Reviews of the film "Courier" Karen Shakhnazarov initially met a variety of different. He always had many supporters and opponents. In this article we will tell the plot of this picture, give information about its director, actors, as well as the opinions that the tape left with the audience and critics.
Filming
In reviews of the film "Courier", viewers and critics have always noted that the creators of the picture were able to accurately convey the era in which the picture was shot. It was a perestroika time, so the crew had constant problems finding the right props. In particular, elegant and fashionable clothes. For example, because of this, actress Anastasia Nemolyaeva had to use the things of Alena Setunskaya, the wife of director Karen Shakhnazarov, on the set.
Preparing for the shoot, he looked at about a hundred applicants for the main male role, until he chose Fyodor Dunaevsky. Moreover, the actor as a result got into the picture in many ways by accident.
Having played the main female role, Nemolyaeva brought her photographs along with pictures of classmates for audition to the Mosfilm film studio. In the "Courier" she got.
The whole picture was shot in only a few places in Moscow. Sand quarry, in which Ivan pretended to be an Indian, is located in the Lyubertsy district. The house where Katya lived with her parents is the building of the Rossiya Insurance Company. Ivan and his friend Nikolai Bazin ride a skateboard on a viewing platform on the Sparrow Hills, and a sports ground where young people dance breaks is located on Dovzhenko Street in the area of school No. 1118.
Plot
The events in the movie "Courier" 1986 unfold in the Soviet capital during perestroika. At the center of the story is the main character Ivan, who had just graduated from school, but could not enter the institute. On exams, he failed. True, he was not very keen on going to college.
According to the plot of the film "Courier", he decides to go to work, gets a job as a courier in the journal "Questions of Knowledge". Fulfilling another job assignment, he brings the manuscript to Professor Kuznetsov, where he meets his daughter Katya. The girl has an interest in the young man, but he quickly disappears. It turns out that this interest simply has nothing to cling to. Katya lacks both mental strength and intelligence. Neither for a bright flash of emotions, nor for a conscious protest.
Ivan himself was initially attracted by this beautiful girl, but he soon realized how dull and uninteresting she was. After parting, everyone returns to their environment. Katya again revolves in the society of modern golden youth, and Ivan remains face to face with his uncertain future. A hint of how everything will develop further appears only in the very end of the picture, when the main character meets his eyes with a tankman with a scar on his face, which has left the reserve. For the viewer, it becomes obvious that the young man will join the army.
Character Features
Unlike Katya, whose famous and educated parents (she herself studies at the institute), Ivan is a much more interesting person. Although in his circle of friends this cannot be said.
He has a friend Nikolai Bazin, with whom they like to skateboard in the evenings. He himself is an inquisitive young man who too often plunges into his dreams, which is why he is often far from the life realities surrounding him around.
The divorce of parents leaves an imprint on his attitude to the world, the scene from which we see in the film. With Katya, at first they have a lot of common topics for conversation, Ivan, in order to captivate the girl, constantly comes up with different stories, largely invented. For Katya, he becomes an element of entertainment, while Ivan is in search of a man who could understand him.
A young man crosses the line when he invents a story about her pregnancy. As a result, there is a conflict between people, they no longer meet.
Primary source
The film "Courier" in 1986 was shot on the story of the same name by the director Shakhnazarov. At the same time, there are certain differences in the picture from the literary source. Although in general, the film adaptation is shot close to the text.
For example, in the book there is a secondary line about the science fiction writer, which was not reflected in the film. Another vivid episode of the story is a colorful and vivid description of Ivan's dream, which helps to understand the complex inner world of the protagonist. The actors themselves recalled that the scene with this dream was shot, but then almost completely cut out during installation.
One of the most memorable episodes is related to the conversation between Kuznetsov and Ivan, when a professor asks a young man what he is going to earn a living from. In the film, the young man declares that he writes poetry, recites Pushkin’s lines from the poem "Monument", which is part of the school curriculum. This episode is present in the story, only Ivan reads Pushkin’s less well-known poem "Flower", therefore the scene in which the professor does not immediately determine who the true author of the text looks more believable.
An episode was added to the film in which Ivan and Katya walk around the city when they “want to have a baby,” after the young man told the girl’s parents that she was pregnant. In the book, Ivan only apologizes to Katya for saying too much.
Also added is a scene in which Ivan meets a tanker who returned from Afghanistan, which helps to understand the future fate of the young man. There is no such episode in the story.
Cast
The actors and the roles of the movie Courier were very successfully selected by the film crew. It immediately becomes apparent that most of the characters exactly fell into the created image.
In addition to the main characters, which we will talk about separately, many celebrities appeared in the picture in secondary or episodic images. For example, Inna Churikova plays the role of the mother of Ivan Lydia Alekseevna Miroshnikova, Alexander Pankratov-Cherny appears in the image of the chief editor Stepan Afanasevich, among the guests at the birthday of Katya, Vladimir Menshov.
For the main character Fyodor Dunaevsky, this role in the movie was his debut. He was born in 1969 in Moscow. He studied poorly, several times he was expelled from schools, including because of fights. At 14, he worked as a janitor in a kindergarten. He studied at a medical school, worked as an ambulance paramedic.
In 1991, he left for Israel, where he received a second citizenship. He starred in the TV series "Youth of Tel Aviv", played in local theaters. In the mid-90s he returned to Russia, studied at the directing department of VGIK. Then he left for Italy, where he remained until 2000. He had his own business in the field of cargo transportation, which closed in 2001.
Since then, from time to time he has returned to Russia for filming in series, owns the production center "Wicket".
Fedor Dunaevsky in "Courier" played his most prominent role. After that, he was one of the main characters in the drama of Eldar Ryazanov, "Dear Elena Sergeevna." Since 2012, he played several minor roles in the series - "Rook", "Toptuny", "Cossacks", "Olga", "Laundry".
Anastasia Nemolyaeva
Anastasia Nemolyaeva did not have a career as a film actress. In the movie "Courier" she got the main role for the first time. Although she made her debut six years earlier in the famous satirical comedy by Oleg Efremov and Naum Ardashnikov's "Old New Year". She appears in the image of Lisa Sebeikina.
The fact that in the film “Courier” the actors and the roles they play looks as organically as possible, we can say in relation to it. The very next year, after Shakhnazarov’s success, she played one of the main roles in Pavel Lyubimov’s historical adventure film “The Pathfinder”, as well as in the films “Time to Fly” and “Old Alphabet”. In the cult melodrama of Pyotr Todorovsky, "Interdevochka" Nemolyaeva appears in the image of a heroine named Lyalka.
In 1991, she became a graduate of GITIS. Until 1999, she played in the theater on Malaya Bronnaya. When he married Veniamin Skalnik, she took up the family design business. She makes furniture and utensils from wood and glass in the style of naive art. Several works are exhibited at the Russian Museum.
Since 2000, Nemolyaeva does not play in the theater, occasionally appearing in the movies. Among the latest works, one can note the drama by Alexander Rogozhkin "Drive", detective Alexander Kott, "Diamond Hunters."
Oleg Basilashvili
If practically the debutants starred in the leading roles, then among the supporting characters are the real stars of Soviet cinema. Oleg Basilashvili in the movie "Courier" plays Katya's father, professor Semyon Petrovich Kuznetsov.
By that time, Basilashvili had already received the title of People's Artist of the USSR, which he got in 1984. He himself is a native of Moscow, was born in 1934. A graduate of the Moscow Art Theater School. He began his career at the Lenin Komsomol Theater in Leningrad, and then, together with his wife, actress Tatyana Doronina, received an invitation from the Gorky Bolshoi Drama Theater.
In the movie, his debut took place in 1939 in the comedy of Tatyana Lukashevich "Foundling". He appears in the image of a boy on a bicycle. Then few people paid attention to him, and the surname was not even indicated in the credits. His first works at a conscious age were Andrei Andreyevich in The Bride and Strelnikov in The Hot Soul. They also did not add fame to him.
Basilashvili gained fame after the films of Eldar Ryazanov and George Danelia. Viewers still remember the images created by him - Yuri Grigorievich Samokhvalov in the lyrical comedy "Office Romance", pianist Platon Sergeyevich Ryabinin in the melodrama "Station for Two", Count Merzlyaev in the tragicomedy "About the Poor Hussar Say the Word," by Andrei Pavlovich Osenovich Buzinovich Osenovich Pavlovich Osenovich Pavlovich marathon. "
Basilashvili is now 84 years old. His last film role at the moment is the cemetery worker Georgy in the comedy melodrama Karen Oganesyan, Rezo Gigineishvili and Roman Prygunov "Without Borders".
Svetlana Kryuchkova
Svetlana Kryuchkova in the movie "Courier" appears in the role of editorial secretary Zinaida Pavlovna. This is another famous Soviet actress, a graduate of the Moscow Art Theater School, a People’s Artist of the RSFSR (her title was awarded in 1991).
Her film debut turned out to be very vivid and memorable. This was a student of the evening school Nelli Ledneva in the comedy melodrama Alexei Korenev "Big Change".
It is worth noting that after that she received mainly secondary roles, albeit in famous films. For example, the Sarafanovs' neighbor, Natalia Makarskaya, played in the psychological drama Vitaly Melnikov's "Elder Son".
Interestingly, during her career, she played several roles in the films about the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. In 1980 - the maid of Agatha, in 1981 - Mrs. Eliza Barrymore, and already in 2013 - Queen Victoria.
Karen Shakhnazarov
In the career of the director of the film "Courier" Shakhnazarov, this was the fourth full-length work. A native of Krasnodar, a graduate of VGIK, made his debut on the big screen in 1979 with the comedy "Goodies" about a professional swindler who, taking advantage of the favor of an employee of the Institute of Ancient Culture, takes off on the career ladder. The main roles in that film were played by George Burkov and Tatyana Vasilyeva.
Then came the musical comedy “We Are From Jazz” and the drama “Winter Evening in Gagra”. The film "We Are From Jazz" received several international awards and became the best film of the year according to a survey of readers of the magazine "Soviet Screen".
"Courier" Karen Shakhnazarov can definitely be recognized as his directorial success. In 1987, the picture was recognized as the best film of the year according to a survey of the magazine "Soviet Screen", became one of the rental leaders, taking sixth place. In cinemas, almost 32 million people watched it.
Also, the tape was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the Moscow International Film Festival, received the State Prize of the RSFSR named after the Vasilyev brothers.
Currently, Shakhnazarov is one of the most famous domestic directors. Moreover, since 1998 he heads the Mosfilm film studio in the status of chairman of the board of the concern and general director.
Among his most high-profile subsequent works, it is worth noting:
- Phantasmagoria "City of Zero". This is a comedy of the absurdity about the engineer of the machine-building plant Alexei Varakin performed by Leonid Filatov, who comes to a small provincial city to agree on the technical details of the project, and then cannot get out of there.
- The mystical historical drama "The Killer" with Oleg Yankovsky and Malcolm MacDowell in the lead roles. This is a story about a metropolitan psychiatrist who, in a provincial clinic, gets acquainted with a former felon suffering from a split personality. He identifies himself with the murderers of Russian emperors, citing amazing evidence as evidence.
- The drama "The Vanished Empire" about the history of love in the Soviet Union of the 70s.
- A film adaptation of Chekhov’s novel “Chamber No. 6” of the same name.
- The drama "Anna Karenina. History of Vronsky."
Impression
Reviews for the movie Courier were mostly positive. The audience noted that this is a thoughtful picture dedicated to the eternal story of the conflict of generations, the love of young people from different social groups, the influence of society on the way of thinking and behavior of people.
This is at the same time a very serious and funny film that makes you think about the future, the search by young people for their place in life. In some reviews of the Courier film, critics noted that this is an amazingly deep film about the lost generation, in which we can watch the heroes of a difficult perestroika time, when the country changed before the eyes of young people, they could not understand what it would turn out to be, what place they will be able to take in this new world.
Shakhnazarov accurately conveys this feeling of uselessness and uncertainty in his tape.