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“The Quiet Don” by Film-Director S.Ursulyak. Comments on the Premiere of the Year

The mass media actively responded the release of the new 14-serial screen-version “The Quiet Don” by S.Ursulyak as the main premiere of this year. The newspaper “Komsomolskaya Pravda” noted that this film show “is fiercely debated about in the Internet”. And here the newspaper publishes an interview with Alexander Sholokhov, Director of the National M.A.Sholokhov Museum-Reserve, who said: “I don’t like the end of the new film version: it should have shown Mishatka, Grigory’s son, who is the last man of his blood relation on the earth. And other drawbacks can be found here, but it’s a good job, and it is really a project of the year”.

Different mass media publish different authors, who sometimes “rush to extremes”: there is a variety of opinions – from warm, grateful to angry and cruel…

For example, the newspaper “Izvestiya” of December, 4, focuses on the fact: a new film “The Quiet Don” has become a leader of the Sunday evening airtime. Just here the newspaper gives the words of the film-director of the fourth screen version, who considers that “the main reason of the film success is that it is made after the novel by Mikhail Sholokhov”. The critic Kirill Razlogov called the serial “an interesting work” and underlined that “we see a predominantly personal drama of the main personages… Very attractive Nataliya performed by Dariya Ursulyak, talented Yevgeny Tkachuk as Grigory Melekhov”. The art critic considers: “This is a good professional melodrama from Sergey Ursulyak”.

The portal “Kino-Teatr.ru” after a detailed analysis of the film concludes: “Sergey Ursulyak has watered down our poor, aggressive and propagandistic television with quite a high quality, though subject to reservations, product, added a drop of goodness into an unavoidable evil. And this has been a breakthrough already”.

Another portal, “KinoBukvar”, shows a prevailing critical approach. “A good, frankly amateur production”, where “cardboard characters” speak “unnatural unfamiliar dialect”, “simulated dramatic scenes”, “stamped ridged clothes borrowed from theatrical costumery…” And lastly: “In general, a good serial has failed.”

But there are more reserved, constructive views. One of them came by e-mail to the official website of our Museum. Anna Zaborskaya, a musician, mildly criticized the incidental music of the film, especially its lack of audio effects from the life of the Cossack country: the sounds of flowing and noise of the River Don, a steppe wind, neighing of horses, mooing of cows, bleating of sheep, buzzing of bees, chirring of crickets and grasshoppers… But in general, as the author of the communication goes, “the film is good, the actors are interesting with their findings and embodiment. Ursulyak has succeeded to read everything in the novel

between the lines. Next year, if everything is all right, I will definitely go to the Don region, Sholokhov country.”

The comments of professionals and ordinary onlookers about the premiere of “The Quiet Don” go on publishing in the mass media and at different Internet forums.

Alexey Kochetov