When the jury of the "Kinotaur" under the leadership of Boris Khlebnikov called the best film Yakut "scarecrow", this news was accepted inspired. The work of Dmitry Davydov outside the festival context looks not so sensational, but the reasons for the babe are clear: the average Russian film, shown in the "Kinotavra", does not have a feeling of reality, and "scarecrow" is not quite perfect, but alive. A film about Zadarka from the Yakut village, for which the supernatural talent was both a gift, and a curse, talking about modernity, but mats her with archaica, which in this picture seems to be the usual part of the landscape.
It is interesting to compare two festival hits of the Russian production, published in 2020, "Bagago" and Kitoboy Philippe Yuryeva: At the "Kinotava", the first received the Grand Prix, a prize for the best female role and a premium of the Guild of Kinovydov and film critics; The second is for the director, for the best male role and the diploma of the Guild of Kinovadov and film critics. For a person from Western Russia, the other picture is the testimony of a different, non-private world, but if Kitoboy, shot on Chukotka by the Moscow Group, sets out an exotic story from the life of a few peoples on the glossy Sundays Esperanto, then "scarecrow" is told gross, but in his own words. Including literally - in the Yakut language, in which individual Russian expressions are engaged in the village life, the signs of Russian life are engaged in the village life: monetary signs, such as tricolors or police uniforms.
This persistent presence of the distant world, in everything alien to the local, reminds that the position of things in these parts has not changed too much since Vladimir Korolenko (third-party, but the sensitive look of the reference writer considered the mystical aspects of the colonial Yakut life in "Makara's dream" and other Siberian stories) . In this place there is no sensation of variability; In any case, the main heroine in the logic of the linear time is not included (Valentina Romanova-Chyskyyray). She sends rituals to the inhabitants of the village - heals anything, from injuries to infertility, but when her Vedovo skills are not needed, they despise her fellow villagers and bypass. The earthly existence of frightenment takes place in a half-conscious state of a bottle of vodka, and outside of her mystical spiritual life, the outside world almost ceased to interest her - in the prehistory of the film the tragedy appears, after which the heroine left attempts to normal.
It is characteristic that Dmitry Davydov, being himself from the Yakutsk village, does not experience the need to "make beautifully": no majestic taiga and mighty rivers in the frame, no journal ethnography, only fences, beggar interiors of houses and a statement of attendant buildings. The reality "frightening" - gray-whitening, faded, which corresponds to the position of his heroine. She lives on the border of the worlds, and the lower world of spirits seemed to be seeping into the middle of the world of people, depriving his paints, warmth and humanity. In particular, this applies to their own dwelling of frightened - a half-walled, seven-party, in everything uncertain. So, it seems, it should look like a "subtle place", where different levels of reality come into contact.
In addition, the poor digital aesthetics is simply to face this inexpensive film whose budget was 1.5 million rubles and did not include any government financing. On the map of the modern cinema of the Russian Federation, Yakut cinema is the only genuinely independent, present indie. This reduction here can be decrypted both independent, and as indigenous; The second word is an important term in modern social sciences, it is also used in the cinema for indigenous cinema. But the term denotes not just films formally belonging to one of the few peoples on the list, but also a special type of sensuality. What in South America, that in Siberia Indigenous Cinema is always a minority practice, and therefore its aesthetics are usually straight and devoid of formal sophistication. The task of the director of such a cinema is not to decorate the reality, but to see it, fixing life and at the same time trying to distinguish between the invisible reality of the folklore, culture, history.
At the same time, the "scarecrow" is not outside international traditions, and the receptions of the director-Sinefil Davydov can be found precedents, and images - sources of influence. Reviewers often recalled Balabanov, and mostly it was because he was engaged in the Yakut theme, finding something close in the northern character. But the fact that a friend is frightened by the Kochegar, it seems after all the non-random, and their total loneliness is bringing it closer with Balaban heroes. Like Balabanova, the genuine plot of the film is the nude life of the hero in the hostile space, divided on his and strangers, where you can not always believe in the first.
But in this space, there is still a place for faith and the possibility of a miracle, and it is already reminded of European religious cinema. "Scarecrow" something like "The Word" of Draier, although instead of a direct, uncompromising Protestant faith of the Danchanin in Davydov an ambivalent, not fully clarified to the wonderful attitude. Actually, in "Word" it was the evidence of a miracle: it happened right in the frame, and the camera as if certified his authenticity. But the rituals of frightened should occur without outsiders, and the viewer also concerns this: at the very beginning of each of the Snowball sessions, a mounting gluing takes place. We are not so much the story about the wiping or rustic crazy, how much a picture of a reality is a reliability of which everyone can determine for itself.
The text first published in the room 11/12 "Cinema Art" in 2020 under the heading "Subtle place"