MOSCOW, July 25, Pavel Surkov. Today marks the 95th anniversary of the birth of Vasily Shukshin. His fate is the story of a man from the people, full of incredible inner strength, moving towards his goal, a little naive and always filled with goodness. It seems that he himself and his heroes are still close to us, because they are the deep self of Russia, the backbone and basis of its DNA. So if there is anywhere to look for the answer to the “mysterious Russian soul,” it is definitely in the books and films of Vasily Makarovich.
Born in the distant village of Srostki, he quickly mastered peasant work. He worked as a teacher and then as a director of a local school. But I dreamed of making films. So that her son Vasya could go to Moscow and enter VGIK, his mother even sold a cow. Shukshin lived up to expectations: he joined the metropolitan world of young filmmakers and new cultural leaders. He became a regular at the famous company on Bolshoi Karetny Lane, where Andrei Tarkovsky, Arthur Makarov, and their younger comrade Vladimir Vysotsky were. Everyone was captivated by his sincerity and fantastic talent.
At night, in an ordinary student notebook, he wrote his amazing stories, simple sketches from the life of peasants. Shukshin quickly began to be published, and directors noticed his texture. In Gerasimov's «Quiet Don» he played a wordless episode: a naive boy peeks out from behind a fence. But I remember it: an interesting vignette, a very young Shukshin.
He made his directorial debut, the film “There Lives Such a Guy,” based on his own script, and invited his VGIK comrade Leonid Kuravlev to play the main role. Vasily Makarovich always wrote the central characters “to suit himself” — with absolute peasant confidence.
< br />
Shukshin spent hours talking about literature with his best friend Georgy Burkov, who was also loved by directors for his simple but noticeable appearance. Both were bookworms and subconsciously suffered from the fact that behind his simple «peasant» appearance, those around him often did not assume a sharp and tenacious mind, depth of soul and a penchant for philosophizing.
Each new film by Vasily Makarovich became an event, they were snapped up for quotes: “Stoves and Benches”, “Kalina Krasnaya”. Shukshinskoye «Shvarknuli to your liking!» was perceived as a kind of quintessence of the Russian spirit. His movie characters are simple, kind, sometimes confused in life, but always bright. This was Shukshin’s principle — first of all, to see goodness and inner light in a person. Conveying this is not an easy task for a writer.
He dreamed of making a movie about Stenka Razin and playing the daring Cossack chieftain himself. I tried several times to start with the picture. But nothing came of it, but the script turned into a full-fledged novel — “I came to give you freedom.”
As Vasily Makarovich grew older, he realized more and more that his main calling was literature, and his main tools were that same student notebook and a simple fountain pen. He wrote in a train compartment, in a hotel room, and sometimes on a stump in the forest during breaks between filming.
He worked his ass off: he launched his own films, acted in films. The main role in Sergei Bondarchuk’s film “They Fought for the Motherland” turned out to be his last. Vasily Shukshin died of a heart attack while filming on location. Burkov found him dead in the morning — the night before, as usual, they had talked for a long time, dreamed and shared plans.
Shukshin was seen off throughout Moscow — the funeral cortege was moving towards the cemetery, and on the sidewalks there were people with viburnum branches with red berries on them. Vladimir Vysotsky wrote a song about this with a bright ending: “And next to a viburnum bush grew — such a red viburnum.”
If Vasily Makarovich found out today that his works are still published and are even included in the school curriculum, most likely he would I wasn't surprised. With his slight peasant grin, he would wink and rejoice: here, they say, they understood, appreciated, but I had no doubts, however. media-type=»ar16x9″ data-crop-ratio=»0.5625″ data-crop-width=»650″ data-crop-height=»366″ data-source-sid=»» class=»lazyload» width=» 1920″ height=»1080″ decoding=»async» />