'The Legacy' is not just a film, it is visual poetry that speaks the language of feelings and metaphors.
On July 14, a new film by Roman Mikhailov, 'The Legacy', appeared in the catalogs of domestic online cinemas. In his rapid filmography, the director continues to immerse viewers in a world of dreams and everyday fairy-tale magic. His cinema simultaneously shows what is familiar to everyone in the post-Soviet space and something completely unearthly, magical. And this bizarre mix becomes the avant-garde of contemporary Russian art cinema.
In the film 'The Legacy', the viewer is introduced to Ruslan (Oleg Chugunov from the film), an ordinary guy from a provincial town who hangs out with friends, goes to parties in the city, in short – leads a quite ordinary life.
'Major Grom: Plague Doctor' is a Russian comic book film that succeeded.
Open materialHowever, as in any good film, the ordinariness here is merely a cover, hiding deep internal contradictions and struggles. Amid his usual activities, Ruslan also visits a local bedridden shaman, whom the other villagers are openly afraid of, although they regularly send him food through the boy. Not the most obvious pastime for a teenager.
Throughout the film, the story is accompanied by various meta-references: in the garage where one of Ruslan's friends works, there is a poster for another film by Roman Mikhailov, 'A Fairy Tale for the Old' (whether just an Easter egg or a hint at the uniformity of the director's cinematic universe), caricatures of characters from the director's previous works (Evgeny Tkachuk, Fyodor Lavrov) periodically appear in the frame, and angels walk around the characters – more often in dreams, but what is a dream and what is reality here?
The most genuine thing here seems to be Ruslan's instant infatuation with a girl at a party (Darya Matsel), where his friends got involved in some pointless fight. These feelings seem to account for the earthly, if you will – grounded part of Ruslan's life. Meanwhile, the agreement with the shaman to organize his funeral becomes something spiritual. And it is on the struggle of these two polarities that Ruslan's path to the proverbial 'legacy' is built.
'The Legacy' is a film about how important it is to preserve one's individuality, despite all the difficulties and obstacles. It is a film about how each of us is a legacy that we leave behind. And this legacy is not only what we do, but also who we are. Even if your decisions and actions contradict the system or the views of those around you, just as Ruslan's aspirations to fulfill the agreement with the outcast contradict everything around him.
Mikhailov's regular cinematographer Alexey Rodionov created a visual canvas in the film 'The Legacy' that reminds us that cinema is an art capable not only of telling stories but also of visualizing them. Each frame is a separate picture that can be viewed out of context, enjoying the composition and color palette, the distinct graininess, and the deliberate overexposure.
An intriguing decision affecting the perception of the story was the move to almost completely ignore the face of the main character, which appears on screen for maybe 5 minutes total. Thanks to this, the viewer, like those angels, observes the boy's fate from over his shoulder and becomes a participant in the events.
The musical accompaniment by Pavel Dodonov complements the whimsical visual sequence, creating that very fairy-tale atmosphere at the intersection of a metaphorical story and modern realities – it's no coincidence that domestic rap in the style of Husky is heard both on and off screen.
In conclusion, I want to say that 'The Legacy' is a film that makes you think about what is important (who we are and why) and take a fresh look at familiar things. It is a film that stands alongside other extraordinary works by Mikhailov at the forefront of Russian arthouse – original, quirky, but at the same time exceptionally understandable to you and me.
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