#several days from the life of i i oblomov

[acupofbritishearlgrey]

Ilya Oblomov [Oleg Tabakov] & Andrei Stoltz [Yuri Bogatyryov]

'...he sincerely loved and trusted only one person, perhaps because they had grown up, studied, and lived together. This person was Andrei Ivanovich Stoltz.' © ’Several days from the life of I. I. Oblomov’ (1980), dir. Nikita Mikhalkov

[storja-historja]

studi dari J. C. Leyendecker + sovkino: Oblomov (1980)

[curlycrowned]

On the sweet repose.

It's an old saying that 'there's plenty of time to rest when one is dead.' I absolutely object to this thought. To work like an obedient mare and live like a thoughtless cattle was not what I had in mind when I came upon this: my present situation.

This morning rose lethargic. Having decided on being a regular Oblomov for the day, another one of the many dubious yet ultimately necessary choices I've made this past fortnight, I rose up with the winter collecting in my room. It has been a mostly uneventful day since, a rare exception in the present times, thank you very much!

This past month saw a great change in the conceptions I held dear and in my disposition in general. I've encountered loss and bereavement, the former of a relation most dear to me, snatched from the face of the earth most untimely, while latter from a beloved dear of five years knowing, and it has made me question certain aspects of my life, but more on that in later essays.

We live in a time when idleness is supremely discouraged; never was an empty mind more a devils workshop than present! And yet it behoves us to examine this, for is it not from the state of blankness and pristine clarity of mind that inspirational ideas are born? My present situation, upon which I'm rather timid to expound of, lest some involved in it may find their eyes perusing this, is one of such kind; an unusual, nay peculiar kind which believes in severe exhausting of the mind in a monotonous exercise of learning principles thought to be set in rock.

We were once champions of free reigns to thought and revelled in our readiness to action. I was introduced to ideas and the arts at an early age in life. If anything I took from it that man was not merely to be born and to die and lead a wearisome existence in between. The goal was to excel at living, to make the 'journey' worthwhile.

I find myself joining ranks with a mindless flock of automotons well trained and skilled, but empty in their minds of thought and their hearts of vigour and vitality. I have all but forgotten the notion of rest and I reckon it shall be the end of me. Get busy living or get busy dying is what they say, an extreme of both is perhaps to the fate of this unhappy lot. I long for the sweet release, but sadly I am to remain a gaolbird for the longest period before any hope of my deliverance.

[acupofbritishearlgrey]

Yuri Bogatyryov (02.03.1947 — 02.02.1989)

Encyclopedia of the Soviet Cinema: 'There was no one like him, before or after. It looks like he'd come and gone so quick just to leave us this unfathomable enigma of his phenomenon to marvel at.' Vitaly Wolf (critic, writer): 'He was very nervous, very kind and extraordinarily open-hearted. His tutor Katin-Yartsev used to tell me how worried he was about Bogatyryov's openness and vulnerability.' Irina Pavlova (critic): 'A two-meter giant, he could easily play a bravest knight (or the chekist Yegor Shilov in At Home Among Strangers), then turn into an ecstatically maudlin idiot Manilov in Gogol's Dead Souls. One moment his body could be steel-and spring-like, and he'd sport unequalled strength and agility. The next it would turn all wadded and quilt-like, as if lacking spinal cord... Immensely gifted, he was a wealth of the artistic 'material' in its pure form: fantastically pliable, filling any shape or form, easily meeting any director-poised challenges, dramatic or intellectual.'

movies in the post:

'Several days from the life of I. I. Oblomov' (1980), dir. Nikita Mikhalkov

'A Slave of Love' (1976), dir. Nikita Mikhalkov

'At Home Among Strangers' (1974), dir. Nikita Mikhalkov

'Declaration of Love' (1978), dir. Ilya Averbakh

'Martin Eden' (1976), dir. Sergey Evlakhishvili

The Nose (1977), dir. Rolan Bykov

'An Unfinished Piece for Mechanical Piano' (1977), dir. Nikita Mikhalkov

'Open book' (1977-1979), dir. Viktor Titov