Jubilee of the best role of Oleg Yankovsky
On January 17, 1983, Roman Balayan's film "Полёты во сне и наяву (Flights in Dreams and in Reality)" was released on the screens of Soviet cinemas.
We didn't miss a single movie novelty in those years. And although the name of Balayan was unfamiliar to me at that time, the previous films of this director somehow passed me by, the presence in the picture of the stars of the first magnitude - Oleg Yankovsky, Lyudmila Gurchenko, Oleg Tabakov - suggested that the film is not ordinary, and it cannot be missed. After watching it, I had a dispute with my friend - a philosophy teacher. He regretted the lost time, lamented that the best acting forces are spent on nonsense, on the narrative of an empty man. I said that, in my opinion, the film continues the line of Russian classical literature about an "extra person" (Chatsky, Pechorin, Bazarov), who cannot find a worthy place in society due to the imperfection of this very society, and therefore is playing tricks. A friend a few days later said: "I watched "Flights" again. I guess you're right."
It is curious, but many years later I found a similar assessment from the famous film critic Fyodor Razzakov:
"This movie ("Flights in a dream and in reality" - FG) was enthusiastically accepted by the liberal intelligentsia, calling it conceptual. It was about an "extra person" – a young engineer of a design bureau, who, it would seem, has everything – a wife, a daughter, a young mistress, a lot of friends – but there is no main thing: a sense of being needed by society." Раззаков Ф. Гибель советского кино. Тайна закулисной войны [1973-1991] - 2008
Another well-known Soviet film critic Andrei Zorky, in his review of the film published in Sputnik Kinozritelya Magazin shortly after the film's release, evaluates the personality of the hero of the picture Balayan in a completely different way:
"This is irreconcilability and contempt for everything gray, vain, petty, this is the frenzy of the soul, the thirst for light and miracle, the thirst for the impossible, this is the "million torments" of the heart, which does not want and cannot live in the rhythm of the pendulum of unpretentious home wall clock. For Sergei, this is a job that has ceased to bring satisfaction at all, this is a circle of colleagues who have bored "neighbors in the cullmans", this is a family in which everything sweet, hot, alive seems to have been dragged out by a frozen crust of lava, this is an everyday deception in which the hero involves himself with desperate stubbornness, this is furious attempts to break through, to gain clarity, harmony, expediency of life."
President of the Guild of Film Critics of Russia Viktor Matizen in 2004 suggested that
"in "Flights" the main thing was, apparently, an autobiographical motive - the confession of a man who cannot find a place for himself in the life around him."
Most likely, Matizen based his assumption on the words of Roman Balayan himself, who in an interview with Larisa Malyukova said:
"My "high relations" with cinema ended in '79. After "Biryuk", I was idle for five and a half years. They offered to shoot the crap about socialist industry. And I said to myself: okay, don't worry, well, you shoot it, you don't shoot... All that I've been "accumulate" inside these five years, all the bile and frustration I've put into "Flights"...
In fairness, it should be noted that the script of the film was written by the famous Soviet screenwriter Viktor Merezhko, proposed to Balayan by his then friend Nikita Mikhalkov. However, then Balayan radically revised the script, since it was more suitable for a comedy than for the "confession" conceived by the director. And in the course of filming, numerous amendments were made to the script. As a result, in particular, the originally conceived "flights" have practically disappeared. The appeal for a recommendation regarding the screenwriter to Nikita Mikhalkov was absolutely no coincidence: Balayan initially wanted to shoot him in the main role. But almost at the last moment he changed his mind and invited Oleg Yankovsky for this role. Thank God for what happened: Nikita Sergeyevich, with all his huge acting talent, would simply have taken the picture in a completely different direction. As a compensation, Balayan offered Nikita Mikhalkov to actually play himself in a short episode.
The script of the film was ready by the beginning of 1981. In Moscow, the script quickly passed all the instances, and in Kyiv, since Balayan was working at the Kyiv Dovzhenko Film Studio at that time and was going to shoot his film there, the case stalled. Serious claims to the script were made by the then head of the State Committee for Cinematography of Ukraine, Yuriy Olenenko. Balayan was supported by his teacher at the Film Institute named after Karpenko-Kary, who at that time held the post of 1st Secretary of the Union of Cinematographers of the Ukrainian SSR, Timofey Levchuk. After reading the script, he said:
"It's complete bullshit — I don't understand why someone tells you not to shoot. I don't see any special anti-Sovietism in it."
Filming began in Vladimir on September 14, 1981. Filming was difficult, mainly due to the fact that the stars involved in the film - Oleg Ivanovich Yankovsky, Lyudmila Markovna Gurchenko, Oleg Pavlovich Tabakov - simultaneously starred in other films and played in theaters. They constantly had to travel between Moscow, Vladimir and other filming locations. Naturally, because of this, filming, mostly full-scale, was disrupted, postponed. In addition, changes were constantly being made to the original script. There was another difficulty, of a utilitarian nature. In the peripheral cities of the Soviet Union, to which Vladimir belonged, in those years there was simply nothing to eat, the store shelves were half empty. Nikita Mikhalkov helped solve the problem. He, thanks to his numerous connections with the powerful of this world, managed to negotiate with the regional CPSU committee canteen, which took the film crew into its care.
Anyway, at the beginning of 1982, work on the film was completed. But, according to Roman Balayan,
"for about a year the film lay "on the shelf"."
In November 1982, as you know, a significant event took place in the life of the country: Secretary General Brezhnev died. Naturally, the death of the "leader" did not entail serious social changes. But some progress in the echelons of power still occurred, and Balayan's picture was released on the screens. However, a rather modest circulation - 502 copies. But those who wanted to, they watched the picture. There were 6.4 million such people across the country. Of course, there is no comparison with Eldar Ryazanov's "Вокзал для двоих (A Railway Station for Two)" (in one of the main roles - L. Gurchenko) and Sergei Mikaelyan's "Влюблён по собственному желанию (Love by Request)" (in one of the main roles - O.Yankovsky). The first of these films gathered 35.8 million viewers in cinemas, the second - 25.6 million.
In some reviews of Soviet film critics, the film was given such an epithet as "west oriented". Although, the "west oriented" in this film is only that, unlike many other Soviet pictures of that period, for example, "Tears Were Falling" by Georgiy Daneliya, it was really released to the West. In May 1983, the film was presented as part of an out-of-competition screening at the Cannes International Film Festival (without any reaction to this event). And on June 15, 1983, it premiered in New York. What the Western viewer understood in this film is evidenced, in particular, by the review of the film reviewer of the influential American edition The New York Times, Vincent Canby:
"The most curious thing about ''Flights of Fancy'' is that the film refuses to see Sergei as the tiresome boor that he is. It spoils him endlessly while the audience may groan with fatigue. Actually, Oleg Yankovsky, who plays Sergei, is an attractive performer, as is Ludmila Gurchenko, who plays the former mistress, but their material is dreadful.Even worse are the flights of fancy of Mr. Balayan, the director, and Vadim Khrapachov, who wrote the soundtrack score. They appear to have overdosed on Fellini films and learned nothing. There's even a kind of budget version of the final sequence of ''8 1/2,'' and the entire movie is awash in Nino Rota-like music in which, inexplicably, one discovers the melody of ''Strangers in the Night.''.
In 1987, after the beginning of perestroika, the film received official recognition: four representatives of the creative team, including Roman Balayan, Viktor Merezhko, Oleg Yankovsky, and cameraman Vilen Kalyuta were awarded USSR State Prizes. Oleg Yankovsky subsequently called the role in this film his best and most beloved film work. An indirect confirmation of this is the fact that after "Flights" Oleg Ivanovich starred in 5 more films by Roman Balayan, including the film "Райские птицы (Birds of Paradise)" (2008), which is considered a sequel to "Flights".
Modern moviegoers appreciated the film quite highly. 63% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated the film from 8 to 10. Taking into account this indicator and the above, the rating of Roman Balayan's film "Flights in a dream and in reality" according to the FilmGourmand version was 7,869, which allowed it to take 894th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
