Original subtitles

MOSFILM

THE THIRD CREATIVE ASSOCIATION

LARISA

Film director Larisa Shepitko died

at the 187-kilometer mark of the Leningrad Highway in a car accident.

She died together with her colleagues

Volodya Chukhnov, the cameraman,

Yuri Fomenko, the production designer,

and three other members of her crew.

They had just started shooting a film based on a story by Valentin Rasputin,

Farewell to Matyora.

Larisa had dreamed about this work.

She had spent her entire life preparing for it.

And this movie would have been the high point of her creative career.

Larisa Efimovna chose me to play the role of Darya

in her last film Matyora.

Meeting her was a miracle for me.

And I am happy that I had a chance to be close to this miracle.

Action!

Darya, what is it?

Pull closer.

What will it be?

Where will I go?

- Why? - Close your eyes.

Psych yourself up.

- The dolly! - Panorama.

- The dolly. - Panorama. Panorama.

- Stop! - Action!

Look at the candle.

The feeling of guilt without being guilty is also hard to bear.

That is why it is so hard for me to talk about Larisa.

The work on my novel Farewell to Matyora

was, as you know, the last project for Larisa and her colleagues.

I remember Larisa calling me for the first time

during one of my visits to Moscow

and saying cautiously that she wanted to film Matyora.

I went to our meeting with two objectives in mind.

First, I wanted to see the director, Larisa Shepitko,

who had literally astonished me with her film The Ascent.

And second, I wanted to try and prevent Matyora from being filmed.

I wanted to preserve Matyora in its original genre, as a piece of prose.

But Larisa managed to persuade me very quickly.

She started describing what she imagined the future film to be like.

And she was so passionate about it, so interested in it,

that I completely forgot my intention not to let go of Matyora.

Her zeal, passion and devotion

already, at the start of film production,

was what struck me then.

I was persuaded by our spiritual kinship, which I no longer doubted.

I was persuaded by a creative rather than a formal interpretation of the novel.

This is how we came to an understanding,

which led to the start of the film's production.

This is how the spirit of the flooded Matyora was awakened,

if we speak about it in this mystical language.

The spirit of Matyora — without knowing why

or for what purpose it had been disturbed —

struck back at us and took this great, terrible toll on us.

Mitya, antiaircraft guns!

Mitya.

Mitya, what's the matter?

Mitya!

Mitya!

Wings is a film about people scarred by the war,

about wounds forever burned into memory...

about the intolerableness of living without wings.

I want to make a declaration of love.

Love is the only thing that never dies.

There is no death.

I may have realized for the first time...

that, when a person is talented... they are immortal.

I will be proud for the rest of my life that I worked with Larisa Shepitko.

Remember, Nadezhda Stepanovna, how they danced in The Great Waltz?

I give you my word that everything,

every single shot in my films,

was created from my perspective as a woman.

I was never in the business of copying.

I never tried to take male directors as a model,

because I know only too well that any attempt

by my female friends, my colleagues — both junior and senior —

to imitate male filmmakers makes no sense

because it's all derivative.

But I do differentiate between films made by women and those made by men,

because there is no such thing as a female cinema or a male cinema.

There is the sentimental and the serious.

Well, male directors are also known to produce ladylike, sentimental films.

A woman, while being an equal half of what is our human nature,

is able to share amazing things with the world.

Not a single man is able to grasp certain phenomena

in the psyche of human beings on such a deep, intuitive level as a woman.

Hey, look!

Following Wings,

Larisa made a film based on Gennady Shpalikov's script You and Me.

Katya!

In this film, Larisa came close to the central theme of her work —

the unsparing judgment of oneself

and the great responsibility each of us has for the things we've done in life.

When I was 16, we had a family meeting.

I was finishing school then.

It turned out that Larisa knew how to write a little,

compose verses,

to paint, to sing —

a little bit of everything.

But none of these abilities were developed enough in me

to get the nerve to apply to, say,

an arts institute or a literature institute.

But all those little skills, as one person told me,

could be very useful in one specific profession.

I asked, "What profession?" And he said, "Film director."

I was the typical unformed child.

Apparently, Alexander Dovzhenko, our professor,

decided to use me to track the development of the human species.

Unfortunately, my time under his guidance was short-lived.

He died a year and a half later.

He was the greatest humanist we were lucky to meet.

I think such people lived in the Renaissance.

But above all else, he was an absolute maximalist.

You know that to live all your 60 years staying true to your conscience,

without betraying any of your moral principles,

always telling the truth to people's faces, was very hard.

Of course, hypocrisy, compromise,

a wheeler-dealer mentality or crude workmanship were out of the question.

I don't know if I could dare meet his glance now...

HEAT

...because when I grew up to be an independent, adult person,

I realized how hard it is to follow these principles.

Proclaiming them is one thing. Living them every day is quite another.

Because every day, every second of our life prompts us

to fulfill our everyday needs by making some kind of compromise,

maneuvering, keeping silent...

WINGS

...knuckling under just for now.

One might say, well, we must be flexible.

That's what life demands from us. Everybody does it after all.

But it turns out that while everyday life seems to let us cheat for five seconds...

YOU AND ME

...and then make up for it,

art punishes us for such things in the most cruel and irreversible way.

You can't make a film today just for the money.

They say to themselves, "I'll make a second-rate film.

I'll bend here. I'll say something they want to hear.

I'll try to please these people. I will let it slide.

I'll tell a half-truth. I won't speak up.

THE ASCENT

But, in the next film, I'll make up for it.

I'll say anything and everything I want

as a creative person, as an artist, as a citizen."

It's a lie. It's impossible.

It's pointless to deceive yourself with this illusion.

Once you have stumbled,

you will not find the same right road again.

You'll forget how to get there.

Because, as it turned out, you can never step into the same river twice.

Larisa was born just before the war

and, together with her family, went through all the hardships of that time —

bombings, hunger, hard labor.

You can't forget such an experience.

It burns you and stays with you forever.

I think it was at that time

that the invisible seeds of a future film were planted and, many years later,

grew to be the greatest achievement of Larisa Shepitko as a director —

the film The Ascent.

If you spend your life taking care of another person,

then you have justified your existence.

It's the evidence of your spiritual life.

This blessing is not limited to the individual,

but is a gift to all people — this devotion to other people.

Some things are sacred for each of us.

There is a clear concept of good and evil,

of what is right and wrong.

There are timeless values,

like love for the motherland.

What is it?

Why are we born into this world?

What can we contribute to this world?

How will we make life better?

And ultimately, what am I capable of as a person?

What are you capable of?

This was the last shot taken by Larisa before her death.

The eternal tree.

This is a symbol of invincible character and dignity,

a symbol of faith in what we call life...

that never ends and goes on forever.

A film by

E. KLIMOV, Yu. SKHIRTLADZE A. RODIONOV, V. PETROV

A. SHNITKE, E. KLAS B. VENGEROVSKY, N. GNISYUK

L. LUPPOV V. ZHANOV, A. RUDACHENKO, G. KLIMOV

V. KHOVANSKAYA, V. BELOVA

V. PIGANOV, A. REPINA G. SOKOLOVA

These people shared their thoughts about Larisa Shepitko

Director - E. KLIMOV Writer - V. RASPUTIN

Actresses S. STANYUTA, M. BULGAKOVA

THE END