Some people inherit real estate. Others are family heirlooms. Herman Jr. inherited from Herman Sr. the film language.
However, it seems that he has nothing to say in this language. And he imitates his father’s cinema — its free associativity, non-linear logic of recollection … In the center of «Soldier» is the story of a therapist participating in the distant 61st in the training program for the first Soviet cosmonauts. He has a wife in Moscow and a mistress at the cosmodrome. But this is not the main thing for the dramaturgy of the film. The main thing is the conversations of the heroes about the fate of the Russian intelligentsia, the “wolfhound age” and other pathetic things that are clearly of little interest even to the director. And you don’t believe in anything. Especially the fact that Gagarin and Titov, between a trampoline and a centrifuge, discussed the poet Baratashvili in Pasternak’s translation … Still, the cinema is insidious — it touches only if the author speaks about what is personally dear to him, and it is better if in his own language.
Directed by: Alexey German Jr. Starring: Merab Ninidze, Chulpan Khamatova.