To Buzykin with love. Anniversary of the ”Autumn Marathon”
Today the 40th anniversary of the "Autumn Marathon" by Georgy Danelia. The cult film based on the play by Alexander Volodin with Oleg Basilashvili, Natalia Gundareva and Marina Neyelova in the lead roles was released at the turn of the 70s and 80s and presented the audience with a colorful portrait of a man of that era, whose inner experiences are close and understandable to us now.The playwright Alexander Volodin, having written the autobiographical play The Woeful Life of a Rogue, realized that it was not quite a comedy. The story was to be filmed by a director who could reflect the depth hidden behind the comic ups and downs of life. He turned to Georgy Danelia, but he decided to give the script to young filmmakers. However, Volodin insisted that the film should be made by a mature master. Then Georgy Nikolaevich passed the script to Pavel Arsenov, but the playwright did not see the proper interest in his brainchild in it, and the story returned to Danelia.  Georgy Nikolaevich was sure that "the material was not his", that the main role, written especially for Basilashvili, was not suitable for that. Oleg Valerianovich, brought to the audition by cunning, could not change the director's opinion at a personal meeting:“A handsome, self-confident, forty-year-old man with a well-trained voice sits opposite me. Of course, he is not suitable for the modest, helpless and weak-willed Buzykin ". But after the tests, Georgy Nikolaevich was asked to give a ride to the actor.“He got out on Maroseyka near the pharmacy (his mother lived there), and we drove about fifty meters, and the car stopped at a red traffic light. I looked in the rearview mirror. I see - a stooped man, and does not know how to cross the street. It will reach the middle, then it will return to the sidewalk ", - the director will recall.  Andrey Buzykin is a talented translator and teacher. He is the same intelligentsia hanging out in the midst of the timelessness of the 70s. Buzykin is married, he has an adult daughter, a young mistress, an alcoholic neighbor, a translator friend from Denmark and a mediocre university friend. The hero loves all of them, tries to please everyone, only in captivity of his own reliability he is deeply unhappy. Running his daily "marathon", he unsuccessfully tries to catch up with his own life: a little more, a little more, and I will exhale, I will begin to live. However, the marathon turns out to be a banal race in a circle, and the film becomes a monument to human vulnerability. It's about our fragile souls. About us, who are worried, who are doubting, who are looking for ... At some point, the story captured Danelia. He considered Alexander Volodin to be the best Soviet playwright and enjoyed his texts immensely. But the enthusiasm was added precisely by the desire to dig deeper - to speculate on the topic of male nature, the midlife crisis and, of course, their own contradictions.“Volodin wrote a script about himself, and I, I confess, filmed this story about myself”, the director later admits.  Georgy Danelia for the first time allowed a man to show his weaknesses on the screen (the theme will be continued several years later in his paintings by Roman Balayan). The need to wave checkers has disappeared, saving yourself, your families and at the same time all of humanity. Now the masculine nature, polished by years of social attitudes, was able to reveal its roughness and nuances. The hero received the right to doubt, uncertainty, fatigue. Buzykin surrendered to life, hunched his back and accepted the conditions imposed on him with slavish obedience. He does not mind the boss when he turns off his good translations only because the author is no longer relevant, does not refuse a neighbor who has come to drink, does not honestly even answer himself to questions about feelings for his wife and mistress. Maybe because his own desires got lost somewhere among the concepts of "duty", "obligation", "tradition", among  “My Buzykin, Andrei Pavlovich, is one of my dearest roles. Thanks to Georgy Nikolaevich, with his help, and sometimes even under his dictatorship, I had to look at myself from the outside, look into my soul. No, we are not talking about a love triangle, but about our place in life, about the conformism inherent in every Soviet person, about the intelligent inability to say, when necessary, “no!” or, otherwise, “yes!”, about the tragedy of self-destruction, about the impossibility of changing ... ”, Oleg Basilashvili says about his role. Oleg Valerianovich did not exaggerate, the dictatorship of Danelia was on the site. An architect by training, he was astonishingly precise and attentive to detail. As a result, the picture turned out to be surprisingly harmonious in its composition, it is not for nothing that it is still being studied in Western film schools today. He was also scrupulous in working with acting characters. The director gradually and gradually reveals to us Buzykina - after all, a marathon, not a short-distance run. But the minor heroes in bright flashes sweep along the path of his following. Their images are perhaps even exaggerated, which makes the viewer feel them sharper. Tired of such a life, the protagonist's wife Nina, played by Natalia Gundareva, is clearly boring. Trying to get along with her role, the mistress Allochka, skillfully manipulating "there is nothing possible, but here everything is possible", played by Marina Neyolova. Yevgeny Leonov for the role of Vasily Ignatievich's inimitable neighbor won the Italian Journalists' Prize at the Venice Film Festival. During the small interval that was allotted to him in the picture, he managed to tell both about the mysterious USA soul, and about the philosophy of our feasts.“The toasted one drinks to the bottom”, “We sit well!”, “The wrong forest, the wrong one”- almost all of the character's remarks have gone to the people. It is surprising that Leonov was not supposed to play Buzykin's neighbor, but Allochka. Fortunately, this did not happen. Nikolai Kryuchkov brilliantly played the role of the front-line soldier Uncle Kolya, a man of the old school. Calm, confident, firm. For him, everything is extremely simple, he is devoid of Buzykin doubts. If you come out of the toilet, wash your hands, if you sleep with a woman, marry her. Such is the everyday poetry behind which a whole philosophy is hidden.  "Autumn Marathon" became a symbolic end of the outgoing era. Andrey Buzykin absorbed all the experiences that were in the air at that time. Do you remember how some fifteen years ago the metro builder Kolya ran briskly up the escalator in the film "I Walk Through Moscow"? And as now it is stooped, with a bowed head, Buzykin walks over him ... Bitter mockery of life from George Danelia. The Topic of Article: To Buzykin with love. Anniversary of the ”Autumn Marathon”. |
