"28 Panfilov" as 300 Spartans
The movie saga about the most legendary and, perhaps, the most highlighted exploit of the Great Patriotic War - “28 Panfilov” - was launched yesterday in cinemas in Russia and several CIS countries. Even before the release of the picture among the people and the authorities, they were quick to say about them: these are our 300 Spartans. The authors of the realized project add: “Seven Samurai”, and “Magnificent Seven”. Others attacked the creators of the full-length tape with indignation: they filmed a myth, a pacifier. "NVO" testifies: the film, with all its contradictions, looks at one go, penetrates. But it’s noticeable that the work of cinematographers "sags"But was there a feat?
The script of this film was ready in 2009 year, and the St. Petersburg filmmaker Andrei Shalopa who wrote it was aimed at coinciding with the film for the 70 anniversary of the Battle of Moscow. However, he faced a complete rejection of the project in all instances up to the presidential administration, where he also sent a corresponding letter. Nobody even promised money for the production of the tape (for scumbags - “Bastards” - please, for “Stalingrad”, glorifying mostly the “inner world” of the fascists, as much as you like, and for “any Panfilovites” - not doing it, guys). But he did not lower his hands. And together with an associate friend, young director Kim Druzhinin (on the day of the premiere of the film he turned 32 of the year), they fought for several years for the work to fully take place and be shown to a wide audience.
The co-authors of the picture came up with a “wild idea” to launch a “cap in a circle” over the Internet (in cinematic slang, this is called a crowdfunding coffering word). On pure enthusiasm, a one and a half minute teaser video was shot (in Russian - advertising was attracted) and placed it on the network resources of their friends. In a short time, 35 086 responded to a variety of “imbued with ideas” people (each of them is mentioned in the credits at the end of the viewing!), Who “threw” 34 million 746 thousand 62 rubles into this “cap”. “It was a real miracle,” said Andrei Shalopa at the Panfilovtsev show for journalists. “Such trust of thousands of people was incredibly touching, but at the same time we felt an unprecedented responsibility.”
After that, the Ministry of Culture "woke up". He added the necessary amount, and "28 Panfilov" lay down for anti-tank guns and took a bunch of grenades in their hands. I threw a few funds and Kazakhstan: in the 1941 year, the 316-I division was formed, led by Major General Ivan Panfilov. Money “from the Net” made up the fifth part of the film’s budget (the absolute record for Russia), and it is no longer known as popular.
How did this “unprecedented responsibility” of Chaliop and Druzhinin reflect in a concrete embodiment? After all, the creators could not but take into account the fact that during the time when work on the film was already in full swing - in the summer of 2015 - the State Archive of the Russian Federation seemed to be against the apparently "patriotic" project. Allegedly under the guise of upholding historical truths and “in connection with the numerous appeals of citizens, institutions and organizations” (the style is exactly Soviet, which was resorted to when one had to “choke” someone on the instructions of the party, whether it be some kind of “enemy of the people” or “dissident dissent” ) The Office posted on its official website a "report-report of the Chief Military Prosecutor N. Afanasyev" On 28 Panfilovites "dated May 10, 1948 as a result of an investigation by the Main Military Prosecutor's Office, which is stored in the fund of the USSR Prosecutor's Office." This document is not a sensation - it was published back in the years of the Khrushchev thaw, they waved it into Gorbachev's perestroika. On its basis, the head of the State Archive, Doctor of Historical Sciences Sergey Mironenko (now former) categorically stated that “there were no 28 Panfilov heroes - this is one of the myths planted by the state”, and the whole feat was invented in 1941 by two journalists and the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda ". Moreover, this loud statement Mironenko “did not hesitate” to make on June 22, 2015 at the World Congress of Russian Press in Moscow. A week later, this clearly, to put it mildly, incorrect, inappropriate speech was condemned by the Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky, who rightly noted that the head of the State Archives has no right to give his own assessments of historical documents, because this is perceived not as a vision of a scientist, but as a position of the state.
However, as the authors of the film “28 Panfilov” noticed at its presentation, this controversy only spurred them in a creative impulse to make a picture worthy of the glory of the soldiers who defended 75 years ago to Moscow. The journalists also asked about their attitude towards the other, where the Minister of Culture addressed a harsher known criticism of those who doubt that 28’s Panfilov’s feat was. This condition pretends to gain a foothold in the list of winged pearls "from statesmen" as the most abusive, because it is much "cooler" than "Scum!" Vladimir Zhirinovsky. And therefore we will refrain here once again to replicate this unacceptable rudeness to an official in that rank. Moreover, Medinsky voiced it in Astana after watching President Vladimir Putin and his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev watching the film (by the way, on May 2015, on the eve of 70 anniversary of Victory, a monument was opened in one of the parks of Astana with the participation of Nazarbayev Panfilov and the memorial alley 28 Panfilov). Andrei Shalopa, a screenwriter, understands Mr. Medinsky, although he does not support his rhetoric in this vein: “Personally, I think that debunking national feats of this magnitude is a crime. It is impossible not to see that the legend about the feat of 28 Panfilov did not originate from scratch, and it was in the 1941 year. Over the years, it has also become part of our national culture. Personally, I was born much later than the end of the war, in 1972, I absorbed this legend in my childhood. This is such a powerful myth that to argue against him, where the truth is, where the fiction, does not make sense. This is immoral! .. As for the rude words spoken by the Minister of Culture, I refer here to my friend Kim Druzhinin. In one of the interviews, he also did not support this rhetoric, but he noted that he often thinks with the same words when he sees how individuals try to subvert things that must be untouchable for every Russian. ”
In contrast to the State Archive in the Russian Military Historical Society (RVIO), the set of documents and evidence available to historical science does not allow 100-percent confidence to refute either the fact of the battle at the Dubosekovo junction, much less the feat of Panfilov’s soldiers. In particular, this opinion was expressed by the scientific director of the RVIO, Mikhail Myagkov.
Answering the clarifying question “NVO”, the script writer Schallop noted that “Putin and Nazarbayev after watching said: well done guys, they made a good movie!” Both presidents also noted that the feat of the division formed in Almaty and blocked the way tanks the enemy to Moscow, must forever remain in the memory of subsequent generations. By the way, in the official anthem of Moscow they never tried to replace the words “And twenty eight will live forever / Your bravest sons” ...
WHERE GENERAL PANFILOV?
But the topic of our notes is not to discuss whether “28 Panfilov’s exploit was“ or wasn’t ”, but the understanding of kinonovinka. The authors themselves are quite satisfied with their work. They believe that they have managed quite well to embody on the screen "the original idea of the production, which is radically different from what everyone has heard before." Indeed, it goes through the entire film with the leitmotif that one should not heroically die for the Motherland, as it was “accepted” earlier (“Stand dead!” - Zhukov shouts on Rokossovsky in the Ozerovskaya Battle for Moscow ”from the film epic“ Liberation ”, etc. .), and fight. Defeat the enemy, and survive yourself to continue to destroy it further. At the same time, in several colorful dialogues of the heroes in the course of the plot development this is “proved” quite convincingly.
Some critics saw this as an “over-modernization” of those events: they say, in 1941, such an installation for the defenders of Moscow was simply impossible and would have been shot for such appeals. However, Shalopa and Druzhinin were advised to read such things, for example, “works of the times of the war of Alexander Beck, in which the same thought is clearly carried out in black and white”.
Although both authors could directly refer to the example of the commander of the 316 th rifle division, Major General Ivan Vasilyevich Panfilov. “General Batya”, as the soldiers called him, said: “I don’t need you to die, you need to stay alive!” He believed that the military’s main vocation was to save the lives of soldiers in war.
It is a pity that we will not see General Panfilov in the film. Even briefly. His name will not sound even in the dialogue of the characters. Therefore, the inexperienced in the history of the battle near Moscow, the young spectator “12 +”, on which the film adaptation of the legend is mainly designed, will not fully understand why the 28 heroes are specifically Panfilov’s.
The plot of the film saga develops over three days, starting on November 14 1941. In a village near Moscow, fighters of a multinational company (specifically, it was the 4 company of the 2 battalion of the 1075 regiment of the 316 division of the Western Front 16 Army) are trained to hit Hitler tanks with grenades. To do this, they build a “tank” from the tree at hand, which they drag a colleague in a trench above the head, and he throws a bunch of grenades on the back of these Trojan sleds. Interestingly, back in Kazakhstan, when General Panfilov was only forming a division, he organized trainings for overcoming tank dreading among soldiers - running them around with tractors.
The battalion commander, Major Reshetnikov, returning from the regiment with the task received, devotes himself to the command of the commanders of his company officers: to dig in the alleged tank-dangerous areas and restrain the German offensive. The fascists should not break through to the highway along which their tanks to Moscow are within reach. To the question of one of the officers, how much time must be restrained, the battalion commented shortly: until the standby forces arrive. Which is not in sight.
The 4 th company under the command of the Belarusian captain Pavel Gundilovich is determined by the position in the area of the Dubosekovo junction, which is 7 km south-east of Volokolamsk. While the company goes there, the fighters are talking and debating about the exploits of the Spartans and seven samurai 300 (the Japanese in the Middle Ages made the film “Seven Samurai” about the last in 1954, and in Hollywood they adapted it to the famous Western “The Magnificent Seven”). In Dubosekova company, reinforced 45-mm cannon, carefully and professionally digs in, while building and false positions.
The Germans are overwhelmed by them and deliver the first blow. Thinking that he was good at grinding Russian defenses, the enemy moved tanks to their positions. The company with stubborn resistance holds back the onslaught of the thundering armada, incites the enemy’s four tracked vehicles, but in the fierce battle loses the vast majority of personnel. Including seriously injured and Captain Gundilovich, who is sent to the rear. 27 soldiers and sergeants remain in the ranks, under the command of politruk Vasily Klochkov.
From this point on (25 minutes from the beginning of the last 1 hour 49 minutes of the movie) the feat of 28 Panfilov is shown, of which 6 survived miraculously. In the ribbon finale, the camera bypasses them after leaving the trenches after the retreat of the Wehrmacht’s steel lava, and round it is led off behind their backs, letting the viewer see the 18 enemy tanks on the battlefield. The heroes are positioned against the background of these smoking trophies in about the same way as the sculptural group of the six 10-meter granite Panfilovs near Dubosekov, which is shown next. A couple of years ago, the author of these lines had a chance to visit this place, that 1,5 km from Dubosekov - the memorial is fascinating, it was felt like a snowy November 1941, the Panfilov people feel to the core.
RELIABILITY IN HEIGHT ITEMS
In the opinion of HBO, the legend of 28 in its canonical sense, in which it has been known since 1941, the authors succeeded in translating to the full. Obviously, they have achieved both spectator empathy and pride in the fact that we have such heroes. The game of actors can not but rejoice. Everyone managed to show clearly the peculiarities of his character, his individual traits, habits and voices recognizability. The film is well flavored not with bearded army bikes, but with lively “trench” speech (while it is completely devoid of phrases “in the spirit” of Medina) and healthy soldier humor. The feat was shot without pathos, every day, like the work of a plowman behind an oral. “Right now, we will show them what kind of Russians we are!” Said one of the characters to ordinary Musabek Sengirbayev, while carefully preparing to repel the attack. - “I'm kind of like a Kazakh,” he notes. - “What about the Kazakhs - are they not Russians?” That's when they will trample on Kazakhstan, we will show them what kind of Kazakhs we are! ”By internationalism, by a community of nations and nationalities, the entire on-screen piece is permeated.
The catch phrase of political director Klochkov “Russia is great, but there is nowhere to retreat — Moscow behind does not sound like a puff, without a relish (well, they say, the apogee of the film!), But even imperceptibly, and not in its canonical context - with a breast bulging, as Ozerovskiy Liberation. And, let's say, very logically in the exceptional situation of the battle shown to the viewer. You see: this “Moscow is behind us, we will not retreat!” Then they lived. This speech of Klochkov before the last “sdyuzhit, do not miss the tanks” and the speech of the battalion commander Reshetnikov, who sent the company to Dubosekov, touches to spasms in the throat. By the way, Klochkov himself, played by actor Alexei Morozov, is very similar in appearance to the original hero.
The creators of the film legend managed to achieve exact observance of historical authenticity up to buttons in the form of clothes of soldiers and officers. Here Artem Kokin, a military historian and reconstructor who heads the Leningrad-900 military history club in the northern capital, provided invaluable assistance. And, let's say, the rarest thing - the 45-mm Soviet gun and the 150-mm German howitzer - was provided free of charge from St. Petersburg collector and devotee Oleg Titberia from his museum. “And I can say,” said Andrei Shalopa, not without pride, “that a film in which you will see such a cannon firing simply does not exist. In addition to newsreels and our film.
"The Truth of Life" has contributed to the most complex technologies of combined shooting, many of whose elements have no analogues at all in the domestic, and, possibly, in foreign cinema. Much here Druzhinin and Shalopa came up with themselves and through the experts from the film industry who helped them. “In our film, the drawn objects are minimized, as is the case, for example, in the almost completely painted Stalingrad by Fyodor Bondarchuk. Almost everything in the frame is real, says Shalopa. - Layouts of tanks are made perfectly. The fact is that the crazy popularity of computer games about tanks led to the fact that people are very well versed in their modifications. Therefore, we had no margin for error in the details. We also went to the famous tank museum in Kubinka near Moscow and studied in detail the interior of the tower of German cars that attacked the 4 company, and then recreated this cabin in the pavilion ... "
The creators also make no secret that they creatively borrowed some moments from the best Soviet war films, such as “Hot Snow” and “They Fought for the Motherland”: in this, as they see it, Shaliopa and Druzhinin see the continuity of domestic cinematographs of two different eras.
MOSCOW AND DO NOT SEE
The described impression you get immediately after viewing. But "moving away", you ask a number of questions.
Reliability (legends) at the height? Oh oh! As an experienced attacker carefully wipes his fingerprints at the scene of the offense, so Druzhinin and Shalopa meticulously “cleaned” their film material from all Soviet. All that remained of him was that the rank of Klochkov was a political instructor. Even the portrait of the Supreme Commander - Stalin - never flashed at least half a frame. Co-authors, not without astonishment, were asked about this “strangeness”. The explanation was: the film is de-modern, and the new generation “12 +”, to which modern Russia is much closer, will not accept the concept “Soviet Union”. This approach seems rather awkward. Because, firstly, in the category “12 +” and a huge number of those who “were born in the Soviet Union” are direct descendants and grandchildren of veterans and remember well “everything Soviet”; secondly, those born after 1991 enjoyed watching “pre-New Russian” films on the topic of war, and the partial presence of communists and Soviet rhetoric, for example, in the movie “Only Old Men” Go To Battle, does not cause them any rejection.
In Panfilov's 2016, only a few seconds on 10 – 15 showed a woman who gave something to a soldier who had run up to her who was running to fight. During the quartering of the battalion in the village, not one of the fighters, even the most "Kazanivist" (like Vasily Shukshin's hero in "They Fought for the Motherland") did not even start even the smallest cupids. The authors of the film explain the absence of a love line by its “irrelevance” in a purely masculine, much less a heroic film saga. It is quite possible that the recent Bondarchuk “Stalingrad” “brought” them to such an extreme, where for 2 hours 10 minutes the city’s defenders on the Volga fought not for him, but “for the virgin Katya”, which they accidentally turned up in a house besieged by the Germans, but then unknown from whom she gave birth. And it would be okay. But even in the numerous conversations that the soldiers lead, not one of them even casually mentioned mother, wife, beloved girl ... and children (the viewer will not see even a single child; while, say, passing ”episode with children in the film“ Only “old men” go into battle subtly emphasized the nobility of the heroic Soviet aces). All this is rather improbable, pretentious, "inhuman" for the legendary Panfilovites! Kohl, 28, is compared to 300 by the Spartans, this is what comes to mind. In the American film 1962 of the Year “300 Spartans,” not even a single love line did not in the least prevent “belittle” the feat of the soldiers of Tsar Leonid, but on the contrary - only further magnified the military action of the swordtails who had become famous for centuries and defended their native hearths.
Many critics were quick to pay compliments to the creators of Panfilov, because they did not take the “Hollywood Path” and didn’t make the superheroes of the capital of 28 the defenders of the capital. This is hardly true. In the final of the film, one of the six soldiers who survived for a minute or two of screen time, like a vinaigrette, crushed the Germans, who were already ready to celebrate their victory over the trenches of the defeated company. And none of the enemies even tried to throw a grenade at the “daring” Russian. Pure water action! So you see in this guise of Arnold Schwarzenegger from the "Commandos" or Sylvester Stallone from the "Rambo". And after that, the next tank armada, already ready to rush through the trenches that had not been taken, frightened, retreats at the same time. And in this, too, one can see the influence of Hollywood - its fantastic “kin” about hordes of giant insects or star invaders.
The Hitlerites in the film are not only impersonal, but even none of them can see their faces: tankers in the turret are shown from the back, and all the infantrymen go on the attack in “anti-frost” headscarves on their faces, like those masked terrorists. This, too, was the authors' idea - to make enemies a gray mass, sort of a locust (perhaps the creators of the film “28 Panfilov” borrowed this technique from the authors of the “Brest Fortress”, shot six years earlier).
These "annoying little things" have merged into the biggest drawback of the film. He sees that if you don’t know the essence of the events of mid-November 1941, it is difficult, if not impossible, to understand why a handful of heroes needed to “die to death, but not die”. This “logical series” in film history is simply not registered, deliberately rejected by the creators.
And in this sense, "28 Panfilov" can be put on a par with the landmark movies of zero - "9 company" ("Unknown army of an unknown country in an unknown war") and "Stalingrad" ("Stalingrad" without Stalingrad "); in brackets - the headlines of reviews of these films in the "NVO". In the same series, alas, the film 2013 of the year “Gagarin. The first in space ", which fell through in the box office. The main reason, as rightly noted by one of the film critics, was as follows: “Gagarin’s flight was a feat not only and not so much of cosmonaut Gagarin Y.A., but of the whole of our country, then called the USSR. The countries immediately after winning a terrible war who accepted the space challenge and won the space race. And instead of the hero of the country, we were shown a superhero without a country. This is a film about the lone superman, which the real Yuri Alekseevich, thank God, was not. The film does not show the people who created Gagarin and the spaceship Vostok. There is no visible power, which gave the young Gagarin the steering wheel of the aircraft and the opportunity to fulfill his dream (and the dream of many) designer Korolev. You can’t get rid of the impression that Korolev and Gagarin wanted it, and the latter jumped to the stars ... ”
Similarly, with the new domestic "blockbuster". Despite all the good-quality patriotic-internationalist rhetoric that sounds in film history, we don’t see the Moscow they defended for 28 Panfilov. We are often shown a map of the fighting, but the eye does not catch the name of “my dear capital” on it. Not felt the breath of a great country - the "motherland", which called Panfilov to the feat for the salvation of the Fatherland. If you want, this approach to the display of the “holy for every Russian legend” authors level the very understanding of World War II!
And completely impersonal Germans only reinforce this feeling. The viewer does not have an impressive vision that the 15 – 16 of November (and the next few days) in the Moscow battle was truly a climax. And the legend of 28 simply could not be born on any other day, except November 16! This is precisely the case that if there were no Panfilovs, they would have to be invented - that is, as they say, soared in that frosty air. And this was probably felt by everyone then - from an undetermined soldier and a militiaman in a trench to the front commander of the army general Zhukov, and maybe to Stalin.
After all, it is precisely these days that the strength of the German hordes, based on their multiple superiority, training and combat experience of soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht, was surpassed by the resistance of the Red Army soldiers, coupled with the emergency measures of the Soviet government and the leadership of its armed forces to mobilize resources to resist the enemy. Let us remember: after all, it was about one of these days — perhaps, it was 16 of November — Marshal Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov wrote years later: “I don’t remember exactly what number — it was soon after the Germans’ tactical breakthrough on the Kalinin Front’s 30 Army and right wing of the army of K.K. Rokossovskogo - I.V. Stalin asked:
- Are you sure that we will keep Moscow? I ask you about it with pain in my soul. Speak honestly like a communist.
- Moscow will certainly keep ...
“It's not bad that you have such confidence ...”
And in the same context: “The battles that took place on November 16 – 18 were very hard for us. The enemy, disregarding the losses, was climbing through, trying to break through to Moscow with his tank wedges at any cost.
But the deeply echeloned artillery and anti-tank defense and the well-organized interaction of all branches of the military did not allow the enemy to break through the battle formations of the 16 Army. ”
And it was precisely in these dramatic days that there was a conflict between Lieutenant-General Rokossovsky, Commander-16, and Zhukov. Konstantin Konstantinovich, partly giving up the slack, on the 19 of the 10th asked Zhukov to withdraw the army units across the Istra River. The front commander told him a definitive "no." According to the memoirs of Rokossovsky himself, Zhukov ordered him to "stand to the death, not leaving a single step." By this time - the very next day after the legendary feat of Panfilov - 216-I rifle was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, renamed 8-th Guards Division a day later, and on the same day General Panfilov fell to the death of a hero. Already 23 division was given his name in November: the only case in the entire history of the war and the second in the history of the Red Army was the 25-I Chapayev Division (completely killed in July 1942 in Sevastopol).
It seems that this situation could have been reflected in some bright strokes in the film “28 Panfilov” (albeit without the Soviet entourage, which is so not accepted by the authors) - say, in the “preamble” to it. Then it would be clear why a handful of fighters armed with just one anti-tank gun and small-caliber gun (they pierced the armor only from the side) and weak gangs against tanks firmly opposed the enemy and persevered. But we, as noted above, did not even see General Panfilov on the screen ...
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