The painting "The White Nights of the Postman Alexei Tryapitsyn": review

The master of domestic film directing Andrei Konchalovsky tirelessly continues to collect professional film awards and sympathy of the audience with his film project "White Nights of the Postman Alexei Tryapitsyn". Reviews, reviews unanimously emphasize the originality of the creator's idea, because the picture was created on the principle of documentary cinema - the camera seems to spy on the life of a real person.

Contemplation film

Once again, Konchalovsky tried to expand the limits of cinema and penetrate the sacred depths of the unsolved Russian soul. Therefore, the film is not unambiguously documentary, in every episode, the influence of the director's intention is felt, albeit extremely abstract and very vague, a sort of art house in the cinema. “The White Nights of the Postman Aleksey Tryapitsyn” urges the viewer to dissolve in it, to smoothly follow the course of the storyline, which is devoid of sharp turns and emotional changes. The film turned out to be like an unhurried symphony, and the term “contemplative” fits him perfectly.

No echo of misanthropism

Almost all reviews of the film “White Nights of the Postman Aleksey Tryapitsyn” note the lack of a “dark” coverage of village life in the plot of a traditional Russian cinema.

Konchalovsky shows the inhabitants of the village as ordinary people, with an imprint of a difficult fate on their faces, but under the yoke of hardships that have not lost their human essence. The heroes of the picture are by no means degraded or miserable, suffering from alcohol dependence. The film project “White Nights of the Postman Aleksey Tryapitsyn” demonstrates many interesting, colorful types. The review of the representative of the organization "Art of Cinema" is a confirmation of this statement. Objectively (without appreciation) to reflect the real characters, personalities that are encountered throughout Russia by the director in the story, the absence of a misanthropic tone (subtext) and any hint of condemnation allows.

The unsteady line between realism and mysticism

It is worth noting that the film is not limited to strict realism, as the plot narrative develops, the shades of mysticism come to light more clearly. Extraordinarily delicately Konchalovsky lifts the veil into the world of the unidentified film “White Nights of the Postman Aleksey Tryapitsyn”, so penetratingly felt by the central character. Reviews, reviews of critics unanimously call the protagonist a medium, he incomprehensibly manages to connect not only the inhabitants of an isolated village with the outside world, but also historical milestones: ignorant paganism, communism that has sunk into oblivion, an unsightly present and a ghostly future.

The state of "timelessness"

The film, which won the Silver Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival in the nomination "Best Director's Work", was shot in the remote outback of the Arkhangelsk Region (Plesetsk district, the village of Vershino) and occasionally in Kenozero National Park. Therefore, reviews of the film “White Nights of the Postman Aleksey Tryapitsyn” claim that the author staged a premiere screening in Arkhangelsk only for this reason.

It is in this area, forgotten by people and God, in a state of timelessness that the village is located in which the events of the picture develop. It seems that the terrain and population exist in some other, paradoxical and magical reality. This assumption is reinforced by the last frames of the picture and the citation of Shakespeare's Storm. It is these artistic techniques in the film "White Nights of the Postman Alexei Tryapitsyn" (review by D. Bykov, "Novaya Gazeta" that especially emphasizes them) excite the minds of the audience.

Pure melody without falsity

Everything in the movie is entirely a natural product: landscapes of a national park with a play of light and shadow, villagers, a strange silent cat with piercing yellow eyes and the central character himself - as one review reads. "The White Nights of the Postman Alexei Tryapitsyn" is a movie similar to a pure melody without a hint of falsity. And it’s hard to disagree, because all the plot twists of the picture are not paramount. Most importantly, examples of non-invented, genuine life.

The author spent a lot of time and effort on creating the film "White Nights of the Postman Alexei Tryapitsyn". A review by MK reviewer Svetlana Khokhryakova indicates that efforts were not in vain. Konchalovsky obtained an elegant and slightly poetic portrait not only of a separate village and postman, but of the mythical Russian mentality as a whole: devoid of a clear vector of development, painfully torn between an invincible faith in a bright future and hopeless nostalgic hopelessness.

Analogy with Flaherty?

If you try to make a detailed analysis of the film into separate puzzle components, you can see that the method used by the director goes back to the early 1920s. It was during this time period that the cult picture of Robert Flaherty came out with the mysterious title Nanook from the North. It was from there that Konchalovsky borrowed some tricks, such as: “a slightly outlined plot” and “prolonged observation”. These cinematic terms today will only be remembered by professionals, and even then not all. And Konchalovsky managed to reincarnate them.

Elegy or Documentary

The film depicts rural life - without luxury, financial abundance, with booze and swearing, fights, theft and hopelessness - that, by and large, is the whole review. The “White Nights of the Postman Aleksey Tryapitsyn” has already been broadcast on Channel One and managed to cause a storm of emotions among the watchers and to receive categorically polar reviews.

Some contemplators considered it depressingly naturalistic and called it documentary, others called it an elegy in a dying village. “The White Nights of the Postman Aleksey Tryapitsin” (criticism of Boris Boris Absurdly confirms this) can in no way be called a “biography of a regular postman”; And this “experiment” directed by A. Konchalovsky, quite bold for modern Russian formats, was undoubtedly a success.