their simple belongings to set off on the road, not suspecting that it would be a road one way – to Babi Yar. I was struck and forever remembered by the image of that tailor who, on the eve of his last journey, thinking about a happy, peaceful life, took the lady’s measurements, as if performing a special dance, full of intimate feelings (Innokenty Smoktunovsky). It was a drama gradually turning into tragedy. The degree of a specific tragic event was enhanced by the degree of truth of human characters and relationships.
In The Tailor of Brooklyn, the emphasis is placed not so much on the truth of characters and relationships, but on the mystical background of the present and past. The mysticism begins when a stranger (Sergei Puskepalis) comes into the house of an elderly man (Yuri Vaksman). For some reason, the tailor categorically does not want to let him in. Did he know him or does he know that something unpleasant is connected with the stranger? The film does not answer these questions. It gradually becomes clear that the man in black is just an insurance agent whom the Brooklyn tailor would like to avoid meeting. Again the question is: why? Again, the answer is unclear. Either the story with the tailor’s son, or his own debts, but the story begins to unfold in the opposite direction, towards the past, where there was war and a concentration camp.
As we return to this monstrous past, history in the present takes on the form of an increasingly theatrical farce, in which the emphasis shifts from reality to the unreal.
(…..)
With documentary films it seems simpler and clearer. There is truth and history – there is already a movie. And if there is a person about whom you want to learn more and more, then the documentary will definitely find its audience. The best non-fiction film of Listapad 2023 was recognized as the film “ God! I feel Your approach!” (Russia, directors Nikolay Burlyaev, Dmitry Chernetsov). Many years ago, Andrei Tarkovsky invited Moscow schoolboy Kolya Burlyaev first to play the main role in Ivan’s Childhood, and then to one of the key roles in his next film Andrei Rublev. The meeting and creative collaboration became iconic and significant in the biography of the actor, director, public figure, founder of the International Film Forum “Golden Knight” Nikolai Petrovich Burlyaev. More than once in his books and numerous interviews, he outlined for himself the fateful role of a great film director. Years later, Burlyaev decided to create a film-memoir about one of the largest representatives of auteur cinema, where he also acted as the scriptwriter and producer.
On the one hand, “God! I feel Your approach!” – a memory of a man who became a kind of guru in cinema for Nikolai Burlyaev. On the other hand, this is a film about the worldview principles of Andrei Tarkovsky in cinema and in life. The basis of the film is the confessional diary entries of Andrei Tarkovsky, from which it becomes obvious how extremely important the moral basis and spiritual depth of the work was for the author of multi-layered, multicultural cinema, the creator of a special artistic film language. One of the best researchers of Tarkovsky’s work, Dmitry Salynsky, noted: “The variety of religious readings of Tarkovsky’s films is due to the fact that he directed the thoughts and feelings of the audience into the realm of the spirit, and what each of them saw there is a deeply personal matter.” Nikolai Burlyaev talks about films, the views of the Master, projecting his own views onto this solid spiritual and ideological basis. The film reveals known and unknown facets of Tarkovsky’s personality, which largely explains some episodes of his works. However, it is difficult to agree with the opinion that “God! I feel Your approach!” is a discovery film, a story about an unknown Tarkovsky. Most likely, this is a confession film, a confession film, a certain version of reverence for the Author, for whom the artistic and spiritual were equivalent.
(….)
Probably, in the current circumstances of the development of the film process, it is natural that of all types of cinema art, the most important for us is documentary cinema, since there you will find what is in particular short supply today – truth and people.
The full jury of the documentary competition: Alexander Semenyuk (Russia), Natalia Marinova (Belarus), Jovan Markovic (Serbia), program director Maria Arekh and actress Tatyana Kiryushchenko-Horuzhaya.
The awards for the film “The Tailor from Brooklyn” are accepted by director Evgeny Serov and the leading actor Yuri Vaksman.
(Full version – in “NE” No. 1, 2024).
