Dear Hans, best Pyotr
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Dear Hans, best Pyotr |
| Original title | Mily Chans, dorogoi Pjotr (Милый Ханс, дорогой Пётр) |
| Country of production | Russia , Germany , Great Britain |
| original language | German , Russian |
| Publishing year | 2015 |
| length | 120 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Alexander Mindadze |
| script | Alexander Mindadze |
| production | Alexander Mindadse, Lisa Antonowa, Leonid Blawatnik, Heino Deckert, Frank Evers, Helge Neubronner, Valeri Charkow |
| music | Valery Siwer |
| camera | Oleg Mutu |
| occupation | |
| |
Dear Hans, best Pjotr ( Russian Милый Ханс, дорогой Пётр ) is a Russian-German-British fictional film by the director and screenwriter Alexander Mindadze from 2015. The main roles are cast by German actors.
action
The film is about a team of German engineers, three men and one woman, who in May 1941, shortly before the German invasion of the Soviet Union, were working in a Russian factory on the development of a special optical glass for the production of lenses. The background is an agreement negotiated as part of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact , according to which Germany provides Russia with technological knowledge in exchange for raw materials.
The longed-for success does not materialize at first; there is only scrap with glass. The nervousness and tension in the German team increase, and there are outbreaks of uncontrollable violence. The image of the yellow boiling liquid glass in the furnace, with which the film is lifted, can also be interpreted as an image of the inner processes in people - a parallel that is explicitly expressed in the film.
When Hans finally freaks out, snatches the coal shovel from his Russian colleague Pyotr and ceaselessly feeds coal into the furnace, the temperature rises dangerously. There is an explosion. She claims two lives among the Russian workforce, a man and a very young girl who has just been entrusted with the task of monitoring the instruments.
The mother of this girl, whom Hans will later embrace in a long scene in silence and as if begging for forgiveness, plays an important role in the film as a mute image of pain.
The accident at the plant becomes the subject of internal investigations and Hans is frightened. On his knees, he begs Pyotr, the only surviving witness of his culpable behavior, to keep quiet - otherwise he too will face dungeon. Hans is no more proficient in the Russian language than Pyotr is in German. Nevertheless, Pyotr understands the meaning of the gesture with the fingers crossed in a grid in front of the face, only he corrects with another gesture that the threat of shooting is more likely than prison.
The accident, tragic as it is, also means a breakthrough in the production of the glass. Now it is possible to produce lenses of previously unimagined quality.
With binoculars with these "Otto lenses", Hans, who is returning to Russia as a Wehrmacht soldier on a motorcycle, will explore the familiar terrain.
The film is about war, but there are no scenes of combat.
At the end of the film, Hans undergoes a wet shave in an abandoned barber shop. It is the young Russian woman with whom he almost entered into a love affair before the outbreak of the war, who puts the knife to his neck and shaves his beard. Then the canvas turns black.
In an interview, the director denies that the end of the film remains open. Although it is no longer shown, it is obvious what the end of the story will be.
production
The shooting took place in summer 2014 in the Ukrainian city of Nikopol , a short distance from the scenes of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict that has just broken out. In addition to Russia and Germany, Great Britain also took part in production after the Ukraine fell away.
financing
After a military history advisory board came to a negative assessment of the film project, the Russian Ministry of Culture withdrew from funding the film. The ministry had seen a contribution to the 70-year victory celebration in the film. The reason for the withdrawal said that this was not the view of the war that Russian war veterans, for example, were expecting. The rejection of the film project was seen as a scandal. After the intervention of an expert council for feature films, the ministry recommended the film to the state fund “Fond Kino” for funding, which was then carried out. On the German side, the Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung and the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg participated . In addition, the German-Russian Co-Development Fund of the FFA is mentioned in the opening credits. This only existed for 18 months, from June 2011 to December 2013.
Festival participation
The film was shown in a special program at the Moscow International Film Festival in June 2015 . The film premiered in Germany on October 7, 2015 at the Hamburg Film Festival. The film was also on the program of the Russian Film Week Berlin 2015.
criticism
In Russia, the film found contradicting reception. B. the culture magazine "Seans" published two reviews: for and against.
Andrej Kartaschow describes the subject of the film as "potentially interesting" and praises the excellent plot, but criticizes the cinematic implementation, which only makes the events obscure to understand. The circumstances are not presented in a concrete way - as if the director intended to translate everything into an “extra-historical abstraction”.
Olga Kasyanova does not see Mindadze's film as patriotic, but unusually original and powerful anti-war cinema, difficult in form, but extremely necessary because it tells the well-known humanist truth in a new way: there are no bad nations, only the black wave of history Inevitability that devours every single person.
In a later review in the same place, Marija Kuwschinowa named the film the most underrated film of the year. The reviewer points out the meaning of the leitmotiv German word “glass” in Russian: it means “eye” (глаз) or “voice” (глас).
On film.ru, Yevgeny Uchow emphasizes the importance of the spoken word, speech, in film. More important than a straight narrative thread is the atmosphere in which the coming apocalypse can be felt. Uchow calls the film not only multi-layered, but universal cinema. The lenses sought by the protagonists are precisely the magnifying glass through which we looked at our distant or near past.
Awards
- 2015 Blow-up Chicago International Arthouse Film Fest. Best film, best male actor (Diehl), first prize for camera work (Mutu)
- 2016 Russian Film Award Nika . Best feature film, plus another award for best screenplay.
- 2016 Main Prize "White Elephant" of the Russian Film Critics Guild
- 2016 “Golden Eagle” of the Russian National Academy of Cinematography and Film Studies for the best screenplay
Web links
- Dear Hans, best Pyotr in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Dear Hans, best Pjotr at filmportal.de
- The film on the Russian cinema website "kinopoisk"
Individual evidence
- ↑ [1] on Russia beyond the headlines, accessed on February 26, 2017.
- ↑ [2] Interview (Russian), accessed on March 10, 2017.
- ↑ [3] (Russian), accessed on March 10, 2017
- ↑ [4] Review on seance.ru (Russian), accessed on March 10, 2017
- ↑ [5] Review on seance.ru (Russian), accessed on March 10, 2017
- ↑ [6] Review on film.ru (Russian), accessed on March 10, 2017