April 7, 2008 on the "First Channel" the premiere of the twelve-episode spy saga "Apostle" took place. It was a tense, serious story about the confrontation between two intelligence services - "Abwehr" and the NKVD - in 1942. The series "Apostle", whose actors plunged into skirmishes, fierce fights, chases, and human stories about saving their loved ones, immediately won the hearts of millions of viewers.
Heroes of the picture
This is a completely new for all cinematic canons spy thriller at the same time broke all the records for the ratings. The Apostle saga, the actors into which were selected very carefully, attracted the attention of the audience by two characters: the hero of Nikolai Fomenko - a kind of brutal “tough guy” Alexei Ivanovich Khromov (captain of state security) and the hero of Evgeny Mironov - a refined, thin intellectual, who, according to the plot becomes Superman Pavel Istomin.
Other artists who participated in the creation of this action movie are also no less talented and famous - Daria Moroz, Yuri Nazarov, Alena Babenko, Larisa Malevannaya, Sergey Bystritsky, Andrei Smirnov, Alexander Bashirov ... There were a lot of intense scenes in the series, so the actors I had to play in quite extreme situations - run, swim, perform stunt tricks. But, despite the complexity, none of them complained, answering all the calls of the director with professionalism and well-coordinated work.
Taken from life
The entire plot of the saga "Apostle", the actors of which were masters of their craft, developed quite nonlinearly. It is based on the difficult destinies of two twin brothers, whose roads listened dramatically during the years of World War II. In each series of paintings, the memories of the main acting characters slip through, constantly transferring them to the past, to that still quiet and happy life.
This is a very difficult story, which has a documentary basis. Shown here is a multi-pass operation of the secret department of the NKVD against the strong Abwehr intelligence structure. Unfortunately, there were some casualties. The hostages of these actions are a simple Soviet man and his family. The Chekists very accurately caught the main character on a hook, promising him, if he did not fulfill their task, to destroy his wife and child.
The storyline of the series
So, we have already figured out that the true background is all that the Apostle shows, the television series. Actors surprisingly organically fit into that era, playing brightly and even boldly.
The main characters of the picture are two brothers, similar to each other as two drops of water - Peter and Pavel Istominy. One of the brothers - Peter - a German intelligence saboteur. He, in team with the other two saboteurs, is thrown into the territory of the Soviet Union in 1942, in the winter. And it seems that the German command provided for the maximum possible options for the development of events, but ... But absolutely not as planned, a sabotage group landed. And here's what happened: one of the saboteurs by the name of Marchenko shot the pilots right on the plane, then he killed the second saboteur and stunned him with the blow of a third pistol - Peter Istomin. Peter by some miracle manages to recover and jumps out of the plane. It seems to him that he was saved, but almost immediately he falls into the clutches of the NKVD.
So begins to tell the whole story "Apostle", a television series whose reviews contain warm words of gratitude to the artists. The actors played their roles so filigree that for moments it seemed that this was not a game, but real life.
Peter Istomin decided to run away. During an escape attempt, he (as it turned out, he was a Russian thief in law) dies. The Chekists urgently need to find the rest of the saboteurs. They turn for help to Peter's twin brother, Paul. Paul turns out to be diametrically opposite in character, behavior, in his life principles to Peter. But he has to enter a deadly game in which the winner is the one who does his job better than the rest. So, the mistakes of one brother have to be corrected by another.
Mironov-Istomin
The actors of the Apostle series, who played the two main roles, were already celebrities. But shooting in this picture only added beautiful flowers to their huge creative “bouquets”.
The Istomin brothers - Peter and Paul - were perfectly played by Evgeny Mironov. Later, he told how an intelligent lone wolf, like his brother, was gradually sculpted from an intelligent Paul. How he was separated from his beloved family, which he valued more than his life. The actor is sure that Oleg Antonov wrote a very good script for the picture, because it turned out to be a multi-part movie, like those that were shot during the Soviet Union, this is a story that life itself prompted. "Apostle" - this was the call sign of Paul. And this was his struggle not so much for Victory in general, as for his reunion with his family - with his wife and son.
Actors of the film "Apostle" (Russia) practiced many scenes without the help of understudies. When filming the episode of the capture of the train, Mironov himself had to jump on the roofs of the cars.
Mironov and Fomenko on fire
Once Yevgeny Mironov and Nikolai Fomenko (character Aleksey Khromov) nearly died in a flame in an antique GAZ M-1 car . When the shooting of one of the takes took place, a fountain of bright sparks fell from under the hood of this car and thick smoke fell. A little later it turned out that the wiring on the motor caught fire. Very quickly the blazing fire began to be extinguished by all possible improvised means. In order to save time as soon as possible, the crew decided not to wait until the old "gas" was repaired. The antiques on wheels were simply tied with a strong cable to the Citroen and courageously finished up the necessary material.
Abvershola in the monastery
The series "Apostle", actors and roles which appealed to millions of viewers, filmed in different places. Filming of one of the key scenes took place in the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery. And, according to the scenario, all the action took place in an abvershoo. It was within its walls that Germans prepared saboteurs from ordinary Soviet criminals, from surrendered soldiers of the country of Soviets and many other strange-minded personalities. The creators of the series told the ubiquitous reporters that local residents with great desire agreed to the role of "their own", but far from all agreed to play the Germans.
On the territory of this monastery, in the prison yard, a tower was built, a fence of barbed wire. Nazi flags were hung there. And in place of the icon placed a portrait of Hitler himself.
Explosion, flashes, feathers ...
Despite such concessions to the question of the filming process, filmmakers had a sufficient number of restrictions when working in the museum-reserve. For example, there was a ban on shooting pyrotechnic effects on the territory of the monastery, so the explosions that sounded in the spy saga were heard outside its walls.
All the actors of the series “Apostle” were sympathetic to this situation and tried not to allow any wrong steps.
They decided to shoot the explosion on the shore of the lake, located near the monastery. To do this, they used 60 liters of diesel fuel, which exploded with such a deafening sound that the members of the film crew disconnected mobile phones and cameras, and an alarm went off in cars nearby. There, on the lake, they shot red-orange flashes of fire and recorded sound. Directly within the walls of the monastery, hens were shot that scatter in all directions from the blast wave. At the very moment when the birds were supposed to fly, feathers and fluff were released into the wind from ordinary pillows. Actors of the Apostle series were bombarded with pieces of land: as if these pieces had fallen on them from explosions. And then the computer people combined these explosions and the image of the monastery.
Final shootings
Recent episodes were filmed in Tunisia. The work went hard, because foreign filming is not an easy task. They have their own rules and the main problem is that not everything depends on the actors and directors. The entire crew was in tight deadlines, so they were filmed from dusk until dawn. No one had time to simply enjoy the beauties of nature, the warm sea. Some changes crept into the script, so several scenes were invented and remade on the go. So they finished shooting the Apostle series. Actors also showed miracles of endurance and skill - he did not complain about anything, but tried to fulfill all the director’s requirements as best as possible.
The end of the story was kept in such a secret that until the last five minutes it will not be clear to the audience who the main villain is.
So it turned out "Apostle", a television series. The actors and the roles they played in this saga turned out to be very real, as if all the characters lived somewhere in the neighboring streets or in neighboring yards.