#valery michailov

[yardsards]

tired of everyone on here reducing icepick joe down to haha funny stabby man

like i DO like the jokes and memes, don't get me wrong, but like

there's SO MUCH to his character and he really does tie into goncharov's main themes

like. we're told early on the he was put into a mental institution as a young man due to his breakdown and inconsolable grief at losing his older brother giorno (who was his only living family and basically a father figure to him!)

wherein he was mistreated and was HEAVILY IMPLIED to be scheduled for a lobotomy before he escaped. (in fact, some interpretations say he actually received and survived the lobotomy, citing his manner of speaking and his lack of impulse control. but that's a whole separate discussion because i can honestly see both sides)

and then he turns to a life of crime because that's basically the only option he had left, after being deprived of so many opportunities in his youth (and the fear of being caught and involuntarily institutionalized again)

and him eventually leaning into the role of "violent madman" that the world thrust onto him for showing signs of mental illness in a way that was nonviolent, but was loud and inconvenient and impossible for those around him to simply push away.

and him taking his rage out at the same world that not only killed his brother but forced him to undergo years of psychiatric abuse and basically dehumanization

(like seriously, how do SO MANY people miss the connection between him using an icepick as a weapon and the concept of an ICEPICK lobotomy)

which. yknow. ties heavily into the film's theme of people being pushed to society's margins and forced into a life of crime, instead of given the help they desperately needed

and then like.

his fucking death scene. he tries to put a stop to the cycle of senseless violence, taking the fall for andrey, telling michailov that *he* was the one who killed luciana

him kneeling down and allowing michailov to bash him through the skull with his very own icepick. it's more lobotomy symbolism; dying from the very thing he spent his whole life running from. further driving home the film's themes of repeating cycles and futility

and then, to drive it all home, that sacrifice didn't even end up stopping the cycle of violence! because andrey viewed joe as basically an older brother (mirroring joe and giorno) and tried to get revenge on michailov for killing joe.

like. come on.

[cancerstanople]

who needs good grades when you can spend every waking moment trying to piece together a timeline for a movie that doesn't exist based on the handful of crumbs of collectively hallucinated agreed-upon lore found on tumblr dot com

[ducktalk]

[soultea]

OH Goncharov THIS and Sophie THAT but what about Valery huh? Valery Michailov who cares SO MUCH about his sister. Valery Michailov who has no discernable love interest (no Luciana doesn't count it was never confirmed and honestly I didn't buy it on his end in the film itself). Valery Michailov who clearly doesn't have a sexual urge in his body if those failed seduction scenes are to be believed. Valery Michailov who is SO DONE with all the romantic drama and just wants to go home and have his family intact again.

Y'all can keep your homoerotic tension, I want the aro/ace King.

[phyroblue]

I did not escape goncharov (1973) and now I have a giant hyperfixation on it… enjoy these andrey/Andrei and goncharov drawings :)

[wistfulwatcher]

happy beer bottle scene day!

[randomlikeliness]

Guys, guys, guys.

I know everyone here is discussing the homoerotic tension subtext square polycule whatever you call it between Goncharov, Andrey, Katya and Sofia and I GET IT.

But are we going to just ignore the aroace icon that is Valery Michailov???

First off, he is the only character without a possible love interest. The guy spends the whole movie trying to convince his sister Katya to leave first Goncharov and then Sofia and go back to Russia and he makes it clear that he is not there for any romantic bullshit.

The way he doesn't realize that he has just interrupted the scene with the highest level of homoerotic tension in the whole interest of cinema when he bursts into the bathhouse and finds Goncharov and Andrej staring at each other in towels and talking about nothing (I mean, come on that was obvious even to me)

There is a whole ass conversation between him and Katya about how he considers familial love to be more important than romantic love when he reminds her that "you only have one mother, one father, one brother, but you could trace a path from Naples to our childhood house in Moscow with the blood of all the men who'll tell you they love you."

Bro, the way he showed up to the mafia gala ALONE rather than inviting Ice Pick Joe's cousin like he had suggested even if that would have guaranteed him Ice Pick Joe's help with his plan.

EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER tries to seduce him at one point or the other to get information out of him or manipulate him while he doesn't even bat an eye. Like, the way he doesn't even realize Andrej's flirting with him at the gala! He is totally clueless!!! (yes, I know Andrej was only trying to get a reaction out of Goncharov, that's not the point).

This is just the stuff out the top of my mind. If anyone has anything to add, feel free to contribute.

[tomatoclown]

ICE PICK JOE! MARIO!! VALERY!!! IM SORRY YOU’VE BEEN NEGLECTED

listen I love the famous love quadruple as much as the next guy but these three deserve more attention (specially my boy valery)

So I drew them while in class

[phantomstatistician]

Fandom: Goncharov

Sample Size: 757 stories

Source: AO3

[violetfaust]

For my own sanity

I'm trying to put together a list of the various versions of Goncharov (1973) screened throughout the last fifty years.

The four-and-a-half-hour film festival cut that even Scorsese felt was a rough draft

The US theatrical release in 1973

The 1973 European theatrical release with its extra half hour of footage

The 1973 Latin American dub with its extra half hour of different footage

The so-called Secret Reels that producer Domenico Procacci the Elder (not to be confused with the unrelated Italian filmmaker Domenic Procacci the Younger, who has only been active since the late 80s) used to screen at his fantastic, legendary drug-fueled parties in the 70s--these seem to be (at least one of) the source(s) of the deleted Goronchov/Andrey sex scene

The 1980 director's cut

The 1980s Soviet bootleg (which became so popular that it led to the 1993 re-envisioning)

Matteo's own controversial "Writer's Cut" (particularly complicated because apparently he never stopped editing and re-editing to fully achieve his personal vision--every time he screened the movie after 1975, privately or publicly, it had at least some minor differences and often incredibly large ones, with entire character arcs added or lost). At least one of these, my own personal favorite with the deleted second epilogue, was copied and got into general circulation on college campuses and whatnot

Also probably based on one of Matteo's cuts, the "Underground" cuts that were the basis of the Queer improv parties dating back at least to 1982

The first VHS release

The rare Betamax release with the extra Patchka scene

The post-Soviet edit 1993 "modernization" re-envisioning Gonchorov/Katya's backstory that was most Millennials' introduction to the movie

The butchered 90s broadcast TV airings (both of which cut vital plot points--such as Ice Pick Joe's lobotomy backstory--and were likely the reason an entire generation lost interest in the film)

The 1998 25th-anniversary director's cut (the one that The New Yorker famously panned with "It seems that Scorsese has forgotten his own movie")

The 40th-anniversary DVD release with six hours of additional footage

The recent gorgeously digitized Blu-ray release that included the nine-hour supercut and "Making Of" documentary (and probably inspired the Gonchorov renaissance)

The eagerly awaited upcoming 50th-anniversary Criterion edition that's rumored to incorporate the "Lost Reels" that Matteo, Scorsese, Al Pacino, and second assistant editor Mariana Lyudmila Manuali had kept private, as well as the distinct four hours of Patchka footage that the cinematographer filmed whenever he got bored.

And, of course, the crowdsourced Internet project to recover the "definitive" Gonchorov, incorporating most of the known footage as well as new home-filmed snippets from the private collections of minor players like Lynda Carter (in her first screen role as Dancer #2) and Henry Winkler (the busboy)--currently running twelve hours

Am I missing anything?

(Note: This list intentionally excludes the probably apocryphal student project that reframed the entire film from Valery's point of view--even if it actually exists and uses original footage, it can only be considered an homage to the full film and not an actual variant.)

[violetheart77]

Goncharov Beloveds: The FINAL Full Collection

And it only took a couple weeks past the meme’s prime to finally finish it for real

[pb-and-beans]

Guys I think this is getting over control

[its-blorbin-time]

Goncharov remake fancast (I’m really proud of this)

Lin-Manuel Miranda as Narrator

Toby Maguire as Ice Pick Joe

Leonardo DiCaprio as Valery

Harry Styles as Andrey

Timothee Chalamet as Goncharov

Jennifer Lawrence as Katya

Kirsten Stewart as Sofia

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Mario

[catholic-character-tournament]

Round 1 - Side B

Propaganda below ⬇️

Valery

tw unreality skip to eddie

His feet are washed in a scene very reminiscient of Saint Peter being washed by Jesus, his leitmotiv is stronger than ever in the scene in front of the church, and his whole arc is about forgiving those who sinned against him.

I'm pretty sure he's actually russian orthodox but rules say that's allowed. His conversation with Katya Jesus told them to turn his cheek literally made me cry ahhh greatest mafia movie of all time

Eddie (tw mentions of suicide)

He meets Venom (the alien goo parasite that inhabits his body) in a church. Eddie is depressed and about to end his life and just before he does it goes to church and prays to God to forgive him because suicide is… y’know, a sin. Anyway Venom possesses him and saves his life and they have a crazy relationship/love story and the stained glass window in that church becomes important symbolism for them <3 He is the most catholic man ever

Admittedly, most of Eddie's insanity has little to do with Catholicism, he's just a deranged weirdo (affectionate) but he was suicidal once and went to a church to ask forgiveness before killing himself. That's where he met the symbiote and their relationship has parallels to both marriage and religion.

Listen listen he is the epitome of Catholic trauma. He’s got the angst. The repression. The je ne sais quoi. His whole story is basically very dependant on churches if that makes any sense. Like he tried to kill himself in a church and that’s when he bonded with the symbiote. They stopped a symbiote invasion by fu̶c̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ crying out in agony in a church. EDDIE AND VENOM GOT MARRIED IN CANON IN THE CHURCH WHERE THEY MET. He also has so many breakdowns in churches and we love that for him.

He meets Venom in a church and has a lot of religious moments connected to Venom. They also sort of get married in the church they met at? It's gay. Eddie is catholic and in a committed relationship with an alien and it's gay.

(Cw suicide mention) He's canonically Catholic and has such a funky (read: kinda fucked up) relationship with it. When his life fell apart he went to a church to pray for forgiveness for the sin of committing suicide and to ask God to kill spiderman i think but then before he could actually do anything an alien came down and connected with him (in a gay way) and he was like "are you an angel". Also his sense of morality is totally fucked, its like "if you've done something bad once you deserve to die" and I like to think that's related to the specific brand of Catholicism

killed a cop in church (amazing spider-man 1963 comic, issue 300), had a homoerotic rebonding moment with his symbiote in church (venom: planet of the symbiotes comic), asked jesus to carry out a hit on former coworker peter parker (spider-man 3 movie)

more here

[chromatic-automatic]

I can’t leave it. It follows behind my every step- like a shadow.

Goncharov (1973)

dir. Martin Scorsese

[alpacinoinheat]

goncharov moodboard • valery