Countries and films: Belarus

Belarusian cinema is presented in the Golden Thousand by one film - military detective Mikhail Ptashuk "In August of 1944".

In our student years, in the second half of the 70s, my friends and I read the book by Vladimir Bogomolov, "The Moment of Truth." And, of course, if suddenly someone in the student cafeteria accidentally took a fork in each hand, laughing, called it "Macedonian shooting." And in the conversations inserted the expression "pump the pendulum".

And somewhere in the early 2000s, probably on the eve of the next Victory Day, television announced the screening of the feature film "In August of 1944". The announcement stated that the film was staged according to the same book, memorable from my student years. Naturally, I was looking forward to this film.

Honestly, I did not immediately recognize the book in the film. But this is absolutely natural: after all, a quarter of a century has passed since acquaintance with the book. And over the years, I have never had a chance to re-read it. And human memory is not the most reliable tool. And still, I watched the film with great pleasure. In many respects, thanks to the brilliant acting of almost everyone involved in the film.

However, I have long been accustomed to the fact that film adaptations very often do not coincide with their literary sources, and I think this is quite normal. After all, cinema and literature are different types of art. What can be stated on paper is not always possible to depict on the screen.

But many authors of literary works transferred to the film often do not understand this. Very rarely, writers approve of how the film adaptations of their works are implemented. Much more often they express dissatisfaction, some less violently, some more. You don’t have to go far for examples: Ken Kesey forbade his name to be mentioned in connection with Milos Forman’s film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and even sued the director, Stephen King was very unhappy with the way Stanley Kubrick directed the film based on his novel “The Shining”, Strugatsky brothers expressed a lot of complaints against Andrei Tarkovsky about "Stalker", however, after the death of the director. Well, and so on. There are many similar examples.

Vladimir Bogomolov also got into this rows of writers, dissatisfied with how their novel was adapted. Not just expressed dissatisfaction, but ordered to remove his name from the credits of the film. Well, what can you do? Free will. And it seems to me that such writers should be advised to take an example from the great Vasily Makarovich Shukshin. He himself wrote and directed films on his works. And if God did not give such a versatile talent, then there is nothing to complain about. Indeed, for that matter, very often it is thanks to the film adaptations by the great directors that literary works gain world fame.

But back to the film. Immediately make a reservation that, unlike all other films included in the Golden Thousand, I do not know the exact date of the premiere of this picture. In an interview with Mikhail Ptashuk to the Trud newspaper dated December 2000, 1999 is indicated - The review of Sergei Kudryavtsev indicates the year 2000. - Kinopoisk in general "managed" to indicate the date of the premiere on one page on May 4, 2001, and on the other on May 4, 2002. Wikipedia reports only about the premiere on Russian television, apparently the very one that I wrote about at the very beginning of this post, on May 9, 2002.

The discrepancy in these data can indicate only one thing - about the most severe disputes associated with this film. Retelling the content of these disputes makes no sense, they are well stated here. I will only briefly state that the main claims of the military and former Smershovites (however, there are no former ones) are numerous technical inaccuracies in the film. And the main claims of Vladimir Bogomolov himself are the lack of psychologism inherent in his story. But here, it seems to me, one should agree with Sergey Kudryavtsev already mentioned - “Regarding the novel“ In August of 1944 ”(or“ The Moment of Truth ”) by Vladimir Bogomolov there has long been a strong opinion that it is impossible to film it. First of all, it’s difficult to convey cinema is its complex polyphonic structure, where not only the documentary, protocol element of orders, reports, ciphers and fictionalized, genrely pointed, tense narrative structure of the military detective interacts, but they also compete, argue with each other two methods of comprehending the reality of the past time. "

And Victor Matizen, in his review of the film in the journal “The Art of Cinema” (2001, No. 6), as an explanation of the impossibility of achieving full compliance with the film adaptation of the literary source, cited the well-known popular expression: “If everything were true, there would be no muvie”. But it seems to me that you can agree with the point of view of the famous film translator Dmitry Puchkov aka Goblin "In general, the movie turned out pretty good, not bad, yes. And the book is a block. The cliff. And the movie didn’t reach it. It turned out a good action movie about the war. But it’s not a masterpiece equal to the book."

However, the moviegoer still highly appreciated the film by Mikhail Ptashuk. Moreover, including a foreign viewer, as evidenced by ratings and reviews on IMDB. And this is despite the fact that the film was not shown in the West: Western censorship closes the doors for films on the participation of the Soviet Army in the World War II. Accordingly, the film could not be presented at prestigious foreign film festivals.

The only festival at which the film was presented and nominated for main prize and for five other nominations was the 2002 Russian film award Nika ceremony. And such a tragedy had to happen: on the way to this ceremony, Mikhail Ptashuk died in a car accident! It is unlikely, of course, that this tragedy somehow influenced the decision of the jury, but purely for reference: “Nika” was awarded to Alexander Sokurov's film “Taurus”. Which rating, by the way, does not reach 7 either according to IMDB or Kinopoisk.

And for Mikhail Ptashuk’s film, 75% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users around the world gave ratings from 8 to 10. Based on this indicator and the above, the rating of the film “In August of 1944” according to FilmGourmand was 7.877, making it the 878th place in the Golden Thousand.