People are nostalgic for the Soviet past, since at that time everything was simple and clear. Everyone remembers the USSR in their own way: one remembered the deficit and the lines, while others remember how it was stable and good to live. In the movie "The Vanished Empire," the actors tell us about Moscow of the seventies. She is presented as the director of this drama, Karen Shakhnazarov, remembered her.
What is this movie about
First of all, this picture is about love and difficult relationships between friends. A plot of this kind has been used more than once, but for spectators of any age, the peculiarities of relations in the times of the USSR will be interesting. Two friends - Sergey and Stepan - are studying at the institute. They seem to be doing well. Sergei has a girlfriend, Luda, but with the arrival of a new student, Katya, the couple had a discord.
It turns out that Stepan loved Luda all this time. He begins to look after her, and soon she reciprocates and becomes pregnant. Friends swear and never meet again. The film closes with an unexpected meeting of former friends at the airport. The USSR has long ceased to exist, and the heroes are very old. Life divorced them in different directions: Stepan did not have a happy life with Lyudmila, and he emigrated; Sergey works as a translator, and their mutual friend got drunk. The original version of the film was called "Love in the USSR." It is this name, and not “The Vanished Empire,” that actors often indicate in their portfolios.
How to choose an actor for the role of Sergey
Karen Shakhnazarov gave the main male role to the young actor Lyapin, who at that time had just graduated from VGIK. He hesitated for a long time, but in the end he chose Alexander. For the painting "The Vanished Empire" the actors and roles were selected very carefully. For a long time, they could not decide who could play the main character. Many famous actors auditioned for this role, but no one was happy with the director.
Alexander Lyapin was a fallback. He was invited to the casting due to similarities with Sergei Bezrukov. He did not fully satisfy the requirements of the director, but became the best of all applicants. In the film “The Vanished Empire”, the actors are mainly involved those who are just starting their journey. For the role of young Stepan and Sergey, graduates and students of the capital's theater universities and colleges were casting.
Alexander Lyapin
Despite the fact that the film "Vanished Imeria", whose actors are very young, became the starting point in Alexander's career, they did not begin to recognize him on the streets after the role of Sergey. He became much more popular after the role of Alexei Maltsev in the sitcom "Interns". In this project, his role was comedic, not dramatic.
Thanks to the role of Sergey, Alexander Lyapin received the Constellation Award for best debut. According to critics, he got used to the role well and played a dramatic hero. Meanwhile, it was the film “The Vanished Empire” (the actors and roles that were discussed above) that could help Alexander to reveal himself as a very gifted person. In 2009, he played another major role in the military drama "Lieutenant Suvorov."
The main female role
Lydmila was invited to the role of the main beauty Lydia Milyuzin, who was practically unknown before participating in the picture of Shakhnazarov. This is not a metropolitan actress, she is a native of the city of Urzhum, Kirov region, but she was able to win the hearts of the audience.
The “Vanished Empire” was her first serious work, followed by other major movie roles. Lilia builds her career for the most part on the stage of the Maly Theater.
You can also see this young actress in episodic roles of popular TV shows. At one time, reporters watched her life, since Lydia was the wife of the famous actor and director Kirill Pletnev for more than two years. In this marriage, the actress was born sons Fedor and George. After the birth of the youngest child, the couple broke up. Critics noted that in the movie The Vanished Empire, the actors were in a similar situation. At the end of the tape it turned out that Stepan and Luda lived together for only a year.
Adult images
All viewers liked the director's choice for the role of older people. For example, the aged Stepan (30 years had passed by the time the friends met) was played by Vladimir Ilyin, known for the films “Moneychangers” and “I Want to Go to Jail”. As Ilyin and other actors said, “The Vanished Empire” is a tape in which it’s not a shame to star. That is why the masters of the scene took part in it.
The grandfather of Sergei was played by Armen Dzhigarkhanyan, whose popularity is undeniable. In his life, he has played in more than 250 films. No wonder Valentine Gaft said that there are fewer Armenians on Earth than the films where Dzhigarkhanyan was shot. Armen Borisovich is also engaged in dubbing cartoons, dubbing foreign actors in Russian cinema. He received a lot of state awards and is inscribed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most removed actor. Now he lives alternately in Russia and the USA.
Critic reviews
When the casting for the film “The Vanished Empire” began, the actors reacted positively to it: the classic script, a famous director and filming in 4 countries attracted young talents. Critics, in turn, accepted the film ambiguously. Some called the picture soundly, while others found a lot of mistakes in it.
Most of the filming was carried out in Teply Stan, where Khrushchev’s were still preserved, but at the time the pictures of the houses under the P-44 and P-46 projects were not in Moscow. They appeared only in the eighties. Also, the film was criticized due to the mismatch of hairstyles of the fashion of the time - men then grew their hair to resemble western rock stars. Wrong, according to critics, costumes for the actors were chosen. In the early seventies, young people wore very wide flares, which were not in the picture.