The search for new approaches to the theme of the Russian revolution: Kirill Serebrennikov''s TV-series The Diary of the Murderer (2002)
The article discusses the problematic and artistic style of the TV-series The Diary of the Murderer (12 episodes, 2002), one of the best movies about the revolution in post-perestroika times. The film is analyzed in a broad cultural context: against the backdrop of a weak reflection on historical themes, on the one hand, and in connection with the emergence of the "new drama", one of the foremost trends of Russian art in the 2000s, on the other. The Diary of the Murderer is made by key authors of the "new drama", among which: director Kirill Serebrennikov, script writers Elena Gremina, Mikhail Ugarov, Alexander Rodionov. Designed for television, the film was created in the popular detective genre: in modern times in the museum of a small town they found a diary of a student of 1918 who confesses to the murders committed by him; the people who discovered the diary start an investigation and become immersed in the atmosphere of the past. The authors are innovators, expressing deep philosophical ideas and using the original artistic style in the TV-series. The interpretation of the revolution proposed in the movie reflects their time, the content of which was the crisis of the Soviet worldview. In an attempt to recreate the split picture of the world, the authors turn to the basic, mythological images and think in terms of good and evil: the revolution is a devilish game, the embodiment of which is a psychological duel between the Commissar Rosa (V. Isakova) and the student Voinov (K. Pirogov), whom she forces to shoot comrades in exchange for freedom. Embodying their large-scale thought in artistic images, the authors widely use the techniques of postmodern deconstruction, directing them on the clichés of Soviet art. Thus, Commissar Rosa, initially a classic positive hero of Soviet cinema, turns out to be an example of an embittered lumpen and the embodiment of the demonized spirit of the revolution. By making stereotypes the object of play and manipulation, the authors open behind the familiar images a different meaning, shaking established aesthetic and philosophical concepts. In general, 196 The Diary of the Murderer conveys the mentality of the progressive artistic intelligentsia in the 1990s and 2000s, and at the same time testifies to the aesthetic search expressed in the movement from the humanistic narrative of the Soviet period to the mythological and postmodern art of the turn of the century.