The Edge, a new film by Alexei Uchitel, has just been released in Russia. Earlier this film was chosen as the Russian nominee for the Oscar film award.
Ten years ago another film by Uchitel was among the nominees for an Oscar. It was a psychological drama His Wife's Diary - a story of love and loneliness of the great Russian writer Ivan Bunin, who ended his life in emigration in Paris. The Oscar jury members did not appreciate the poetical bio pic. It looks like the director's new film, which is a mixture of an action movie and a melodrama, with a complicated love triangle, has more chances of winning.
The action takes place shortly after the end of the Second World War in the Siberian hinterland, among Russians and Germans with damaged personal stories and a strange transformation: the victors seem to be crawling into the skins of the defeated, and vice versa. Ignat, the main character, is the embodiment of the larger-than-life image of the Soviet victorious warrior who, in fact, proves to be shell-shocked, sick and broken, although not completely destroyed.
"The film is consistent with many Western stereotypes of Russia - the taiga, bears, moonshine, naked women in the Russian banya (sauna) a KGB agent with a gun. But the racing around on old locomotives, built in the early 20th century, is quite an unusual thing. In the film, trains made in the early 20th century build up astonishing speeds," the filmmaker says enthusiastically.
"Our locomotives are great actors. They are like living creatures. They hiss, they blow off steam, they can be gentle and they get so angry that they derail. When we were shooting the last episode a huge train derailed knocking off all our projector lamps. I think he was really tired."
The trains make the movie more spectacular, but the film is about different things. It is a psychological story with a number of interesting collisions. In an interview Alexei Uchitel noted that that this is the first time when he has made a film that can interest wide audience, both the young and the old. If I see tears, laughter and other strong emotions I will be happy, he says.
The leading role is played by well-known Russian actor Vladimir Mashkov. In the film he performed all dangerous stunts himself. He drove trains and stayed in icy water for hours when his character was building a railroad bridge. The actor said that for him this role was a fight for survival.
"I realized that there were people who had gone through even more serious challenges and survived. And I could also overcome this. In fact, it was not me, but another person. He is one of the victors (in the war with Nazis) and we all inherited this victorious gene from our fathers and grandfathers."
It turned out that there were engine drivers in Mashkov's dynasty and Vladimir is very proud that after the end of the filming he received an engine driver certificate.
Though now the actor is able to joke during filming he worked on the edge of his physical and psychological abilities. The Edge was not only a remote Siberian village, but also the edge of human abilities and relations.
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