While the US president refuses to make peace with the world's richest man, our author recalls the best films about how friendship falls apart. From screams to gunshots, from «Mikey and Nicky» to «The Banshees of Inisherin».

Writer Holly Martins' childhood friend turned out to be a cruel egoist. Harry Osborn accused his school friend Peter Parker of murdering his father. Anakin Skywalker turned to the dark side. Two friends went into the woods and found they had absolutely nothing to talk about. In our selection — ten films about how old friends become strangers.

«Old Joy»

Two old friends who haven't seen each other in a long time go hiking to rekindle their relationship — to start from the same point where they left off. Like any utopia, their naive attempts fail. While one thinks about his pregnant wife, the other talks about how he's figured out the universe. On the car radio, the usual political argument — Lyndon Johnson, civil rights, Republicans vs. Democrats. Friendship quietly crumbles, the world passes by unnoticed.

The film was directed by Kelly Reichardt, one of the leading directors of her generation. She is known for quiet, minimalist films, but even by that standard, «Old Joy» surprises with its unobtrusiveness. At one point, the friends discuss a theory that the universe is shaped like a tear, quietly falling into the void. In the context of their dialogue, it's a somewhat cheesy absurdity, like a description of Reichardt's cinema — perhaps the ultimate truth.

«Mikey and Nicky»

A cult film by Elaine May, a living classic without whom it's hard to imagine lists of great American filmmakers. May primarily worked in comedy, and «Mikey and Nicky», a film about betrayal, is considered her own rare betrayal of the genre. The themes, however, remained the same. May's smart comedies are about how, behind a carefully constructed facade, nothing alive remains in the end. Her thriller about the nocturnal odyssey of small-time crooks is essentially about the same thing.

Two old friends spend the whole night riding buses, visiting bars and a cemetery, knocking on doors — their own and others'. Including the doors of patience — their own and others'. Nicky (the great John Cassavetes) is toxic, unbearable, a lying paranoid. Mikey (his great friend Peter Falk) is calm, restrained, hoarding grievances with such petty pedantry that nothing but grievances remains in him in the end. Nicky, a small-time gangster, suspects he's been marked for death by bigger gangsters and turns to Mikey for help. The problem is that those same gangsters have also turned to Mikey. «Mikey and Nicky» is one of the scariest films about how male friendship ends. With screams, tears, an inability to believe that things turned out this way, and a final — in every sense — betrayal.

«GoldenEye»

The first film with Pierce Brosnan as James Bond was remarkable for many reasons. It was the first Bond film not based on a novel by Ian Fleming (the simple explanation: the books ran out). For the first time, M was played not by a pensioner of British cinema, but by Judi Dench. And, of course, it was the first Bond film after the collapse of the USSR. The main enemy of the free world according to Ian Fleming finished the race of imperial collapses later than Great Britain — whose colonial legacy was the main theme of the 1970s — but louder and brighter. So it's no surprise that this is the first (and last) Bond film in which he tears through yesterday's Leningrad in a tank.

Britain, of course, ran over its political opponent, which had decomposed into mold and Siberian separatism, but without much joy: «GoldenEye» is a somewhat sad film about the passing of the old world. This world left so clearly that Bond, perhaps for the first time in years of his heroic exploits on the big screen, faced the betrayal of a friend, also an MI6 agent. The Bond franchise, however, wouldn't be itself if even such a dramatic moment culminated not in Sean Bean's monologue about the fate of the Cossacks.

«The Last Duel»

Adam Driver and Matt Damon play two knight friends who went through war together but later drifted apart. The clever Jacques Le Gris (Driver) became a counselor and treasurer to his ever-feasting liege, while Jean de Carrouges (Damon), a brave but proud man, became a knight — a worthy status, but not the most lucrative in peacetime. To improve his financial situation, de Carrouges marries Marguerite (Jodie Comer), the daughter of a wealthy nobleman, for convenience. When economic issues intersect with matters of honor, a duel (can friendship end more spectacularly?) becomes inevitable.

Late-period Ridley Scott, operating in hit-and-miss mode where half his films are unwatchable and the other half don't suggest the author is well over eighty, hit the bullseye with «The Last Duel». It's an interesting interpretation of Kurosawa's «Rashomon», where the same story is told by three narrators with very different perspectives. The versions differ, but in each, it's sad to see how decent people — up to a point, of course — cannot overcome their differences, prejudices, and the injustices of their time.

«The Long Goodbye»

Robert Altman is known for films that subvert the canons of classic Hollywood genres. Besides noir, he took on war films («M*A*S*H») and westerns («McCabe & Mrs. Miller»). In «The Long Goodbye», he did perhaps the worst thing to noir: he moved the action to the 1970s and showed the genre's main icon — the fatal detective Philip Marlowe, once played by Humphrey Bogart — as completely unwanted. Throughout the film, the disheveled Marlowe (the outstanding and subsequently vanished Elliott Gould) with his bad habits and outdated values cannot find his place and refuses to admit the obvious: that someone considered a cynic in the 1940s could pass for an idealist in the 1970s.

As in Chandler's novel, which the film follows quite loosely, Marlowe is approached by an old friend, Terry Lennox, who asks for a ride to Mexico. Marlowe agrees, but upon returning, he unexpectedly finds himself in jail for complicity in murder. Three days later, he is released — Lennox has committed suicide and left a confession note. However, Marlowe doesn't believe his friend could kill himself and goes to Mexico to find him, a search that becomes an unexpected test of strength for both the hero and those unlucky enough to meet him. A dark film, despite the constant sunshine in the frame, it's a story of friendship and betrayal where little is clear until the finale, and after it, it's not entirely clear how to live with it all.

«Spider-Man 3»

Since school days, the rather reserved straight-A student Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) was friends with Harry Osborn (James Franco), the popular and confident son of a scientist and businessman. Despite their differences, their relationship never cracked, even when Spider-Man killed Harry's father and Peter refused to tell him who was under the vigilante's mask. He refused, of course, because he wore that mask himself. The truth came out in the outstanding second part of the trilogy and destroyed their friendship.

Being characters in a superhero film, they couldn't just have a fight or a talk, and a significant part of the third and final film of Sam Raimi's trilogy is devoted to an excessive, brutal, and traumatic reckoning for both. Both hide behind masks: Peter as Spider-Man, Harry as the Goblin. It's easier to try to kill your childhood friend if you don't have to look him in the eye. The ending of their story is touching and sad, but in a way also hopeful: sometimes friendship can't be saved, but people can.

«Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith»

On the volcanic planet Mustafar, not only the history of the Old Republic ended, but also, perhaps, the greatest friendship of an entire era. Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi shouts to his former friend: «It's over, Anakin! I have the high ground.» There is pain in his eyes, and rage in his former apprentice Anakin Skywalker's, who has turned to the dark side. By this point, the audience should have no tears left. In a few seconds, the irreversible will happen on screen. But in a sense, it has already happened: the friendship between teacher and student, even in «Attack of the Clones,» the second and most boring film of the prequel trilogy, bore the mark of a tragic end. The teacher was too willing to be deceived, the student too easily exploited that.

«Revenge of the Sith» is a grand story about the victory of evil, the fall of centuries-old democracy and the mighty Jedi Order (you can read about the franchise's plot twists in our guide), which was supposed to guard peace in the galaxy. But at the same time, it is an intimate story of the dissolution of one friendship. George Lucas always went for scale rather than subtlety, and that makes it perhaps all the more surprising that the most terrifying and memorable scene in his directorial career is a man's solitary leap. Towards his former friend, fate, and a painfully uncomfortable black suit.

«Withnail and I»

Two nearly destitute friends, dreaming of becoming actors, smoke a lot and drink a lot. So much that it takes up all their free time. And work time, too, generally. They wait for pubs to open, only to not notice them closing, constantly argue over money, paranoia, and social responsibility, and close themselves off in their strange little hell, which people, if life later turns out well, tend to be nostalgic about. At some point, the friends move from the capital to the countryside because the London apartment has become too cold and unbearable. When it's time to return, the 1960s and the heroes' friendship will come to an end.

«Withnail and I» is a cult film about relentless drinking and unfulfilled big hopes. It is entirely devoted to satisfying basic needs and in that sense is extremely minimalist. The heroes either eat or talk about food. When one of them starts talking about earning money, it becomes clear that, so to speak, the plastic world has won. Director Bruce Robinson made a film about his youth, which he understood completely but was still sad to say goodbye to. As with the people who couldn't or didn't have time to say goodbye to it.

«The Third Man»

When Harry met Holly, the latter was far less happy to see his old friend than expected. Holly Martins, a writer of pulp novels, came to post-war Vienna, divided into zones of control among the Allied forces, at the invitation of Harry Lime (the great Orson Welles). He hoped to find work there, but instead found only troubles: Harry was dead, the city was in chaos, and naturally, there was no work. Deciding to play cowboy, Holly begins his own investigation into his friend's death, which he believes the local police handled with insufficient attention.

The investigation yields unexpected results — not only is Harry alive, but he is also a very bad person. So bad that Holly, in his American naivety, thinks it would have been better if he had actually died. «The Third Man» is one of the best illustrations of the moral dilemma about the possibility and dangers of friendship with a bad person. Loyalty to friends obliges you to help them, but what are the limits of that loyalty? A significant part of the film's charm lies not only in the unique cinematography and Welles' monologue about the cuckoo clock but also in this uncertainty. «The Third Man» is perhaps the most unexpected but also the most fitting reason to think about whom, why, and to what extent we consider friends.

«The Banshees of Inisherin»

The tragicomedy by Martin McDonagh was one of the main films of 2022 (in our top, it was the main one) and three years later has not lost any of its sad beauty. It's a story about how, on a small Irish island, on one perfectly ordinary day, Colm (Brendan Gleeson) tells his best friend Pádraic (Colin Farrell) that they are no longer friends. Colm has decided to dedicate himself to composing music for the violin, while Pádraic can only discuss the weather and the health of livestock. If Pádraic continues to impose himself with his dreary everydayness, Colm promises to cut off a finger for each such occasion. Since Pádraic turns out to be a surprisingly persistent friend, Colm quickly runs into problems with his violin.

The main merit of McDonagh's film is perhaps not so much its rare sarcasm as the fact that the author refuses to take a clear stance on the characters. Colm has the right to want more from life; Pádraic cannot just stop communicating with his best friend. Many see the film as a metaphor for the Irish Civil War, which is true in its own way, but above all, it's a story of friendship, an exploration of how little actually separates happiness from nightmare and how little we sometimes understand those we are friends with.