- Last week on START the premiere of the series “257 Reasons to Live” took place. How do you remember the filming of this project?
- They were unforgettable! The script is both dramatic and funny. He will not leave you indifferent. This is the case when you just dream of starring in a project with such dialogs. Arriving at the site, of course, I saw almost the same film crew with which we were just filming Nefutbol. The first sensation was as if we were filming a sequel (laughs. - RT ). But it is surprising that the atmosphere was different: the material is different, it creates a completely different mood on the site. That is, the "genre" of filming is directly related to the "genre" of the script. It was on this site that I noticed such a moment. The whole group is immersed in what is happening in the script.
It is no secret that every film-making process is a series of challenges. From the series “to manage to remove 60 shifts in 45”, “how to give winter to summer” and vice versa ... “how to shoot if you cut off the whole world”. After a good project, you become older - this is always evident by the number of gray hairs added.
And the guys this time did a miracle altogether: they managed to remove this cold, rainy summer sunny and unimaginably beautiful. All scenes were shot in nature and in the interiors, not a single pavilion, which gave a special charm to the entire series. It feels like you worked with the wizards of cinema. Yes there is a feeling - it was so!
- Your hero communicates closely with the girl who defeated cancer. How important is the issue of ethics of interaction with a seriously ill person in the plot?
- It is important to note that our series is not about cancer and seriously ill patients: it is about life, about the desire to live, the reasons to live, and about the dreams that we want to realize. My hero Konstantin comes across a girl who has an illness behind her, and she has already begun to put into practice her items from the diary. Faces, as soon as she added to it the 257th reason - "find your love."
Constantine is the exact opposite of her. He is sarcastic and treats life with a great deal of irony. I would say that even in his name there is a constancy and immutability of experiences. He created for himself his own order of life, his own framework, from which he did not want to leave. Everything suits him, he does not want to change anything.
He looks like the hero Casey Affleck from Manchester by the Sea. Inside him there are force majeure circumstances that made him behave this way. Lock in a kind of "cocoon." And the heroine of Polina - Zhenya Korotkova - pushes Konstantin out of the “comfort zone” by his behavior, thereby forcing him to look at life anew. She generally makes everyone around her do this (laughs. - RT )! I’m talking about Polina herself too.
- You met Polina Maximova on the set of the series, and your romantic line on the screen flowed into real life. Has this fact somehow affected work? Was it easier or harder for you to play a couple in such circumstances?
- We just had a good and fun together - both in the frame and outside the frame. I think it is also very visible in the series itself. Therefore, of course, yes: this also directly affected the project.
- © Photo: START video service
- This year, a film based on the novel “We” based on the novel by Eugene Zamyatin will be released. You well know the source - how clearly did Hamlet Dulian and Alexander Talal follow him?
- The phrase “based on”, it seems to me, already gives an answer to this question. I would say this: the book is an arthouse, and we did the mainstream. Such an action movie that would be understood by a larger number of viewers. It was important for Hamlet and Talal to make him more accessible.
But a change of genre did not simplify the film. It still shows a peculiar, fantastic world created by Zamyatin. The hero himself is more arthouse. It is completely impossible to call him a hero.
- Is the film very different from your ideas about the world of Zamyatin?
- Yes. I can’t say whether it is worse or better. This is a completely different vision.
As a child, I read a book and thought: “I wish I could adapt it!” And imagine my happiness when Hamlet wrote to me - then he just wanted to shoot a teaser. Then he didn’t even have money for the whole film, there was only desire. He is a great fellow: this is his debut, a huge project to which he has devoted so many years. And his vision is original, fresh and relevant.
And at the same time, the depth did not disappear. All really important things that are in the work remained. Maybe they will be even stronger at some point. I did not see the result, so I can not say anything about the picture. I just know the process, I understand how involved the artists were, how responsive the workshops were to the matter. It seems to me that everyone has brought their soul to this project.
- You said that you got into the series “Eighties” through Facebook. And after you had a similar experience?
- Yes, social networks to help me (laughs. - RT )! Hamlet (Dulian. - RT ) wrote to me on Vkontakte. That is, in "We" I got so ...
Also on Facebook I wrote an actress Irina Kaptelova, who starred a lot in China. An agent asked me to contact me (there is no Facebook in China). Then the adventure began. I recorded my films and showrills (actor’s video cards, fragments from different works. - RT ) on flash drives that were transferred to someone who would fly to China and transfer them to the studio there. For two weeks I was already on the set in China. That is, everything happened at lightning speed.
And if we talk about what kind of experience in the cinema has influenced me greatly, I recall the shooting in China. At our site, of the people who spoke Russian or at least English, there was only my translator. All the rest spoke exclusively in Chinese.
I lived there for four months - and it was so unusual! At first it seemed like I was on another planet. I first appeared in a world so mentally different from ours, with completely different concepts about life.
And, of course, the second huge plus of this project is that I had a chance to work with Nikita Sergeyevich Mikhalkov. At some point, he arrived at the site and for several days removed and subsequently edited the painting.
- © Shot from the film “Bitter!” (2013)
- There are a lot of rave reviews about Nikita Sergeevich. They say it’s an honor to work with him ...
- It's true. Deep, wise. He creates an atmosphere on the site in a second. There are directors who, in order to create silence and a degree of immersion in the material, shout or try to talk with the artists in the corners. I don’t know how Nikita Sergeyevich does it - he simply envelops the whole area with two or three words. People no longer have extraneous matters, phones. Everyone listens attentively to him.
Mikhalkov says something very quietly and you feel that only this matters now.
- You said that you spent some time in Germany and wanted to see how the European film production system works. Did you succeed?
- Just when I lived in Hamburg in Germany, my friend Grigory Dobrygin starred in Anton Corbijn’s film “The Most Dangerous Person”. And I happened to see how European cinema works. Well what to say. Firstly, there are other budgets, and these budgets allow you to remove without processing. There, a lot of money was initially pledged so that everyone had everything, and was on time: the right amount of machines, time, equipment.
Everything works. As far as I remember, shooting day in Europe is ten hours. And there are trade unions. "Step right, step left" is impossible. Everything is on schedule.
- At the end of various projects, how do you tend to evaluate your work? How strict are you with yourself?
- As much as possible. Never satisfied with anything. I am a perfectionist. During filming, I always want to do another and another take, although most likely the first was what we needed (laughs. - RT ). For all that I am proud of my roles in Metamorphosis and Brothers Ch, I believe that I have not played my own role. Still to come.