What to watch for a summer trip without leaving the screen?

Questions about what to watch or what to read, it seems, can be asked endlessly and more than once – after all, any good work, be it a book, a movie or a series, unfortunately sooner or later comes to an end and leaves its viewer or reader in the throes of new searches. But there is also some good news.

To make your task easier, every week we ask our columnist Konstantin Obraztsov – writer, author of “Red Chains”, “Hammer of the Witches” and other books, as well as creator of the “Sample Reading” program on Rutube and the “Obraztsov” channel on Telegram – to share his collection of the world’s best literature, movies and TV series with diamonds.

Konstantin Obraztsov

Today, there are movies on the agenda that will take you on summer vacation without leaving the screen.

There is a term in literary criticism – “road chronotope”. It is used when talking about events built around travel and not just a point-to-point movement, but exactly that, with a capital J.

This is a Journey where companions who begin with hostility gradually find mutual understanding and turn into true friends, people very close to each other: as, for example, in “Green Book” by Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali, or in the classic “Green Book”. Hit the Bone” is about two rivals who go to a boxing match with Antonio Banderas and Woody Harrelson.

The young hobbits set out on this Journey as meaningless commoners from the prosperous Shire, and returned as true knights, bearing on their cloaks the arms of Gondor and Rohan.

This Path may lead to a dream, perhaps to the seashore, which is the only thing people talk about in heaven.

Tolkien wrote that the Way is always one, it is like a river and every path is a tributary of it, and the moment you step into it you are on a journey into the unknown. Today’s selection includes five films about those who are not afraid to embark on a journey that changes their destiny. Take a journey with them, who knows, maybe these movies will help you change too.

“The Amazing Life of Walter Mitty” (2013, Ben Stiller)

Ben Stiller is a master of creating images of characters that seem completely banal at first glance, but at the same time experience their banality in different ways. In “Meet the Parents,” his Greg asserts his right to be ordinary by refusing to compete or conform to social standards of outward success. In the dramatic “The Case of Brad”, on the contrary, the hero is bitterly worried about his everyday inadequacy, and in “The Incredible Life of Walter Mitty” we see that the secret power of a hero is found in every most ordinary and inconspicuous person. , an adventurer and an adventurer.

“Destiny guides those who want to go, those who don’t want to go are dragged.The ancient Greek philosopher Cleanthes noted that he not only gives us an apt observation of life, but also a luxurious aphorism about situations. Walter Mitty, who was not only played by Ben Stiller, but also directed the story, was a character driven by fate, forcibly stepping out of his comfort zone. Just yesterday he was peacefully working in the most inconspicuous position in the world – preparing photo films in the editorial office of a glamorous magazine – and wondered what was unusual about writing about himself in a profile on a dating site, and then one day everything changed. The magazine is switching to electronic format, the paper version is removed, and on the cover of its latest issue there is a photo of the legendary travel photographer who uses only film. It is impossible to find the necessary frame, and Walter Mitty decides to go along the Road mentioned by Tolkien in order to find the author of the photo. In order to find an eccentric photographer, he has to jump from a helicopter to a ship in a stormy sea, fight a shark, escape from a volcanic eruption on a bicycle, overcome snow-covered passes and do all this, but in fact he has to find himself. At the end of the road and your real, incredible life.

Hector’s Journey to Find Happiness (2014, Peter Chelsom)

If you liked The Odd Life of Walter Mitty, Hector’s Journey to Find Happiness will definitely resonate with you, especially if you’re a fan of the wonderful comic actor Simon Pegg. Here he plays a psychologist who tries to help his patients find happiness without actually experiencing it himself. Unlike Walter Mitty, Hector didn’t wait for fate to grab him by the collar and drag him off on his own great Journey.

Despite the external similarity of the plots of the two films, there is a significant difference between them. Walter Mitty found himself in dizzying adventures. In “Hector’s Journey in Search of Happiness”, the hero also finds himself faced with many dangerous situations: A prosperous British psychologist, accustomed to comfort and a measured life, chooses third and fourth world countries to search for happiness. A bus ride can leave the kind of impressions that you may need to work with an expert later on. Hector gets into all kinds of trouble, gets beaten, finds himself in a completely hellish prison – and all this so that when he returns, he looks at his life differently and is able to notice the notorious happiness in everyday life. This is somewhat reminiscent of Paolo Coelho’s novel “The Alchemist”, popular a quarter of a century ago, in which the hero, traveling through space and time, finds the main treasure of the house.

We can say that “The Incredible Life of Walter Mitty” is about “getting out of your comfort zone”, while “Hector’s Journey in Search of Happiness” is about happiness in the same “moment”. You can make your choice not only according to your taste but also according to your psychotherapist’s recommendations.

“Race of the Century” (2017, James Marsh)

There’s one very important thing you need to understand before you embark on your journey: No one promises you that it will be successful.

You can find the dragon’s treasure or take an arrow from the side and die in the middle of a dank wasteland; You have a chance of finding true love, but you have exactly the same chance of having your heart broken forever; You may win the grand prize, but you may lose everything. Leaving the comfort of a tired office routine and taking entrepreneurial risks inspires respect for his courage, but not a single coach can guarantee you that you will not update your resume again in a year. We usually associate ourselves with the main characters of movies, where a happy ending awaits at the end, suitcases full of money and a loving, beautiful, smart woman, but movies are different and life is even more diverse.

“The Race of the Century”, whose main character is played by the charming Colin Firth, is based on real events. An entrepreneur whose business is on the verge of collapse makes an extremely bold decision: he will participate in a worldwide sailing race, win it and thereby not only improve his business, but also fundamentally change his life. The basis for confidence in success is a little experience of amateur sailing on calm waters and a trimaran of his own invention – this is a three-hull ocean yacht. But theory differs significantly from practice, and after a few weeks in the open ocean, a bold decision turns into a real adventure, and what started as a comedy turns into a drama.

It is recommended to watch “Race of the Century” when you are almost ready to be persuaded by a confident coach to leave your comfort zone, especially when the coach himself is so well entrenched in this zone that he too has entered it. up to your ears.

A step on the path is always a responsibility that only you assume.

“Where did you go, Bernadette?” (2019, Richard Linklater)

In a huge dilapidated mansion, behind a fence worthy of the Adams family, where secret passages hide in closets and plants grow out of the ground, a brilliant female architect lives with her husband, daughter and dog.

If you feel different from everyone else, if you have a hard time at noisy parties, if you get bored of people easily, and if you constantly feel the urge to hide or run away so that everyone will leave you alone, then “Where did you go, where did you go?” Bernadette?” was shot specially for you.

The magnificent Cate Blanchett plays here perhaps her best role, creating the image of a vulnerable artist, as strange as possible and having difficulty adapting to the insular world of a prosperous suburb, hiding from the world either behind the fence of the house or behind it. Dark glasses if this fence must be left. The world is cruel to Bernadette: conflicts with her neighbors, her husband’s betrayal, and the observing psychiatrist is not on her side either. When her planned family vacation to Antarctica is cancelled, Bernadette literally disappears and runs away from home to go on her lonely Journey in search of peace and harmony.

Besides the gorgeous Cate Blanchett, the film also captivates with a visual aesthetic that is surprisingly in line with the image of the main character: from the chaos of her incredible home to the peace of Antarctica that is in line with the mood she misses so much. for.

“Where did you go, Bernadette?” is categorically not recommended for viewing by introverts who periodically feel a strong desire to hide from everyone: if not to Antarctica, then at least to a closed room where you can watch a good movie calmly and alone.

Moonrise Kingdom (2012, Wes Anderson)

Bruce Willis, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton and all of them are in the film directed by the brilliant Wes Anderson, the incomparable master of light and form; For some reason, that’s enough to watch the movie today. passed you.

Abandoned by his adoptive parents, an introverted, strange orphan with antisocial tendencies spends the summer at a scout camp, where, for obvious reasons, he is not popular with his peers. A mentally retarded girl who loves novels and fantasy stories does not find understanding in her parents. They correspond for a long time and unusually touchingly: “Dear Sam…”, “Dear Susie…“—and then they decide to run away together, he from the camp, she from home. Thus begins the Road they embarked on for the sake of love.

The archetypal story of the runaway lovers is always associated with opposition to society. This is the adult world, where people who reject, who cannot understand and therefore chase after the runaways, who do not fully understand what kind of life they will offer them, who are not very happy. Sam and Susie’s love in this world is like a magical artifact, something that reminds everyone of what they once lost. They overcome hardships and bad weather, fight a group of scouts, live a real life, find a way to get married(!) and do not give up even when they are finally caught.

Working on the fine line between reality and fantasy, Wes Anderson tells us a wonderful fairy tale that contains everything we expect from a fairy tale: tears, laughter and a happy ending. It is worth taking this Journey to remind yourself what love is like, that as long as you know how to fall in love like you did when you were young, you will never grow old and never lose hope.