A dead man walks through his own regrets. Russian literature hits different when it's dying.
Based on the Russian classic novel. While maintaining all the main plot-lines of the novel, it follows the events not as they happen but as they are reflected in the mind of the dying hero. Thus make a chain of recollections about the life he had lived through, now seen as a series of irrevocable mistakes and interpreted anew: it is either reconsideration or repentance. Recollections make main hero torment himself over his own past pretenses that seem ridicules now agonize and despair over his perfect indifference to everything except himself, see the horrible aspect of killing his friend, a greenhorn and a show-off. The final action of an intelligent and outstanding man is judging oneself without mercy.
Acting
Ryadinskiy carries the whole rotting soul on his shoulders.
Direction
Khrushch fractures time like memory itself—nonlinear and punishing.
Cinematography
Caucasus landscapes that mock human insignificance.
Director
Roman Khrushch
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Lermontov's novel invented the literary 'superfluous man'—the bored, destructive aristocrat that obsessed Russian writers for generations. Pechorin is basically the original toxic protagonist.
Director Roman Khrushch is largely unknown outside festival circuits; this was his ambitious swing at adapting what's considered untouchable canonical literature in Russia.
RU
