THE AREA AND BUFFOONERY: REFLEXIONS OVER "THE CAPTAIN'S DAUGHTER" BY EKATERINA MIHAJLOVA
The 2005 screen version of the novel «The Captain's Daughter» by A. Pushkin is examined in the article within the framework of intermedial approach. The animated feature film by Yekaterina Mikhailova is not only an illustration of the well-known plot but its interpretation as well. Due to the puppet esthetics, the film-makers elicited some implicit senses from A. Pushkin's novel. Comparing with the text, the film actualizes the space of the square where the main events take place and become the subject of artistic vision in the animated film. The chronotopos of the square is noted to correlate with the subject of history in A. Pushkin's creative activity. The square in the animated film is also connected with the folk farcical theatre. If the connection of the main character with the fun-fair character of Petrushka is faintly outlined in the novel, it is actualized in the film, a naive atmosphere of the folk theatre is reproduced in detail, and an original puppet guise is given back to this Pushkin's character. The plot of the film tends to a fairytale plot about a tried soldier's meeting with Death. The image of Death is personified and given its own role which affixes the screen version with a metaphysical sense. The film is noted to have clear allusions to «A Feast in Time of Plague» by A. Pushkin: Death triumphs, and a dancing couple against the background of the fire-ravaged ruins indicates the dance macabre genre. Christian axiology («Lives of Peter and Febronia») becomes significant for the film-makers. Thus, three sense-bearing fields - farcical, fairytale and hagiographic ones - are closely interwoven in ‘The Captain's Daughter' by Yekaterina Mikhailova