Writer Viktor Pelevin once said that wars start when feature films begin to resemble news and news resembles feature films.
We are watching such a feature film about spies and poisoners right now.
A poison of the Novichok family was found in the body of Alexei Navalny, the Germans tell us.
There is no evidence, but there is a wonderful drama with poisoning somewhere in Siberia, with the life of a "critic of Putin" (as Western newspapers call him) hanging by a thread, and deus ex machina, a god from a car (that is, a German plane) saving our hero.
But according to the laws of drama, the villain does not appear out of nowhere.
We cannot just introduce Ivan Petrovich into the shot and write him the title “killer” - the audience will not believe it.
It is necessary to show a bloody trail that stretches after him from the past: so that the viewer understands who he is dealing with and fears for the life of the protagonist, as for his own.
It is also desirable that our villain has a distinctive handwriting and recognizable weapon.
The audience loves to guess.
A machete flashed in the distance, a close-up camera pulled out a razor or a piece of a stranglehold at the crime scene, and the viewer himself shouts out before the detective: "This is it!"
The scriptwriters of this movie gave poison to the Russian villains.
Not to say that it is completely unjustified: the Soviet intelligence in the past really hounded its enemies.
Our spy Stashinsky killed the Ukrainian nationalists Lev Rebet and Stepan Bandera by spraying a jet of cyanide in their faces.
Why is it so?
Because in this case, the poison, entering the body through the respiratory tract, leaves no traces, and doctors will most likely call the cause of death a heart attack.
This is the meaning of poisons - so that death looks as natural as possible, and the weapon does not lead to the performer.
But this is in life.
In cinema, the villain is vain: he deliberately flaunts his villainy, leaves in place "characteristic signs", his autograph.
On the account of the Russians in this drama - Skripal and his cat, the actionist Pyotr Verzilov, who, allegedly poisoned, was carried in the same "Charite" literally by the same plane as Navalny, and, attention, Vladimir Kara-Murza, the youngest, who stated about his poisoning two whole times: in 2015 and 2017.
It is enough for the Germans to say “Novice” once, and the whole world exhaled with relief: “Well, now everything is clear!
Russian poisoners again. "
Now let's look at the quality of the blood trail.
Skripal and his daughter have not been seen since their "poisoning".
The cat died - and this is the only one who is really sorry in the drama.
Verzilov was cured, and what was found in his body - no one knows, and there is a feeling that Peter himself does not really want to be found out.
But with Kara-Murza, the situation is completely mysterious.
In 2017, he was diagnosed with the "toxic effect of an unknown substance" by Denis Protsenko, the very doctor who in this apocalyptic year became the main hero of the fight against covid.
The patient himself was sent abroad for treatment, samples were sent to toxicological laboratories in the United States and Israel.
The almighty FBI, whose director was then the current Secretary of the State Department, Mike Pompeo, intervened in the case.
And ... the data was classified.
Sorry Mr.
Kara-Murza, you have been poisoned by highlighted likes, and what - we will not say.
Vladimir went to court, and now part of the case was given to the victim, but ... there is still not a word about the results of the examinations.
About what they hounded.
It would seem, what is easier?
You have a villain, you have a murder weapon - so show him so that the audience would freeze in horror and already definitely understand who is to blame.
Do not show.
Secret.
This is because we are in the movies, and here they don't really kill.
The director does not show the safety ropes on which the stunt performer hangs.
He will not show a can, from which artificial blood is gushing, there will be a knife in the frame, there will be a victim's face distorted by pain, there will be waves of the killer's hand, but there will be no moment when the blade enters the body.
Cinema is the art of convention, the art of silence.
We are all shown a film whose purpose is to create a certain mood in society.
Convince everyone that Russians are bad guys who don't need to deal with.
And on naive viewers who ask: "What, was it all true?"
- they look at stupid children who believe in Baba Yaga, but whom, so that they can better eat porridge, sometimes they have to frighten this very Baba Yaga.
Yes, Viktor Olegovich, our news lately is not just like films - these are films.
And we can only hope that your next prophecy about the war will not come true.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.