Audience Member
In short: Inside view in lifes of average Russian citizens and a highschool classroom. Plus an adventurous journey of a teacher and his class through unfriendly nature
I saw this film at the Leiden film festival 2013 (LIFF). Nice inside view in everyday's life of average Russian citizens, and an average highschool classroom. Not sure how "average" it all is, since we have no means for comparison. It is a depressing view, but the interwoven humor softens it all and turns this movie into a digestible package.
The tone is set in the opening scene in a train, where our main character tries to mislead a ticket inspector team by gesturing that he is mute/deaf. Initially they believe him and let him alone, but a few moments later his reflex when his mobile phone rings, exposes him. The remainder of the movie is full of such "small" events.
Do not expect a story with a prologue, a happy end, and the main story in between. The first half is about normal people, a typical cross section of Russian citizens, and how they pass their days. We see neighbors intruding in other people's lives, to an extent we cannot imagine in our Western world where our home is our castle.
The second half is a field trip undertaken by our main character, the geography teacher who was never trained for such a position but he needed the money. He is accompanied by part of his class, who never use his real name but consistently call him "geographer". The field trip actually came forth from a lost card game with one of the students. His prize would have been a "smooth" class for the rest of the semester. It turns out to be an adventurous struggle with nature, combined with the mixed successes he has in dealing with the variety of adolescents in his company.
All in all, though defying all standard rules of storytelling, the net result is very watchable, partly thanks to the humor embedded in the scenario, partly thanks to the variety of participating characters. More people felt this way: this film ranked 3rd for the audience award with average score 4.41 (out of 5).
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/27/23
Full Review
Audience Member
This latest Russian comedy directed by Alexander Veledinsky, who was a co-writer of the screenplay with Rauf Kubayev and Valeri Todorovski is based on the novel The Geographer Drank His Globe Away. It is hard to get a wonderful movie out of a wonderful book, but the team simply did it! Outstanding actor Konstantin Khabensky plays Victor Sergeyevich Sluzhkin: fired biologist, disappointing husband, forgetful father, alcoholic, and brand-new geography teacher to a bunch of year 10 kids (born in 1997) who simply do not care about anything!
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The story introduces us to Russian life of ordinary people through very solid dramatic performances, typical humour, anecdotes and extraordinary cinematography. Newly employed geographer has to come back every day home to his eternally grouchy and inexplicably gorgeous wife Nadya (Elena Lyadova)... until she gets interested in his eternally jovial and romantically successful best friend Budkin (Aleksandr Robak)! They all become a part of a peculiar love triangle, set against the bleakly beautiful small-town Russian winter, where the days are short and nights are cold and long. Our hero suddenly gets lost in a haze of hard vodka, desperate love for a nymphet-like student (Anfisa Chernykh) and the stress of educating teenagers. But, the Geographer, as the students immediately dub Sluzhkin, attempts to escape from the gruelling, dull, stultifying reality of Russia's provincial life in a rafting tour to the Urals, accompanied by wild, adventure-seeking adolescents. Facing numerous grim surprises of the nature, Geographer is poised to find himself and his own truth.
I am blessed that I can understand most of the Slavic languages, because, at the moment, I could not find any good English subtitles for this movie. Some of the festivals around the world had their own substandard translations but they were doing injustice to the witty dialogue which was almost a trademark of this film. If you understand Russian, you love movies with every scene photographed beautifully - regardless if the shots were inside the two rooms of Victor's apartment or in the wilderness, want to see excellent Russian actors and to enjoy perfectly adapted literary masterpiece, please, make every effort to see it in the near future. It is one of the strongest films from the Russian Resurrection Film Festival.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/18/23
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