10/10
One of the greatest films of national cinema
19 January 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Leonid Gaidai is a brilliant, great director who directed an equally great film.

A film familiar to many, if not everyone. The cinema on which generations have grown up, which has managed to remain loved by the people after so much time, when so many changes have taken place. It is still loved.

Three short novels about the life of Soviet, Russian society in the distant sixties, united by one character, the hero - Shurik, who finds himself in various incredible situations.

The first plot is connected with work on a construction site about the beneficial, creative role of labor in human life, re-education by labor.

The conflict in the bus of a noble and positive Shurik (A. Demyanenko) with a hefty boor (A. Smirnov) gets its continuation. The team decides to re-educate the latter by sending him to work. Re-education by labor, the noble role of labor.

The true enthusiasm of the hero Pugovkin, his devotion, admiration for his work.

And now fate brings the old rivals together again: the arena of their confrontation now becomes their place of work: a construction site, because now they are partners. And here Leonid Gaidai manages to do a brilliant thing: to show through the dynamic rivalry of heroes, the confrontation that many generations have watched and are watching in the same breath in mixed feelings of delight, admiration, surprise and laughter the hard routine everyday life of the worker. And the pinnacle of the director's genius is that through this bright maelstrom of confrontation events, real work, real business, real re-education of a person is shown.

In the image of a hefty forty-year-old boor, who doesn't really need anything and everything to the light bulb, who seemed incorrigible, the director shows: and we need such, we need everything. And we will re-educate such people. We'll do it. And we will fight for such people, for their morality, morality. And the most valuable thing is that young people are able to act as an educator, if it so happened. And young people are the future of the country. This is the blessed image of Shurik.

The second part is student life.

Endless exams, notes, books. Shurik teaches everything conscientiously, diligently. And he is a symbol of many students who then came to their jobs, confirmed their marks with their work, knowledge, and work.

But at all times there was another type of students who chose a different path, deceiving themselves that the exam was a holiday for them. Two approaches - two opposite results in the end.

But among these endless sessions there is also the romantic side of this unique period against the background of the harsh everyday life of endless exams, the way home on the bus, dogs at the entrance.

And the third part, in which Shurik enters into a fight with would-be bandits.

This is not the first time the famous and legendary trinity has been here: Vitsin-Nikulin-Morgunov. Accordingly: coward, idiot, seasoned. Already here certain character traits of the heroes are revealed, including their weaknesses. By the will of fate, they are involved in one top-secret event: "Operation "Y"". So that no one would guess. They have to simulate a robbery at the enterprise. But it is shown that going to such an offense, they blame themselves for it (seen in the same song of the hero Nikulin). Until the very end, the voice of conscience speaks to them with its strong influence.

Familiar to the viewer already as a man of work and as a student, Shurik must unexpectedly reveal new facets of his character.

Leonid Gaidai managed to show in a short period of time such diverse aspects of the social life of that distant era, but it is necessary to consider in a more detailed time period. Show bright, dynamic, exciting.

And many years have passed since then, a lot has changed, this is the law of the passage of time, but on the New Year's holiday, this greatest comedy is mandatory, causing a tinge of sad nostalgia. This speaks volumes.
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