I remember when we were in school, we were asked what the author of the work wanted to say. We answered. Generally, the authors wanted to share with the readers their thoughts on the condition of the working people, the arbitrariness of the landlords, and the murderous frivolity of the bourgeoisie. Some of the messages were less pretentious: they shared an admiration for their own natural nature, the joy of a child who knew this world, their complex love experiences.
Later, it became known, already at the institute, that the author does not always know what he managed to share. The author creates a text, the text has a structure, and only the analysis of this structure gives us an idea of the meaning of the work. Can communicate more or less, as work never equals intent. Or it is not what the author thinks, because not only the will and desires of the author are involved in the creation of the work, but also the entire system of artistic techniques that exists at the time of reading. The matter became more complex as the critics thought more deeply about the structure – is it really that obvious? Are there such meanings that exist not in the text itself, but at the edges of the text where it comes into contact with the context (a system of interpretation dependent on the experience of the perceiver)?
It is now almost an axiom that any meaning of a visual or verbal work is not in its nature, but is created and grasped in alliance with the reader or viewer. The culture of interaction directly entrusts the public with the most important role in creating the result of the creative union of the artist and the audience, because the creator only creates traps for meaning and is the job of someone who wants to drive meanings into them. solve riddles. There are no right or wrong answers in art, only a more or less deep and detailed personal interpretation.
And, of course, the most important thing is what the audience or reader comes up with, what desire, circle of association, cultural experience. With a developed imagination and good training around the simplest text, interesting works of the mind and heart arise. Conversely, with a rudimentary understanding of the world and little familiarity with its signs, contact can be the most disappointing.
But there is another aspect – ideology. It is clear that unlike the Soviet era, when all citizens were assumed to have a single point of view by default, people reacted to all events in different ways, often not in connection with personal experience or facts known to them. a pre-established ideological environment. This focuses the eye and ultimately determines perception.
And here is an example. In theaters today, old movies loved by audiences are re-opening as an emergency support measure in the absence of new world premieres of Hollywood films that account for 75% of the box office, and to the surprise of marketers, they’re gone very willingly. The greatest success, as expected, was in 1997 with the film Alexei Balabanov “Brother” (“Brother-2”, “Blind Man’s Bluff”, “About Freaks and People”, “Morphine”, “I Want It Too”. ‘, garnered significantly less public opinion). The movie, shot 25 years ago, was one of the top three grossing movies of the weekend. Of course, “Brother” has long become legendary – comments, overgrown with riddles, part of the national consciousness, but a kind of obscure part. On the one hand, Danila Bagrov, played by Sergei Bodrov, is definitely a handsome character. On the other hand, the figure is extremely strange, behind it there is no position, purpose, task, he directs life by chance, he has no family, property, ideals, he has a primitive sequence in his head. He really doesn’t know anything other than cliches and his ability to pull and pick a gun from a stick and string. However, from the very first video releases (there was no film distribution in Russia in the mid-90s), half of the country recognized it in itself. Why?
If you study the text of the movie, it becomes clear that there is very little heroism in Danil: do you remember how the movie started? A movie is being shot, the command “engine” is heard, and then a man appears from somewhere in the bushes. Director shouts: “Get up this freak!” And in response, Danila gouges out one of his eyes and breaks the guard’s arm. A distinctive feature is that the hero, without hesitation, responds with aggression to any resistance, does not hear the world around him, unconsciously imposes his position on others. And he often makes mistakes – for example, he does not see that his brother, with whom he fits, is a real bandit and bastard, but it does not matter to him, it is important that he is a brother. Like Pinocchio with the alphabet, Danila walks with a set of specific setups: “I’m not quite Jewish …”. The German asked him, “Why?” he asks, but cannot explain, “Leave me alone!” says. In the movie, Danila suddenly appears (we learn nothing about his past) and goes into the unknown, he is a tumbleweed. The trauma of the war, apparently, has just been completed, namely Chechen. He is an eternal child who has been taught to kill, to fight for “self”, and because he can’t do anything else he is forced to be in war forever, to seek that war.
But fans of “Brother” don’t see any of this because they don’t want to look at him. In the visual image proposed by Balabanov, they see something of their own, dear, important. Magic and victory. Words about justice that justifies violence. A simple scheme of life in which absolute evil and absolute good must necessarily exist, and any action done by the good is justified with the intent to protect. Although Danila protects, he often destroys everything around him, but does not see the complexity of the world, his explanations of what is going on are childishly primitive. It is no accident that the plump, caring young Bodrov, who saw Balabanov in the movie “Prisoner of the Caucasus”, got this role – after this incident, according to the author, the script was finally invented. Strong and brave Danila is childish and irresponsible, but therefore emotionally contagious. But fans take the character out of the complex fabric of the movie and adorn it with their favorite traits. This technique – isolating one part from the whole – is characteristic of mass culture, which is often built on a collage of parts that are not strongly interconnected.
By the way, after the first “Brother” and before the second, Balabanov also shot the author’s aesthetic film “About freaks and people”, where there are also brothers – Siamese twins who died tragically. One of the twins wants to be honest and make a decent life, refuses to look at porn cards, treats women with tenderness, but the second is seduced by bad habits, one day gets drunk and they are both impossible to separate from Siamese. to die.
The viability of the idea of the “Russian world”, perhaps the main feature, important and dominant theme of Balabanov’s cinematography, did not see a trace of rebirth in the reality he knew, the future of the archaic matrix, its future. Victory in this field means death. Today, I think Balabanov was really impressed by military power, as simple as lead, which resolves all contradictions. But that’s just part of his understanding of the world. This goes unnoticed by those who “remove” one of the many themes from the director’s entire work.
Reading books and watching movies, each of the viewers definitely reads their thoughts, associations in them. In literary and art debates, this seems to have been accepted. But the same thing happens in real life. We are rarely prepared to admit that people look at the same facts differently. And they see things differently. The theory of art teaches us not only how the work is organized, but also the perception of the complex structure of the world. The number of connections within the system is almost endless. You cannot notice them, you can notice them but ignore them, you can even cut everything with one blow, but they cannot be canceled.
Even in those moments when life itself seems to minimize everything.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.
Source: Gazeta
