Isčeznuvšaja imperija
Directed by:
Karen ShakhnazaroffScreenplay:
Evgeniy NikishovCinematography:
Shandor BerkeshiComposer:
Konstantin ShevelyovPlots(1)
Trapped by obligations to his pre-teen brother, archaeologist single mother and aging grandfather, the illicit temptations of youth, and the social hypocrisy of life in a USSR fifteen years away from its own inevitable transformation, 18 year old Sergey rebels by sidestepping responsibility altogether. Aided and enabled by the privileged, westernized diplomats son Kostya and straight-laced schoolmate Styopa, Sergey pursues girls, vodka, pot, and Western rock and roll with equal abandon. But then the arrival of gorgeous, innocent Lyuda threatens to break Sergey out of his rootless cycle of teenage kicks, even as it tests his already tenuous connection to friends, family, past, and future. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (1)
Karen Shakhnazarov once fascinated me with his film City Zero, which perfectly portrayed the absurdity of the end of the communist era in my eyes, that lifeless timeless period. At that time, I was untouched by Franz Kafka's original work, and this absurd Kafkaesque story found fertile ground. Then we didn't come across each other for a few decades, and now I have the opportunity to see his later works, and I am strongly ambivalent about them. I can't even speak of an average viewer's experience. I understand that Shakhnazarov wanted to bring a nostalgic perspective on the coming-of-age period into his film, but even in its idealized form, I don't recognize the Soviet Union of the first half of the 70s. I miss the atmosphere, I don't believe in the image, I don't believe in the film. You don't evoke a historical epoch just by dressing the characters in period costumes and having a vintage car drive down the street because that's desperately insufficient. The characters are completely contemporary, and the nostalgic look back at their student years is essentially very ordinary and trivial. When former friends meet and the one living in Finland yearns for the Soviet Union, this form of nostalgia is unreliable and even ridiculous. Overall impression: 40%.
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