An excursion into history: what are the main movie premieres of this week

The Union of Salvation

Salvation Union became one of the largest works in Russian cinema in 2019 - if not the largest: about two thousand actors took part in the shooting, more than 1.5 thousand clothes were sewn for the film, a movie village was built from 22 houses, a temple and other objects, models of weapons of that era were made, including replicas of 12-pound guns from World War II.

“In order to restore the architectural image of the city of that time, it took us several months of painstaking work: we studied paintings, prints, descriptions of contemporaries preserved in the archives, also communicated with specialists and consultants before proceeding with drawing ... Thanks to computer graphics we were able to recreate the historical appearance of St. Petersburg in 1825, developing a world that existed 200 years ago. It is important to note that for the first time, viewers will see such a detailed elaboration of St. Petersburg that they have not seen in any historical film, ”quotes the“ Film Distributor’s Bulletin ”by FX producer Eugene Gitzcirat.

Cameraman Igor Grinyakin, in turn, claims that for the filming a group led by director Andrei Kravchuk (Admiral, Italian) used the largest chromakey in the country.

The roles in the film were played by a star team from Alexander Domogarov (Count Miloradovich), Vitaly Kishchenko (Emperor Alexander I), Alexei Guskov (Prince Shcherbatov), ​​Ingeborga Dapkunaite (Princess Belskaya), Maxim Matveev (Prince Trubetskoy), Leonid Bichevina (Apostle Muravyov-Apostol Muravyov) ), Pavel Priluchny (Pavel Pestel), Ivan Yankovsky (Mikhail Bestuzhev-Ryumin), Anton Shagin (Kondraty Ryleev), Sophia Ernst (Anna Belskaya) and many others.

The plot of the “Union of Salvation” needs no introduction - everyone knows this story well from history textbooks. However, you can and should watch the tape not only from aesthetic, but also from practical considerations: the chronology of the events of those days is better perceived on the screen, through a detailed picture of the era, rather than through a dry text.

"Serf"

A counterweight to the serious “Union of Salvation” was another picture of Russian production, also released this week. The team headed by Klim Shipenko (Salyut-7, Text) worked on the comedy “Slave” for about two years: only a year and a half passed from the moment of the idea to its immediate implementation - filming. The authorship of the idea belongs to screenwriters Daria Gracevich, Anton Morozenko and Dmitry Permyakov, who worked together on Interns.

Filming lasted about two months and took place in different locations, but mainly in the Pskov region, where a whole village was built specifically for the film. The creators of the tape borrowed some props from Mosfilm and other film studios, but they had to make a lot on their own - so that Kholop was interesting not only to watch, but also to consider.

However, first of all, the audience in the “Serf” will probably be interested in the plot, which is a kind of symbiosis of “The Taming of the Shrew” and “The Truman Show”. The scriptwriter made the twenty-six-year-old (or so) Grisha (Milos Bikovic), an extremely ugly lifestyle, as the capital’s major. Grisha, who enjoys the patronage of a wealthy father (Alexander Samoilenko), is so insolent that driving in a drunken state has become commonplace for him, and he does not give bribes to traffic cops, but gives up. The hero does not know the word “no” and, on occasion, is ready to cripple any person who stands in his way.

In order to reason the offspring, who lost his mind, the pope oligarch uses the services of a professional. The extravagant psychologist performed by Ivan Okhlobystin in his work uses not the most ordinary methods. And for Grisha, he has an original solution ready: one day the hero wakes up in another century without the opportunity to use the help of his father. Which is very inappropriate, since in the new life Major Grisha is just a servant of Grishka, who can be unpunished with a whip with impunity or even hanged.

“If the meaning of the films by Klim Shipenko could be formulated in one sentence, then it would not be Shipenko. In our tape, each person will see something of their own, their pain points, and laugh at them. And maybe even think about it. But the main message is still the same: you need to live correctly and behave humanly. Nobody is safe from turning from the “from dirt to riches” category and vice versa, ”said Taimuraz Badziev, general producer of the painting, in an interview with RT.

However, even if the viewer does not think about anything, he will surely laugh - at the upheavals of the protagonist, dialogs in the spirit of “Home Arrest” and numerous references to Russian history (or even “Game of Thrones”). A nice bonus to everything is a kind melodramatic end, smoothing out (comical, but still) the suffering of the characters.