Caution of Alexander Mindadze. Trying to understand and hear

CHICAGO. Alexander Mindadze’s film “Dear Hans, Dear Peter” won three nominations at once at the Blowup Film Fest.

The new film by Alexander Mindadze, in the absence of equal competitors at the last IFF, was ignored. Prior to that, he had to overcome considerable obstacles associated with financing. Rolling his fate also does not promise to be easy. The tape, which caused an ambiguous and even painful reaction, is the third in the director’s biography of Alexander Mindadze. In tandem with Vadim Abdrashitov, he participated in the creation of 11 paintings as a screenwriter. Their last collaboration was the Magnetic Storms of 2003. Mindadze’s previous works - “Detachment” (about the crash of an airplane heading to Egypt) and “Saturday” (about the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant) - demonstrated the master’s vivid and original style in his new hypostasis.

The victory in the three main nominations at the festival of auteur cinema on the other side of the earth and the invitation to the film forum in Rotterdam are compensation for the lack of recognition. The reason is simple: the plot does not fit into the usual framework. A German engineer, seconded to a Soviet enterprise before the war, was working with his colleagues to obtain ideal quality lenses. Where perfect optics can turn out after, it becomes obvious even before the appearance of shots from another, non-peaceful life. The prophetic “You Will Return” sounds like an alarm, announcing an impending disaster. Therefore, these unsuccessful attempts at first and leading to grave consequences are perceived no less tragically than the inevitability of a future confrontation. The vulnerability of the script and the film (for its irreconcilable critics) is the reluctance to present the viewer a folded faceless mosaic in advance, to go the beaten and pre-approved way without undue reflection and an attempt to analyze. Before us are not a priori irreconcilable opponents, but ordinary people who find themselves at the edge of a military funnel because of other people’s ambitions and criminal shortsightedness. Clearly readable anti-war message was misunderstood by officials from the art. However, the picture of Mindadze about the days of the past becomes a warning to us today, a request to stay at the edge of the funnel, to see the faces.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru