On May 18, Aleksey Balabanov passed away. Psychologies editor Yuri Zubtsov about the outstanding director and the failed interview.
“I have something like a sad journalistic collection from year to year. Names of people I almost interviewed — but couldn’t.
This was the case with Joseph Brodsky, who did not hand out these interviews in batches and generally lived in America. But then I worked in a very large and influential newspaper, and it seemed that the right people were found, and they were already agreeing on a possible meeting, and it seems that Iosif Aleksandrovich did not mind. And then in January 1996, I turned on the Itogi program, and Yevgeny Kiselev said that Brodsky had died.
It happened a few more times, in fact, that’s the only way it usually happens. But with Alexei Balabanov it turned out differently. At the beginning of the XNUMXs, I was already working in a thick and beautiful glossy magazine. And at the next editorial board, when the question arose of which of the outstanding compatriots to interview, I suggested Balabanov. I remember still being surprised that such an advanced magazine had not done this before. Colleagues looked at me with some regret. And they gently explained that Alexey Balabanov, well, is not suitable for such an advanced publication.
Because it does not fit well in a glossy format with its ridiculous caps and not always clean long hair, and flatly refuses to get a haircut and dress for photo shoots in clothes from the best boutiques. And they even send it, they say, in response to such proposals, to a well-known and also not at all glossy address. And in an interview, he allows himself not very politically correct statements that smack of terry nationalism. In general, such a character is contraindicated for intelligent publications.
A journalist is not a writer or a poet, and interviews are not poems or novels, they are not written on the table. So I did not interview Alexei Balabanov and now I will never do it again. However, I am not too worried about this, because since the time of that editorial board I have become stronger in one conviction. There are people who say everything with their work. And they do not need any additional words, they, these words, can rather hinder than help. Alexei Balabanov was one of them.
And I, excuse me, absolutely do not care why and why he said really strange things in his interviews — such things for which he was later accused of racism, anti-Semitism and who knows what else. Because I saw the films of Alexei Balabanov. And I know for sure that an evil, cruel, vile person could never film anything like this. And if so, then the rest is unimportant.
In the end, Lars von Trier, for example, at a press conference, also agreed to the point that he sympathizes with the Nazis. But here, after all, everything is very simple: could a Nazi film Breaking the Waves? And Knut Hamsun did meet with Hitler and responded to his death with a lofty obituary. It didn’t look good, of course. But everything important that the great writer Hamsun told mankind is not contained in this obituary, but in his books.
I’m not going to compare Balabanov with von Trier or Hamsun, I’m talking about something else. About the sincerity of real talent. An artist, poet or director can seek the location of power as much as he wants, shock the audience with speeches, building a career, be cunning with loved ones and even with himself, or simply light up with completely stupid ideas (talent, after all, does not imply the presence of a great mind). But in works all this is impossible. Otherwise, instead of works, hack-work comes out.
Balabanov had no hack. There were films that you watch without stopping, there were those that made you want to close your eyes, there were films that made you laugh, and films that made you cry. And there was no bullshit.
I am sure that Alexei Balabanov is perhaps our only director who could make a brilliant career in Hollywood. His ability to talk about the deepest things, building a XNUMX% commercial, exciting story is absolutely unique in our cinema today. But I am not able to imagine Balabanov leaving for Hollywood. In recent years, we simply did not have a more Russian director.
His films are more than a mirror of our life today. In a sense, they are our life, crystallized to painful clarity. That is why you want to laugh and cry at them, you want to close your eyes and you can’t tear yourself away. With his films, Alexey Balabanov said everything he had to say, everything for which he came here. Nothing else matters.»