God knows why we love comparing ourselves to others so much? Anxious feeling of inferiority or, on the contrary, confidence in one’s own superiority? However, sometimes these feelings coexist perfectly. Writer Nikolai Kryshchuk compares two films about love: our “Day of Happiness” and the French “Married Life”.
Meanwhile, if we are already so drawn to this, in my opinion, there is no better material than art. And not because such a comparison is part of the author’s task (it happens, but very rarely), but because, against his will, he reveals the peculiarities of the behavior of people of such and such time, such and such locality or such and such community.
And here, by the way, as if responding to our need, and perhaps subtly feeling it, the Kultura channel launched the heading “The Beginning of a Beautiful Era” on the air. That is, it simply shows two films of the same time in a row – ours and the western one. Now we are in the 60s of the last century. Compare if interested.
Pass the tests
- How boundless is your love?
- Why are you comparing yourself to other people?
For example, our Case No. 306 and Jean-Luc Godard’s film Breathless. There are scammers here and there. Or “Day of Happiness” with Alexei Batalov and the French film “Married Life”. Subject: family drama I don’t know how many people have the leisure to watch two films in a row. But my wife and I saw the last pair last Monday.
There are many impressions indeed. Good idea. Beautiful and tragic causelessness, irrationality, unmotivated love. Jealousy and selfishness. Conjugal conversations between a deaf person and a mute person, heating up the conflict. The inability to reconcile professional vocation and family well-being. What do you think our international feuds are about, if everyone has the same problems?
Even the styles of the films are similar. Must have been inspired by Italian neorealism. Long passages and close-ups, everyday conversations, imperceptibly leading into the space of existential understatement.
But there are also differences. One of them is curious. Just in time for our conversation.
In Married Life, the characters are exclusively concerned with themselves and their relationships. They reproach each other or, on the contrary, exclaim: “I don’t blame you for anything!” And then they admit: “It’s all my fault.” And of course: love, love, love. The voice-over of the hero can also utter high-flown vulgarity, such as: “You returned to steal my best memories.” But we dismiss it as an influence of mediocre fiction, or simply as a manifestation of French sentimentality.
Read more:
- What is love?
And here is a scene from Happy Day. The heroine (Tamara Semina) asks the hero (Aleksey Batalov): “You never told me that you love me. Please, tell me.” A combination of pity, passion, insecurity, loneliness. Prayer, and quite, it would seem, not up to general reasoning. But then they follow. And you can’t say that this is a puncture of the director or screenwriter. Because it is very similar to life. For our lives. Love, with a passion that is by no means erotic, the hero answers, is a worn out word. And I would, they say, put people on trial who utter lofty words. Or something like that, I don’t remember. Maybe he even offered to kill them.
Strange, but, I repeat, very similar to our life, to our style. Love is a word, generally speaking, quiet. In addition, the beloved woman asks. What to vitiyvat something? And why so much aggression in this cute hero? And how is it given to a wonderful and not at all aggressive artist in his everyday manifestations?
Read more:
- How do we know it’s love?
But no, we do not solve our own affairs, but the affairs of all mankind at once. We cauterize ulcers, we pursue vices. We are not even up to the truth, just to assert our own rightness, not to mention – not up to love. That is, not to yourself. The inappropriate struggle with false pathos is the wrong side of the same pathos. But the hero does not feel this. Or does he still feel and suffer from it himself?
One way or another, Tamara Semina did not wait for the words of love. And she left God knows where, to look for herself. Every now and then she looked back on the platform, thought that Batalov (the doctor in the film) would still come to see her off. But at that time he was saving the wounded in some kind of fire. And the abandoned husband (surveyor) interrupted his drinking, threw his backpack behind his back and went, probably, to the taiga, to straighten out the twisted path of life. Open Final.
And the people are all nice, and pity them. But why do we so maliciously distrust ourselves, while rooting for humanity unfamiliar to us?