Picture "White Nights of the Postman Alexei Tryapitsyn": review

The master of domestic filmmaking Andrey Konchalovsky tirelessly continues to collect professional film awards and sympathies of the audience with his film project "The White Nights of the Postman Alexei Tryapitsyn." Reviews, reviews unanimously emphasize the originality of the idea of the creator, because the picture is created on the principle of documentary cinema - the camera seems to spy on the life of a real person.

Watching film

Konchalovsky once again tried to expand the limits of cinema for himself and penetrate into the sacred depths of the unsolved Russian soul. Therefore, the film is not unequivocally documentary, in each episode there is an influence of the director's intention, albeit extremely abstract and very vague, a kind of art house in the cinema. "White Nights of the Postman Alexei Tryapitsyna" urges the viewer to dissolve in it, to follow the flow of the story line, which is devoid of sharp turns and emotional changes. The film turned out to be a kind of unhurried symphony, and the term "contemplative" suits him perfectly.

Without the echo of misanthropism

Almost all the reviews on the film "The White Nights of the Postman Alexei Tryapitsyna" note the absence in the plot of the traditional for modern Russian cinematography "garish" coverage of village life.

Konchalovsky shows the inhabitants of the village by ordinary people, with a print of a heavy fate on their faces, but under the yoke of the burdens of people who have not lost their human essence. The heroes of the picture are by no means degraded or miserable, suffering from alcohol dependence. Many interesting, colorful types are shown by the film project "The White Nights of the Postman Alexei Tryapitsyn." The review of the representative of the organization "The Art of Cinema" is a confirmation of this statement. Maximally objectively (non-price) to display real characters, personalities that are found throughout Russia director, in the narrative allows the absence of a misanthropic tone (subtext) and any hint of condemnation.

The unsteady line between realism and mysticism

It is worth noting that the film is not limited to strict realism, as narrative narrative develops, the shades of mysticism appear more and more clearly. Extremely delicately, Konchalovsky lifts the veil in the world of the film "The White Nights of the Postman Alexei Tryapitsyn", which is unidentified, so perceptibly perceived by the central character. Reviews, critics' reviews unanimously call the protagonist a medium, he unknowingly manages to unite not only the inhabitants of an isolated village with the outside world, but also whole historical milestones: ignorant paganism, oblivious communism, an unattractive present and illusory future.

The state of "timelessness"

The film, which won the "Silver Lion" award at the Venice Film Festival in the nomination "Best Director's Work", was shot in the remote backwoods of the Arkhangelsk Region (Plesetsky District, Vershino Village) and occasionally in the Kenozersky National Park. Therefore, reviews of the film "The White Nights of the Postman Alexei Tryapitsyn" claim that the author arranged a premiere show in Arkhangelsk only for this reason.

It is in this place, forgotten by people and God, in a state of timelessness and there is a village in which the events of the picture develop. It seems that the terrain and the population exist in some other, paradoxical and magical reality. This assumption reinforces the latest shots of the painting and the citation of Shakespeare's "Storm". It is these artistic techniques in the film "The White Nights of the Postman Alexei Tryapitsin" (D. Bykov's review of "Novaya Gazeta" especially sharply distinguishes them) stir the minds of the viewer.

Pure melody without hypocrisy

In the movie, everything is entirely naturprodukt: the landscapes of the national park with the play of light and shadow, the villagers, a strange noiseless cat with piercingly yellow eyes and the central character itself, as one review reads. "The White Nights of the Postman Alexei Tryapitsyn" is a motion picture similar to a pure melody without a note of falsehood. And with this it is difficult not to agree, because all the plot turns of the picture are not paramount. The main examples of an unreasoned, genuine life.

A lot of time and effort the author spent on creating a film "White Nights of the Postman Alexei Tryapitsyn." The review of the observer Svetlana Khokhryakova demonstrates that the efforts were not in vain. Konchalovsky got an elegant and slightly poetic portrait of not only a separate village and a postman, but in general a mythical Russian mentality: devoid of a clear vector of development, painfully torn between an unconquerable belief in a bright future and a hopeless nostalgic hopelessness.

An analogy with Flaherty?

If you try to make a detailed analysis of the film into separate puzzle components, you can see that the method used by the director goes back to the beginning of the 1920s. It is in this time period that the cult picture of Robert Flaherty with the enigmatic title "Nanook from the North" comes out. It was from there that Konchalovsky borrowed some techniques, such as: "a slightly planned plot" and "long observation". These cinematographic terms today remember only professionals, and even then not all. And Konchalovsky managed to reincarnate them.

Elegy or documentary

The film depicts a village life - without luxury, financial abundance, with drunkenness and foul language, fights, theft and despair - that, by and large, is the whole review. "White Nights of the Postman Alexei Tryapitsyn" already broadcast on Channel One and managed to cause a storm of emotions in the watchers, get categorically polar reviews.

Some contemplators considered it depressingly naturalistic and called documentary, others called it an elegy over a dying village. "The White Nights of the Postman Alexei Tryapitsyn" (the critic's review of Boris Nelepo confirms this) is by no means a "biography of the ordinary postman", the whole timing of the picture is a few days in life, everyday. And this "experiment" of A.Konchalovsky was quite courageous for modern Russian formats.