The film "Salyut-7": how to mix the heroes of the country with the dirt

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

A long time ago, in the Soviet Union, there was a movie about heroes, after which I wanted to perform feats. After watching the film "Officers", the boys went to military schools.

Then a strange time came when the heroes were gone, except for such thieves in law and foreign exchange prostitutes.

They made it to space

And then the heroes returned, but somehow not like that. It turned out that the real winners in the war are the "penalties" going into battle at gunpoint from the ever-drunk NKVD officers. They fought, it turns out, not for the Motherland, but for a certain girl who loves to wash in the bathroom in the middle of the Battle of Stalingrad, and fought the enemy not with weapons, but with shovel cuttings and miraculous spiders.

It's not just the war heroes that have changed. The life of an actor and poet Vladimir Vysotskythrough the efforts of filmmakers, it turned into a narcotic trip amid financial fraud.

The hockey hero miraculously survived Valery Kharlamov, who in the movies - unseen - hammered Canadians with a club, and not by the power of telekinesis or prayer.

And, finally, we got to space. This is understandable: the Soviet space program will easily provide a couple of hundred ready-made scenarios for full-length films for every taste. Drama, tragedy, lyrics, a person's struggle with himself and with technology - you don't need to invent anything, just shoot.

Shame amid great special effects

The picture "Salyut-7" is good from the point of view of special effects and display of space. So we have not shown space yet. And if it was something abstract, like "Gravity" Alfonso Cuarona, then one could close our eyes to the absurdity of the plot twists.

But the film was made about a specific feat of Soviet cosmonauts. Moreover, the astronauts are quite specific and recognizable. And, although the authors changed the names of some of the characters, anyone who is familiar with the history of the Soviet space program knows exactly who they are talking about.

Because the woman who does welding in orbit is Svetlana Savitskaya, and no one else can be put in this place. And the flight director is Valery Ryumin, especially since Alexander Samoilenkowho plays him in the movie looks like a prototype.

And cosmonauts Fedorov and Alekhine in the cinema are Vladimir Dzhanibekovand Victor Savinykhin life, and others in these circumstances can not be placed.

We emphasize this especially, because what is happening to all these people in the film "Salyut-7" is, as the chairman of the house committee Shvonder used to say, some kind of shame.

Apollo 13: a lucrative sense of pride

Apollo 13 is a classic of heroic space cinema based on real events. Director's picture Ron Howard, filmed in 1995, recounts the 1970 crash of the American Apollo 13 spacecraft en route to the Moon. Three astronauts, whose lives hung in the balance, heroically extricated themselves from an almost hopeless situation, returning to Earth alive.

This is a feat that America is justly proud of. The film about this was based on the book "The Lost Moon", written James Lovelland Jeffrey Kluger.

James Lovell was the commander of Apollo 13, that is, a direct participant in the events. When it came to writing the script, Lovell was invited to co-write.

As a result, Lovell decided that Tom Hanks played it improbably. There was also a number of inconsistencies in the film, which are striking only for specialists, but in general, the creators did not shy away from the real story of events.

With a budget of $ 62 million, the film grossed more than 355 million at the box office and was nominated for an Oscar in nine nominations (although it was awarded only two awards).

This from all sides a successful picture is thoroughly imbued with respect for the people working in the American space program, their families, and in general for the country. And it turns out that you can inspire a sense of pride and still make a profit from the training camp.

Operation Sledgehammer

A book has also been written about the Salyut-7 rescue operation, which is called Notes from a Dead Station. Its author is Viktor Savinykh, flight engineer of the Soyuz T-13 spacecraft, a direct participant in the events.

But the creators of the Salyut-7 film did not take the Savins as co-authors of the script, or even as consultants. Obviously, the astronaut should not interfere with the high flight of their imagination.

I'm not hinting at anything, but the director's previous work Klima Shipenko was called “How to raise a million. Confession . It is a sin, during the film this name constantly entered my head.

The filmmakers lacked what the creators of Apollo 13 had: respect for the heroes and their country. Because you can't do that with those you respect.

Remember the legendary cosmonaut Lev Andropov from Armageddon? In "Salute-7" his spirit is invisibly present. Well, how else to explain the fact that blows with a sledgehammer become the key moment in the repair of the station and the rescue of astronauts?

Viktor Savinykh, very restrained in an interview, said that he strongly objected to this episode. But the authors did not want to change anything.

A miracle of Soviet design thought, the Salyut-7 space station, which in the mid-eighties had no analogues in the world, is being repaired with a sledgehammer. Pride for the country and the astronauts? Not? Weird.

The only thing missing was a bear with a balalaika

Then, perhaps, patriotism will be strengthened by the astronaut, who relishly lights up a cigarette at the emergency station with the help of an open fire of a lighter? Well, where there is smoke, there is booze: the heroes of space are happy to use the stored vodka "for sugrevu".

A bear with a balalaika is expected all the time: he looked like the missing link in this chain. The bear never showed up. But a cockroach appeared, with which the astronauts became friends.

Of course, experiments on insects are carried out on space stations, but this one was clearly not a laboratory one. Apparently, he just snuck aboard the ship before launch.

Tightness, sterility - there are no such things in the realities of this film.

Cigarettes, booze, a repair sledgehammer and cockroaches on a spaceship will surely appeal to American audiences.

But it’s scary to even imagine what the Americans would do to director Ron Howard if astronauts in Apollo 13 fired a Colt, barbecued in the cockpit and befriend a skunk that accidentally fell into a ship flying to the moon.

Space as anarchy

Do you think this is all limited to? If. Here is the hysterical wife of an astronaut, claiming that he traded his family for space. In fact, people spend years preparing to enter the cosmonaut corps, then they wait for the flight for years and sometimes do not wait. The spouse, it seems, should have known that for her husband this is the work of his whole life. But filmmakers have no time to think about such trifles.

"Salyut-7" went through all the notable characters. Cosmonaut Svetlana, after welding in space, foolishly steams a spacesuit for herself, and she has to be urgently saved from death. You understand, "a woman in space - to trouble", as the scriptwriters tell us.

Cosmonaut Vladimir Fedorov saves Svetlana, but visions visit him. On Earth, he reports that he saw angels, and he is logically excluded from the cosmonaut corps.

The two heroes flying to save the Salyut-7 station are friends, but they fight. While drinking, the commander declares to the flight engineer: “You're not an astronaut at all! Engineer in a spacesuit! Interestingly, the authors were told something about the compatibility in the crews?

Ship commander in execution Vladimir Vdovichenkov - a real anarchist. He ignores commands from Earth, acts at his own discretion and, it seems, has never heard of discipline. And what can an aviation colonel know about military discipline?

The engineer played Pavel Derevyankoseems more adequate, but only for the time being. At some point, he imagines that the Americans have flown in, and in hysterics he tries to open the hatch into open space and, when the commander interferes with him, hits his comrade in the head with a fire extinguisher. High relationship!

And one more thing: thanks to the Salyut-7 movie, we learned that spacewalk is not a technologically complex operation that takes time to prepare. Soviet cosmonauts go there as if to the toilet. We were not shown this, but perhaps they also smoke there.

Why Valery Ryumin won't become Gene Krantz

Let's go back to Apollo 13. The film features a character named Gene Krantz, played by Ed Harris … Gene Krantz is a real person, NASA's flight director. According to the results of one poll, the Americans put him in second place among space heroes, both fictional and real. Such a high assessment was given for the fact that the clear, calm actions of Krantz and his team, who promptly prompted the astronauts the necessary operations, made it possible to save the Apollo 13 crew. This confident and knowledgeable leader was played by Ed Harris, who was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

In the film "Salyut-7" there is also a flight director, whose prototype was Valery Ryumin, pilot-cosmonaut, twice Hero of the Soviet Union. But he will not become our Gene Krantz after the film, and this is not the actor's fault. Alexandra Samoilenko.

The scriptwriters turned the flight director not into a professional, but into a reflective whiner who does not understand why he sends people into orbit, constantly gets lost, panics, and does not know what to do. And at a key moment, the flight director smashes glass with a chair and also begins to knock with a sledgehammer - on the ground model of the station.

The flight director's team matches him: people run, throw up their hands, lament, but they cannot give a single sensible advice to astronauts in orbit. But in reality, the rescue of Salyut-7, like the rescue of Apollo-13, would have been impossible without the labor of dozens and hundreds of specialists on Earth who stubbornly searched for ways to resolve emergency situations at the station. Here are all of them, ordinary heroes of Soviet space, the authors of the picture multiplied by zero.

All this is confession …

I don't even want to talk about Soviet generals and KGB officers, who obviously personify power: they passionately express their desire to shoot down the station so that the Americans do not get it. And the death of the crew does not stop them in this desire.

Such is the film about the feat of Soviet cosmonauts as seen by modern cinema masters. A real space "Penal Battalion", in which cosmonauts risk their lives "for a piece of iron," as the flight director says about it, and only because the Soviet authorities are terribly afraid of their secrets falling into the hands of the Americans.

Experience the difference between Apollo 13 and Salyut 7. In one case - a movie about a feat, and in the second - "confession @".

Related article: Save « Firework- 7 . The true story of the feat of Soviet cosmonauts

Video: Interview with Viktor Petrovich Savinykh - pilot-cosmonaut, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, President of the Moscow State University of Geodesy and Cartography.