Let’s make a reservation right away: this is a documentary film, so it is logical that it is difficult to compare it with all sorts of scattered cranberries like “Legend Number 17” or “Moving Up”. However, in today’s conditions and in documentary cinema, you can always find a place for fiction.
But here the authors worked very subtly, very competently. Not a scalpel, but tweezers, not a surgeon’s scalpel, but a careful examination of details (yes, even ulcers) under a magnifying glass.
The peculiarity of human memory, together with the peculiarities of the domestic interpretation of history in our very selectively built upbringing, all this leads to many paradoxes. The average schoolboy sincerely believes that we won the Battle of Borodino, some of the fans under 50 also sincerely believe that we put up with the Canadians in 1972.
For us, it is part of history. For the players, one of the brightest episodes of their lives. And now Mayorov, Maltsev, Mikhailov and others are sitting in the stands of the ice arena in Luzhniki, each of them has his own personal and selective memory: someone talks about the puck 34 seconds before the final siren, someone has it. 48 (yes, what, in fact, the difference?), but everyone points with their hands to the spot: right here, in this corner, there behind the goal. They replay these episodes in their heads for the rest of their lives.
But it is not by knowing the score of the series that we see the film. And just as each of the athletes has the right to his own perception and memory of him, so each of us will choose something of his own from the monologues of hockey players. And there are many layers, and this is a clear success of the filmmakers – here is a purely sports battle and ideology of those who accompanied the national team – where without them? – Party officials. We wait. And the ability to gather in a difficult moment, and laxity, when you just need to endure.
The movie is honest. It is in the scenes of the film about Kharlamov that you will be told about fraternization at the stadium, about a country that woke up differently in the morning. No, the stadium is emotionless, the stadium is full of people in suits (just not enough briefcases) – they have party discipline, they don’t jump and they don’t hug each other. So far, it is not about a fan in the stands, but about “dear sports fans”.
I repeat, the film has many layers: it is about the country, and yet it is about hockey. With his nerve, with his dramaturgy. In recent years, I have often come across the fact that the creators often call documentary films what is essentially a special report, but these, as they say in Odessa, are two big differences.
Correctly constructed composition of the ring – when the film begins with the eighth decisive match, lost by us, so that later, after passing from the first game, it ends with it.
I won’t say that I don’t have any complaints about this movie. There are little things, to separate interruptions, but this is already to my liking. And globally… The creators of the tape decided to describe the context of a hockey mega-event in a rather risky way for our viewer’s habits. If we talk, for example, about coach Bobrov or Tarasov, then the news shows appear with their game of the 40s and 50s. When it comes to the fact that the Canadians invited the Soviets to play precisely because they won the World Championship again and again , images of the Vienna World Championship of the 60s appear, where we took another title. I am not sure that our viewer, accustomed to a clear and chronological chewing of all the events presented on a silver platter, does not get bored from the overload.
However, as for me, there is no overhead.
I, according to newspaper custom, wanted to arrange “podzags” for each of the eight matches, and then I realized that the car driving on the ice surface to fill the ice was a cool move. Our memory varnishes events that can no longer be called recent. We smooth out sharp corners, call defeats victories and mercilessly erase everything that does not fit our concept. A new term, a new game, and again everything is white.
Except hockey players.
The training of the veterans, running through the entire tape, is like a repeated attempt to rewrite the fabric of his sporting life.
Another important fact is that the tapes with the voice of Ozerov, who commented on those matches, have not been preserved. They say someone stole it. I’m sure it was all cheesy degaussed. I had to take Canadian films and superimpose separate fragments with Ozerov’s voice, where there are recordings for collectors. We love to rewrite history, we can’t keep it.
The movie is worthy. The case when the aftertaste is stable and very rich.
