The film "Sign of trouble" (1986, Belarusfilm)

We want to warn you in advance: if you are going to the cinema to “relax” or “spend time”, do not go to this picture. If you are tired and in a bad mood, you better stay at home. Because you have a hard job - empathy. Willy-nilly, you will have to take on part of the suffering of the heroes and love them - Stepanida and Petrok - in their ugly everyday peasant labor, in their completely "not heroic" victory over circumstances, over the war…

It’s hard for me to read Vasil Bykov’s prose, as if you were walking barefoot on sharp stones, because Bykov’s war is blood, sweat, pain, dirt, horror and still indispensable, tireless and painful moral ascent of each hero to his own Golgotha. Watching movies filled with painful tragedy based on the writer’s works (there are already a lot of them - “Alpine Ballad”, “Obelisk”, “Third Rocket”, “Wolf Pack”) - is also not easy, even if the director is trying to slightly “lighten” the bitter bitter reality. When what is written by Bykov is translated into the language of the screen by an artist of such a scale as Larisa Shepitko (“Ascension”), the initial, soul-tearing sympathy and empathy with the protagonist goes into some other, higher moral category. And we do not dare to feel sorry for Sotnikov, going to martyrdom, because his act and he is already higher than suffering, higher than death itself.

The “sign of trouble” is also the story of the ascent. Stepanida’s ascension to his finest hour - to death, through the trials of fate, time, people. Excessive labor on a barren, abandoned slope. Collectivization, dispossession, injustice, allegedly perpetrated in the name of a just cause. And finally, war is the most important test. A chain of trials that only the strength of the human spirit can withstand…

“I believe that everything that I shot in the cinema and did in the theater was fifteen years long, dear to Bykov’s work,” the director Mikhail Ptashuk’s words sound like a declaration of love and make him pay special attention to this work. I would definitely like to tell the viewer about the two mandatory requirements that he made for himself and the whole crew. “Firstly, to love Stepanida is not just to understand, but to love, enjoy her smallest joy and be offended even for negligence in relation to her, not to mention resentment. To justify her in everything… We are not judges and certainly not prosecutors for Stepanida - we are her surviving children. And… observe the style of Bykov, the style of "modest truth." A style that, as it were, tells the viewer: “Sorry, there are moments in this story that are unpleasant to show, but it’s true. And you are already an adult - so look carefully and do not look away, do not be afraid. "

The merciless realism of individual scenes of the film will seem unnecessary to someone. But only scrupulously and in detail following the word of Bykov, with the utmost sincerity, transferring to the screen the smallest details of the existence of heroes, it was possible to achieve a “modest truth” and an amazing authenticity of what was happening. However, if not for Nina Ruslanova, this would have been a completely different picture. Because, despite the directorial accuracy in creating the atmosphere, camera work and excellent acting (I especially want to mention Gennady Garbuk, the famous theater actor, State Prize laureate, in the role of Petrok), the main success of the film is Nina Ruslanova in the role of Stepanida. They will certainly write a lot about this role in detail, because this is undoubtedly a new stage in the work of Ruslanova herself and, perhaps, the most significant and interesting female image in the cinema of recent years.

According to the novel by V. Bykov

Chichov Garik Aleksandrovich