Alex when you were asked to make a film about our fighters, you probably imagined what the blood and then he’ll give you. At the same time, if you remember your debut film “the Last train”, quite intimate, but the emotions are very powerful, it is clear that 17 years ago you knew that the war on the screen is not necessarily the sea of technology and people. But you went to all the trouble of holding the film on the wing.
Alexey Herman: Listen, well, why Nolan complicates his life by removing the “Dunkerque”? And why is it necessary, it was Spielberg who directed “Saving private Ryan”? Or Malik with the “Thin red line”? The creation of a real, adequate “making life difficult”. And so to break the trend, which is that all Russian military movie of the last years, there is as a rule within the country, requires considerable effort. At the time of filming they were more or less justified. For each technological component of the project had the solution. Techniques have been developed that are unique to Russia, made many replicas of combat aircraft 1940-ies. Was found outside the border Yaqui, and on the go.
What do you mean, speaking about the extreme efforts needed to bring our military outside of Russia?
Alexey Herman: Understand, from the point of view of drama was not very faithful to the paradigm of our military cinema, which he is not in demand abroad. And well if our movie just would not be interested spectator on the other side of the border. But the problem is that the world sees World war II through the prism of American military cinema. And in relation to the classic “vodka-balalaika-bears” added “Katyusha” and T-34. And ultimately, this explains why in the global consciousness fighting on the Soviet fronts are perceived as secondary. And many in the West don’t remember what it is we, not the allies took Berlin, and therefore not conscious: enter Hitler was in Moscow, he would enter in London. And then there would be no landing in Normandy, and not the fact that America in General would have entered the war.
But what’s the problem with our war movies?
Alexey Herman: I think that the key problem is that little person…
so while we revel in a military action that’s interesting?
Alexey Herman: Afraid so. We forget all the time that a person is watching a movie not with a clean slate. That it exists in a certain sociocultural environment, he has a background well-established socio-cultural view of life, even if it is quite a young man. He wants in the lives of the characters recognizing their own life, with its doubts, questions, hopes. In this context, the dramatic conflict of our films, as a rule, not obvious and not interesting. Or then it must be a complex drama, the intrigue that runs through the whole film by Jean-Jacques Annaud in “Enemy at the gates”. That is, we label, but don’t stare. And constantly repeat the old.
Remember how your father talked about the war veteran, who even on the best, from his point of view, military the film “the Living and the dead” by Alexander Stolper said that it was not the whole truth about the war, probably not even a quarter of it. “But – he added, – it was a picture closer to the truth about the war”.
Alexey Herman: Now it’s much worse. The problem of our military history cinema that he tries to connect Bondarchuk Sr. and Herman Sr. with Steven Spielberg and cartoon. But this combination does not work. You cannot create an emotional poem, four lines of writing, like Mandelstam, four as Derzhavin and four, in the manner of Mayakovsky, as great poets they were. On the screen should be a unique world, with its degree of credibility, with its disputed or undisputed highlights. For me it is important that in our film, the actors played not the people tight military uniform, and people. Educated, not educated, fun, not very decent, not decent different. But they were in war, and they all protect the homeland. The aim of the film, including to deconstruct emerged in post-Soviet cinema simplified image of a Soviet soldier. The feat does not mean the absence of reflection in man.
Reading your script, I found myself thinking that this is a rare movie about the ordinariness of heroism during the war. Actually, nothing heroic like not. Just girls-pilots took off on the mission, and once someone doesn’t return…
Alexey Herman: Yes, and in a series of these seemingly ordinary on the front of the actions and there was our victory. The well-worn stamp, but really the victory is a personal feat of all. Is the exact phrase: “What is a nation? This is a common fate.” About this and want to make a movie. Not so much about the war itself, how about growing up, about gaining some human qualities in war. In fact, it is a novel of education.
By the way, the bildungsroman. Alex, the pandemic has confused many cards and, unfortunately, 4 APR quietly passed the anniversary of your father, Yuri German. Svetlana Igorevna once admitted to me that the writer Herman it confuses some ambiguity. On the one hand, Yury Pavlovich was very sincere in love for Stalin, he believed in the greatness of the victorious revolutionary people. But at the same time, to his house came people released from camps. And Svetlana Igorevna found a letter in which Hermann for support.Riku thanked by Solzhenitsyn.
Alexey Herman: You know, this inconsistency was not unique to my grandfather. As if we did not belong to Stalin, most of us live Stalin. It is manifested in categorical judgments. That we consider enemies people who think otherwise. It is manifested in our disrespect of another person. The opportunity to work, just mobilized. In our demands to immediately punish someone, not even trying to understand the essence of business, not that in detail. Stalin in us when we believe that everything can be solved a power way. And there will always be those for whom Stalin is the winner and those who remember, how many victims, how many errors have been committed. And there will always be war documents.
And the second thing I am deeply convinced that Stalin was the result of historical processes. Also, like Lenin or Peter the great. Stalin – a product of the post-revolutionary era, when they finally broke through the centuries abscess. He’s a bloody pattern the entire history of our country. Therefore, it is pointless to guess what would be Russia without Stalin.
Returning to Yuri Herman. Unfortunately, the writer thoroughly and undeservedly forgotten. Promonitoriv Runet, brought the formula: Hermann read “inheritance”, those who home have of his book. Do you think it should be read? Or Western-laconic prose of Herman about people act today is not relevant?
Alexey Herman: what to say now is relevant not only to the creativity of my grandfather. Soviet literature was remarkable in its own way, and I have noticed that writers in the days of Yuri Pavlovich was better, and the average reader’s level was probably higher. And it should be read as a document of the era. And Yuri Pavlovich, and my other grandfather, Alexander Borschagovsky (successful in Soviet times, the writer, in particular according to his story the film “Three poplars at Plyushchikha – approx.ed.)… But we have to realize that we are entering a new era with a different way of perceiving information, with a different socialization, with a different perception of the person. With other ideas about such things as duty, sacrifice. The great era of idealistic writers and designers of rockets, the age, complex, intellectually rich life, left with the collapse of the Soviet Union. And it’s not just us. We have lost the illusion that the West is Paradise. But the West, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, no longer want to be better and began to turn to the Soviet Union, with its insinuating censorship and the crisis of goal-setting.
Now the paradigm is changing again. Look at the young bloggers, the new generation, which it is not clear how to talk. View YouTube. The person who hits it on the head frosted watermelon has 5 million views in the Russian segment. A writer has the chance to t��why the success? Way of being today’s man, habits, conditions, it all will inevitably lead to the fact that more and more books will gather dust… And the problem is not that there will be less or more to read. The problem of the need to create new meanings, new ways of conversation.
