“The filmmakers cannot guarantee the accuracy of all historical details. But with characteristic bold caution, we are ready to assert that everything in the film, except fiction, is of course true” – such a mischievous text was greeted by the audience who opened the First Program of Central Television on January 1. , 1988. This was the premiere of Svetlana Druzhinina’s mini-series “Midshipmen, Forward!” – an adventure costume melodrama about three students of the Navigation School who have always been involved in the history of the Russian State. 35 years later, the new (and probably last) episode of “Men Between Ships” is preceded by another text: “The script is based on historical documents.” It is borrowed from the series “Secrets of Palace Coups”, which was the second most important project in Druzhinina’s life. Russia, XVIII. century.” The director worked on it after completing work on the trilogy about midshipmen: from the mid-1990s to the early 2010s, until “Coups” completely disappeared (8 out of 12 planned films were released).
This small and seemingly insignificant change seems to illustrate well the metamorphoses that have been happening to the “Landmen” for thirty-five years. The original series, based on the manuscript of Nina Sorotokina, who unsuccessfully imitated Alexandre Dumas with his musketeers, began shooting even before the announcement of Perestroika. Therefore, at first, “Intermediate Sailors” made a somewhat strange impression by inertia with its confidently arrogant romanticization of the noble class in particular and Tsarist Russia in general. But under the onslaught of the leaping charisma of Sergei Zhigunov, Dmitry Kharatyan and Vladimir Shevelkov (plus Mikhail Boyarsky in the meta role of the reviled d’Artagnan), the raised eyebrows seemed to have begun to return to their original position. And in general, the wind has changed: the sequel “Vivat, sailor!” At one point, it was postponed for a week and a half due to the August coup (at the same time, the shooting of the third episode was continuing) and the film was released on December 6, 1991, two days before the signing. Belovezhskaya Agreements.
“Yay-D”
In short, Midshipmen seemed like a fun fad in 1988. They appear to herald the Imperial Restoration from 2023.
Officially, the new duo “Midshipmen 1787. Peace” and “…War” (characteristically in the opposite order of Leo Tolstoy) were shot three years ago, but have only now reached the screens, which imposes its own filters: Naturally, outside of fiction Jokes about the reality of “everything” are especially poorly combined with the logo of the Russian Military Historical Society. Why it was necessary to dust off this cycle after so many years is an open question (“Mir” earned significantly less than 13 million rubles in a month and a half of distribution). Apparently, each “Burnt by the Sun” should have its own “Forest” and “Castle”, and each “Musketeers” should have its own “Treasures of Cardinal Mazarin”.
By all the laws of legacy sequels, the older officers here seem to pass the baton to the younger generation (the grandfathers are joined by the children of the heroes Zhigunov and Kharatyan, who are in love with each other), and the whole saga seems to return to its roots: while the sons of the empire “play pranks across Europe” and “ While they are dishonoring their homeland, the insidious French are again plotting against the highly spiritual Russia, only this time we are talking about the Russians. Turkish War.
“Yay-D”
But nostalgia turns out to be dubious. Of the original cast, only Kharatyan survived to see the return (in the new episodes she not only does not wear a dress, but for some reason actually undresses, which deprives what is happening of any meaning), as intrigues and scandals are generously sprinkled off the screen in one go. First, Shevelkov disappeared from the project, pursuing Druzhinina, and after the second part, Zhigunov also left. He and the director have since made harsh comments in the press.
Another figure emerging from oblivion was Boyarsky, who in the second film of 1991 asked Druzhinin to take him away, so that in the third film he would not once again complain about the bathhouse, cabbage and “those damn Christmas trees”. But now he probably rested and gained strength. However, in the “Earth” there is enough strength to worry about the fact that “the Russians did not give up on themselves”: in the “War” Benjamin Louis Jeremy Simon Serge de Brilly, that is, Seryozha in short, was somehow pumped by the Russians. women (Palpatin, tramp, note) no longer appear. (What is especially curious is that at the end of the first picture he softly shows the heroes where the attack is being prepared, but they basically ignore this information and ruin the attack in the second.)
“Yay-D”
The resulting gang (the aforementioned plus Alexander Domogarov and Mikhail Mamaev with the participation of young debutants Andrei Laptev and Nika Zdorik) can barely sing the old songs, and no one wrote new ones. And in the breaks, it plays out monstrously in an excruciatingly dull, woefully filmed and generally utterly chaotic and phantasmagorically bad television production suspended in the orbit of cloak-and-sword cinema. Here we can say that “Midshipmen” returned to us in its previous form (it was always a poorly made film), if not for one thing: somehow the new “Midshipmen” look several times worse than the old ones.
The thing is, it can’t be relied upon, with not even a trace of that sensual eroticism (of the now-banned kind) that permeated the 1988 miniseries, in which handsome men in uniform constantly found themselves in inexplicably close proximity to each other. It would be strange to expect David Lynch to recreate the same Twin Peaks as he did in the ’90s. And you don’t want battle scenes like in Sergei Bondarchuk’s “War and Peace”, but they turn out worse than in Steven Spielberg’s “Fabelmans”. Another thing is surprising: this is an insultingly cheap craft in the spirit of Tommy Wiseau’s “Room” and in terms of the level of production it seems even inferior to “Secrets of the Palace Coups” (for some reason I would like to point out: ” Midshipmen 1787. War” , which was released on the same day as the first half of the final season of The Crown It seems like if you can’t do it well, don’t do it at all, but that wasn’t the case.
“Let’s have a taco!” – the ship’s officers will exclaim and calmly step somewhere: probably forward. In this case, we are ready to argue, with our usual bold caution, that 300 rubles would be much better spent on Mexican street food instead of a ticket to the “Landmen”. Judging by the empty theater where I watched “War” on the first day of its release, many people did. At least I’d like to hope so.
Source: Gazeta
Brandon Hall is an author at “Social Bites”. He is a cultural aficionado who writes about the latest news and developments in the world of art, literature, music, and more. With a passion for the arts and a deep understanding of cultural trends, Brandon provides engaging and thought-provoking articles that keep his readers informed and up-to-date on the latest happenings in the cultural world.