Moving up is a movie that is not ashamed of

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

It turns out that Russian cinema is capable of making a spectacular and at the same time emotional story, which not only keeps the audience in suspense from the first to the last second, but does not let go of the audience even after the final credits.

The film "Moving Up" about the legendary victory of Soviet basketball players at the 1972 Olympicsif it does not become the first folk film after Balabanov's "Brother" (which is quite difficult for such a genre), then it will certainly be included in the cohort of outstanding films that are repeatedly reviewed, and those who have not watched are greeted with surprise.

Why? You can give a lot of arguments and put on the shelves the secret of the success of Anton Megerdichev & Co. (in two weeks the film's grosses amounted to 1.4 billion rubles), but that's why he is a secret, that it is pointless.

Real art is a mystery beyond the scrutiny of film critics. A piece of art can be folded perfectly, but don't cling, you don't believe it. Film "Moving Up" clings, you believe and experience his stories, and this cannot be explained by a simple recipe.

Yes, finally, a Russian commercial film has a solid script. Not just a set of actions and jokes, but a big story told in a whole and dramatic way. The story is real, based on the biographical book of a participant in a real event - the leader of the USSR basketball team, Sergei Belov.

But the phrase "based on real events" is by no means for beauty: the writers treated the real heroes of 1972 with care and respect, the changes made and the plot novels do not vulgarize their feat, but add tragedy to it, make it closer to the modern viewer. The final match between the USA and the USSR is completely reproduced in the film - a point for a point.

Yes, the special effects in the film were used not for the sake of the special effects themselves and in spite of the drama, but as an important addition to the internal drama, its design is a rare case for Russian cinema.

Thanks to new technologies, you can't watch basketball matches of the USSR national team almost half a century ago, but as if you live here and now … Here you are on the podium, here on the bench, here you are pushing under the basket - a ball, a sweat, a feint, a jump - there are two points!

Sometimes it even looks too spectacular - then basketball was calmer, but this is justified, since it shows that Soviet basketball players did not just play, and fought on the site, as in battle.

Yes, for the first time in Russian cinema, as in the best examples of Soviet and Hollywood, more than one star is playing in the frame, and all actors, even minor ones … Coach Mashkov-Garanzhin creates a team not only from athletes according to the script: you can feel the same team play of actors - moreover, inexperienced and little-known actors. Somehow we managed to select and assemble the guys who managed to convey not only the individuality of the players, but also the team spirit.

Nevertheless, all of the above does not explain why the audience leaves the hall with bright faces and sweaty souls. After all, technically, this is a standard film about a big victory - there are dozens, if not hundreds.

Perhaps the clue is that the film is something real and dear to millions of viewers. And everyone who looked at the picture, I think, understood this and could name it. The first thing in the film "Moving Up" touches on the long-forgotten in mass culture and therefore so long-awaited camaraderie, command as a conscious cooperation and solidarity of different people. Contemporary art loves to praise the egocentrism of the "free atom", and in extremely unbridled manifestations - when the hero achieves success at the expense of others, stepping over his neighbor.

Here, on the contrary, upward movement is accomplished through rallying with those who, moreover, turned out to be near by the will of fateas is often the case with sports teams. A seemingly banal truth in the era of triumphant consumerism, when even a person becomes a commodity, turns out to be a revelation, and the Russian viewer responds sensitively to him.

"They became a long time ago, only I understood it now." The first to pronounce this phrase is the brilliant master Sergei Belov, shown in the film as a lone wolf, accustomed to playing only for himself, not paying attention to partners and often contrary to the interests of the team. Such people used to be ashamed in the yard, calling them individual farmers. realizing the fallacy of excessive selfishness - and here is the real peculiarity of the real Vladimir Petrovich, who not only trained, but brought up young guys, showing personal participation in their fate.

It is a team, united not in spite of personalities, and thanks to their conscious self-restraint, service to others, and allows the USSR national team to defeat a seemingly invincible opponent. Overcoming insurmountable circumstances is possible only when one for all and all for one.

And this dear, almost at the genetic level, the feeling inherent in us is very accurately conveyed and experienced by the heroes of the picture. The entire film by Megerdichev, as well as the victory of our basketball players over the United States in the last three seconds, is a hymn to that incredible power that allows you to do what no one seems to believe in. "Until it is impossible, then it is possible" - these words of the hero of Mashkov are similar to the well-known advertising slogan "The impossible is possible." But the difference is significant: in the western slogan the triumph of individualism, in ours - the triumph of command.

Russian overcoming is not mechanical, not coldly technological, it is always a living feat filled with human warmth. This soulfulness is emphasized by the storyline with the sick child of the trainer Garanzhin, who needed an operation abroad.

In the film, the money collected for a penny for an operation to his son, Garanzhin gave for urgent treatment to his ward, Alexander Belov, who was diagnosed with a rare heart disease during a tour of the United States. The coach saved the life of a team player, risking the health of his own son - he did not save for the sake of victory or a career, but just humanly, as it should be (the real Belov was really sick and died at the age of 26, but the disease manifested itself much later than the Olympics - but can such a "montage" be called unjustified?).

A big act creates a large team from a group of individualists - and this is priceless. Not complicated tactical schemes and hard training, which are also important and shown in detail in the film, but sincere self-sacrifice leads to overcoming and miraculous victory.

Partnership appears in the picture in another aspect, which, perhaps, is no less close to the Russian heart - in the friendship of peoples. But not a poster, not replaced by tolerance, but a lively, sincere one, in which there is room for friction, resentment, and open conversation.

So, from the very first shots, the Lithuanian basketball player Modestas Paulauskas demonstrates the Baltic opposition to the Soviet regime and the Russian people: "You Russians never understood us!"

The real Paulauskas never said anything like that and, they say, until now, already in his eighth decade, is nostalgic for the Union and the Russian language. But it's not a secret that this attitude was met by many Balts, and the filmmakers introduce a historically important plot from the Soviet past, drawing a parallel with the present.

In Moving Upward, Paulauskas is constantly dissatisfied with how “here, where everything is bad,” and wants to escape “where everything is beautiful”. Impossible not to recognize in this type of current Westernizers-Russophobes as in Russia, so even more so in Ukraine or in the same Baltic states. However - the key point! - before the match with the USA, when he was helped to escape from the national team, he suddenly realizes that he is part of "this country". And the second time, after Sergei Belov, he says the phrase: "They became their own for a long time, only I understood it now."

Unfortunately, the motivation for this act is not fully worked out in the film, but it is clear that the Lithuanian recognized himself as a part of a whole, large and honest family, in which no one holds a stone in his bosom (Garanzhin even gave tacit permission to escape). In other words, pure human relations have become dearer to the Lithuanian than their national pride.

This genuine sincerity of relationship between Russians and different peoples of the USSR is vividly conveyed on the example of the basketball team. You even wonder how the modern guys-actors were able to convey that disinterested atmosphere of unity of peoples in the scene of a Georgian wedding in a mountain village, when the Belarusian Edeshko, the Kazakh Zharmukhamedov, the Georgians Korkia and Sakandelidze, the obstinate Lithuanian, Anatoly Polivoda from the Ukrainian SSR and the Russians were having fun at the same table. Sergey and Alexander Belov.

By a cruel irony of fate, I had to go through the collapse of the Union and the post-Soviet nationalist madness in Ukraine, the Caucasus and the Baltic States to understand the whole the value of the then relationship between the close peoples of a large country. I know that ordinary people yearn for it not only in Russia, but in all republics, and instead of making stupid arguments about the varieties of sausage in the Soviet Union, one should think about how to restore those relations between people of different nationalities.

However, in the film also shows the disadvantages of the Union: a shortage of consumer goods, which basketball players carried suitcases from abroad at their own peril and risk, and self-serving tyrant officials (by the way, at what times do they not exist?), and members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union who covered up their careerism with the interests of the party.

However, in general, the image of the USSR in the 70s in the film is attractive: youth, warmth of relations and the power of an empire. I would not be surprised if "Upward Movement" is banned in countries struggling with the Soviet past - this is such a blow to their propaganda of hatred and discord between peoples.

In conclusion - a few words about the confrontation with the United States, almost the central theme in the concept of the picture. Team USA is shown as a super-powerful, strong-willed, brutal machine, a roller crushing everything in its path.

Obviously, whether the authors of "Upward Movement" wanted it or not, they left an imprint on him. modern geopolitical conflict with Washington … In fact, in the film, under the guise of the then confrontation, the current one is shown: if then the USSR and the USA were in equal weight categories, now in many ways it is really a fight between David and Goliath.

Coach Garanzhin, on the one hand, teaches you to adopt the best methods of struggle from the Americans, but at the same time requires you to bend your line, do not concede to an opponent in anything and fight for every ball and second. And when the rivals turn into outright rudeness, ours, with the tacit permission of the coach, respond with pinpoint strikes. This is a kind of reference to the asymmetric response tactics that Moscow has successfully used in recent years on the international arena.

At the same time, the citizens of the United States themselves are not shown in black colors and in some places are even pretty, like the doctor treating Belov, or those guys from the black quarters who beat Soviet basketball players in streetball. But between the lines it reads that, despite the opinions of individual citizens, the United States and Russia as types of civilizations are fundamentally opposite, and our clash - God forbid, not a military one - is inevitable. But in order not to give in, one must fight with the mind, soul and to the end - it is possible that those three seconds will decide everything.

By the way, in the film there is an episode characteristic from a political point of view, when at the last moment at the limit of nerves Soviet sports officials decide to abandon the final match and almost remove the USSR national team from the Olympics (a completely fictional plot move), but the team convinces them not to.

More than a transparent hint of those Russian eliteswho suggests, under the guise of returning to the camp of progressive humanity, to back down and abandon national interests in favor of Washington.

As you can see, in the film "Moving Up", under the guise of a typical film adaptation of a great sports victory, several important general civil and political meanings are sewn up. Of course, this is not a masterpiece and not the pinnacle of cinematic art (it would be foolish to expect this from a commercially oriented film), but this is the example to be guided by when filming large domestic blockbusters with a claim to art.

"Upward movement" - a good example of symbiosis entertainment and content in popular culture. But something tells me that he is unlikely to be selected as an Oscar nominee.

However, it is much more important that the law of dialectics seems to have worked in Russian cinema, according to which quantitative changes develop into qualitative … I really want not to be deceived in this.