Watching Balabanov is uncomfortable. Even his main audience hit, the Brother dilogy, has never been and will never become just a Friday evening leisure. In Russia, it is somehow not customary to make lists like those made by the American Film Academy. For example, here is one like this, a sample of 2003, when a hundred main protagonists and a hundred villains in the history of national cinema were ranked. The ratings crossed only on the Terminator: the cyborg from the first series was noted in the “negative” top, its reprogrammed copy from the second – in the “positive”. If this experience is nevertheless repeated with us, then our “brother” Danila Bagrov will become the point of intersection: the Russian Robin Hood, a folk hero, tragically misunderstood by the people, a murderer with the smile of a child.
Film frame
It is also uncomfortable to watch a documentary about Balabanov. The method of research, even in this, is congenial to the hero, who, like few others, was able to evoke in the viewer a feeling of awkwardness as a bystander. While watching Balabanov’s paintings, this feeling does not let go – as if he abruptly opened the door and peeped at what he should not have seen. So here, in the film by Lyubov Arkus, the founder of the Séance magazine and a close friend of the director, we see an incredibly intimate portrait of the director, a person who is generally closed (the credits even specifically state that all the shooting was carried out “with the approval of Alyosha and with his direct participation”). In addition to the distance, the chosen moment is also embarrassing – most of the recordings were made in the last two years of his life, when Balabanov, already knowing about his imminent death, shoots his last, most personal film, “I also want” (2012)