Even if you don’t understand anything about football, you probably heard about Eduard Streltsov. If not about his outstanding sporting achievements, then about the vicissitudes of fate – for sure.
The star of Perov near Moscow, a charming blond with a forelock (Alexander Petrov is 31 years old, but he quite convincingly portrays the 16-year-old Edik Streltsov) mints a “weave” with a ball on a bet – otherwise his girlfriend, a barmaid from a pub, will not get to the match. The match, of course, is amateur – the spectators husk seeds, and a cow wanders into the gate every now and then. But soon Edik Streltsov will be noticed by the Torpedo coach (“What kind of pioneer?” – “A good pioneer”) and will take him to big Moscow.
The capital will meet the new star with open arms, and Edik will reciprocate: he will dine in closed restaurants, walk girls at night, pour champagne on policemen (to the tune of the film “I’m walking around Moscow”, filmed, by the way, when Streltsov was not only imprisoned, but already and released). A piece of Edik’s golden Moscow life seems to have been borrowed from Valery Todorovsky’s Stilyagi – the same colors, the same angles, the same status Moscow locations (the latter, however, was a bug: the Museum of the Revolution was never located in the building of the Theater of the Soviet Army; Muscovites will understand that this is a cranberry, and the rest of Russia will look and rejoice – it’s beautiful).
Almost everyone will forgive Edik Streltsov, because on the field “legend number eight” looks like Apollo and also plays like a god. His portraits will grace the covers of Soviet magazines from Smena to Ogonyok. Only in a few years will Yura Gagarin overtake him in popularity.
However, with all the stellar attributes, Edik will remain Edik, a simple kid from the outskirts who loves pickles, yard concepts of honor, mother and beautiful girls. Streltsov is the only one who won’t vote to fire a teammate who abuses alcohol (and who doesn’t?). It is he who will maintain the team spirit of the football players, squeamishly ignoring the Komsomol organizers and bureaucrats. He will remember old friends and ex-girlfriends, and offer new ones honestly and immediately: “Let’s go to me?” Refusing is her problem.
Such non-Soviet behavior will annoy important comrades from the Sports Committee: if Streltsov were an ordinary player, he would simply be removed from the team. But Streltsov is the hope and support of our team at the upcoming World Cup, you can’t win without him. The scales will tilt in his favor, then against, until the Soviet Doctor Evil appears – the party rat Yuri Dmitrievich Postnikov (with the face of the most intelligent actor Alexander Yatsenko). Not only does Streltsov resonate with Postnikov’s dullness with his brightness (the last name, apparently, was chosen on purpose), Streltsov will also take his girlfriend Alla, a Komsomol member, an athlete, a beauty who doesn’t want to Bolshoy on Ulanov, but wants to go to the stadium. The date scene on the football field is not even Stilyagi, but some kind of La La Land.
The further and most interesting events in Streltsov’s biography are shown on the screen almost dotted. Literally a day before the World Cup, a football player is put under a vindictive ex, she imitates rape. The judge gives 12 years. After serving five, Streltsov is released – with a clear conscience, but with scars on his face and heart. Beloved wife Alla does not want to know her husband, and her beloved daughter thinks that he is just “Uncle Edik”. Yes, and the power has changed, at the helm is not the corn retrograde Khrushchev, but the young, progressive, not alien to sports Brezhnev. But the wind of change is blowing in the right direction: Streltsov not only takes the field, he goes out to the chanting of his name in the stands – and the first goal is scored against the Brazilian national team, in which Pele plays. A short exchange of glances between Pele and Streltsov – real guys don’t need a lot of words.
The new sports-patriotic epic looks like a natural continuation of “Legend No. 17” and “Upward Movement”. This is the most popular and demanded genre of Russian cinema today. He is loved by the people, because, as it were, “not about politics”, but about “ordinary athletes”. In fact, Streltsov, like his predecessors, has nothing to do with politics and the “ordinary person”. It is rather a fantasy on the theme of a real biography, as the authors admit. The real Streltsov was never a “boy with a heart of gold.” A sports genius without brakes, he allowed himself everything, being sincerely sure that he could get away with everything. The real Streltsov did not have a great love named Alla, although there really was a wife with that name. Their marriage was destroyed not by the villain from the Sports Committee (in the film this is a collective image), but by Streltsov himself – by drunken sprees and betrayals. Yes, and all these beautiful antics a la young D’Artagnan (which are worth trying to catch up with a high-speed train on a truck with cabbage and jumping into a car at full speed) were actually simpler and more boring.
Director Ilya Uchitel assembled a portrait of a romantic idealist from pieces of a disassembled puzzle and showed Streltsov the way we would like to see him: a knight without fear and reproach, a victim of the Khrushchev regime and the intrigues of caricature apparatchiks. The finale of “Streltsov” is a fairy tale in the spirit of “Slumdog Millionaire” by Danny Boyle. Without Bollywood dancing, but with Pele and half a dozen boys named Edik, who were named after “the same” Edik. “In our film, Streltsov gets what he really deserved, but never got,” says Teacher. Well, he’s within his rights.
The film fulfills another important mission. The authors are stubbornly trying to restore the broken connection between times and connect our present with the Soviet past. The only trouble is that, stitching together the USSR-1950 and Russia-2020, the authors use Soviet threads. Therefore, the seam is too noticeable and not very ready to take root in an organism imbued with new values. Most likely, the authors themselves understand that they have fallen into the trap of style, which they have to get out of due to the obvious distortion of realities.
There can be no place for rape in the icon painting genre. That is why the fateful event in the life of Streltsov is shown the way they want to see him now: there was no sin, no fornication – there was only envy of someone else’s talent and glory, an evil genius from the outside. This is not true. The real Streltsov destroyed himself, pushing the boundaries of what was permitted, hopelessly confusing self-discipline with self-censorship and allowing himself everything that a simple person could not even dream of. The film, which justifies the vices of the “genius”, works on the same myth that is so loved in our post-Orthodox society: forgive a good man for his sins, he is good! As a result, we have what we have: a year and a half in the colony of Kokorin and Mamaev (with all the incomparability of talents) and the fresh case of Mikhail Efremov. “Of course, he is guilty, but he is not guilty” – however, in the end, even the most ardent supporters of Efremov realized that one cannot be “guilty and innocent” at the same time. Someday, a film will also be made about Mikhail Olegovich in the icon-painting genre: a beautiful, bright genius with a heart of gold, who was imprisoned “for nothing.” And we will want to believe it again – because who needs stars with worn out gilding?