With An Easy Film! Or What The "Irony Of Fate" Teaches Us. Psychologist In Defense Of New Year's Film - Reviews

In the past few years, publications have begun to appear regularly, presenting a "fresh" psychological view of the personality traits of the main characters of iconic Soviet films. And since it is timed to "news stories", in early January the characters of Ryazanov's "The Irony of Fate" are the most "shocked"

Back to USSR

And all would be fine, well, you do not like the "scoop" and its inhabitants - be proud, share, write! If it were not for one "but" - this is done, firstly, with an obvious expectation that the modern reader does not remember Soviet realities and he can slip any, the most "sharovar" explanation of the events taking place on the screen under the guise of an assumed fog of psychoanalytic terms. And secondly, instead of a thoughtful analysis, they offer Sovdep's indiscriminate criticism of everything and everyone: "I have not read his novel, but I am extremely indignant at him." But this is already an unsafe thing, like any rewriting of history and the attack on the people of value corns.

However, since you have already taken up this thankless task, then at least you need to listen carefully to what the characters are saying, since you are trying to turn them into clients! After all, the film is about the grandfathers and grandmothers of today's twenty-year-old skeptics and know-it-alls. Obviously, things were different for them! Why such distrust of the motives voiced by the characters themselves? It turns out that in the behavior of the characters, conditioned exclusively by the social problems of "developed socialism", they suddenly begin to find an almost psychopathological explanation. In the USSR, it was quite normal to live with mom and dad: it was almost impossible to buy an apartment (they were mainly issued by the state), and it was not accepted to rent, and it was not affordable either.

Yes, Zhenya Lukashin was really not married until the age of 36, but not because he had unresolved oedipal problems with his mother, but because in the 1970s people believed that one should get married once and for all. And then they got married en masse as virgins. The flip side of such puritanism, by the way, was the ability to go crazy for love. Do you still want to approach these people with modern moral standards?

Diagnosis as a weapon

But most of all it is catchy that in such "analyzes" it is the psychological component that is condemned, that is, the one that, in theory, it is not with the hand of psychologists to condemn and evaluate - "we have no such rights." But no, they manage to ascribe psychological problems and diagnoses to the heroes of forty years ago, relying on modern ideas about the "correctness" and "incorrectness" of love relationships!

The Irony of Fate is a New Year's lyric comedy, fairy tale. From the point of view of the development of the plot, and even more so of psychological motivations, everything in it is flawless. But attempts to present psychological characteristics as a squeeze of "Soviet values" inappropriate for use by a modern person look about as convincing as the statement: "There was no happiness in the USSR and could not be."

Love textbook

Love is always a "meeting", and sudden love really looks somewhat ridiculous, out of time. And the people around Zhenya and Nadya more than once find themselves in confusion, if not even in a stupid situation. Love is one of the "streaming" states in which the feeling of time changes.

At some point, the heroes of the film have a feeling that they have lived a whole life - they get to know each other, quarrel, reconcile, part, meet and, as a result, radically change their lives in less than a day. Love is also the sudden, infinite trust and intimacy. No wonder Ippolit and Galya at some point ask Nadya and Zhenya: "Have you known each other for many years?" And it seems like a "abusive" phrase of Nadia "He came to me as to his home!" after a short time it turns into the real truth.

Lukashin's case

By the way, Zhenya's indecision in matters of marriage may well be explained not by the notorious "infantilism", but by the presence of "growth motivation" in matters of love, the essence of which was remarkably formulated by D. A. Leontyev: "There will be nothing terrible if I do not have relationships, I am only interested in those relationships in which I move somewhere, get something new. " After all, Zhenya is ready to make the highest stakes: either mutual love or loneliness. And when, after returning from Leningrad, he says to his mother: “Yes, and I don’t need to marry,” this is just about the determination to be alone, and not about the unwillingness to stay with my mother in life.

At first sight

Love at first sight is for abnormal people. In the film, Ippolit and Galya are not capable of insanity, they reason soberly. And just they are left with nothing. And "infantile" by modern standards, Zhenya and Nadia are able to fall in love with each other at first sight and, putting their future on the line, achieve the desired result. So the film is definitely about "abnormal", that is, about those who are better off a few hours in love than a whole life without her. And who are ready to risk everything for love. And it is for this property that films are made about them, novels are written, glorified in poetry and songs! And that is why "Enjoy Your Bath" is so popular - because a fairy tale, because about the wonderful and the impossible.

Romance below the baseboard

The vulgarity of the Irony of Fate. Continuation”is that the fabulous story was retroactively“landed”on a level that meets the expectations of ordinary people. But all the same they did not succeed! She got along with Hippolytus anyway, there was nothing to show off! Look, they wanted love! And if in Ryazanov's film, things move from an occasional drink to sober, but fantastic decisions, in the second one turned out to be a cheap drunken story in which everyone did not sober up. But the continuation has one important function - it remarkably demonstrates the impossibility of repeating Ryazanov's history in modern realities.

On the appreciation of love

It is not clear where the “sectarian” belief that psychologists have the right to assess the “normalcy” or “abnormality” of love came from. It would still have at least some meaning, if all this "psychologically correct" and "advanced" reality did not exist exclusively in the heads of these "psychologists" themselves. And clients would not come to us with exactly the same love agony and problems with which the heroes of the Ryazanov film toil.

Whose neuroses are preferable - those that were then, or those that are inherited by today's generation? From the height of their neurosis and their psychological mass ill-being, one would not judge strictly the psychological state of people of another era! We live on the wreckage of a utopian civilization that is unique and hopefully unrepeatable. And the denial of this specificity of ours makes it difficult to consciously say goodbye to her heritage. For some, it turns out to be impossible in principle, someone will be rebuilt, and some moments and ideas will remain with us for a long time.