Kosmos kak predchuvstvie (2005) User Reviews

Some Drama in Russian circa late 1950s

[Jamester · 8/10 · 16 September 2005]

I saw this in the Toronto International Film Festival (2005) with the director present.

This is one of the few Russian movies I've ever seen and a strong contender for on of the best. I enjoyed it not only for the 'Russian perspective', but for the strong dramatic action in a well-told story.

The story revolves around a cook/boxer who lives near the Russian-Finnish border in 1957. A new and rather mysterious boxer in town brings some fresh techniques and perspective into the former's life starting a tale of intrigue (who is this guy), against the backdrop of the Soviet desire to launch satellites into space.

It's an overall upbeat tale in perhaps a less upbeat period of time, with some great boxing sequences (though it's not a boxing movie). The director mentioned it took 3 months to start the actors boxing training who had the coach from the Olympic team do the training. The comment was that had they taken up training earlier on, they would definitely be on the olympic team. That tells you how real the boxing scenes were, but also show the care that went into the overall production.

The movie has an engaging 'secret-service' suspensefulness, and its main characters come across as fun, real, and compelling. In addition, perhaps because of the 'Russian-ness' to this movie, the characters and the actors' portrayals as well as the style of the movie were rather unique (in a very positive way) -- further pulling me in to the screening.

Overall, this rates above average on my list of movies I've seen at the Toronto Film Festival.

there's more to this film than meets the eye

[razorrrr · 7/10 · 26 July 2006]

This film has a definite feeling of "otherness" despite its realistic setting,as other films by the same scriptwriter Alexander Mindadse. They all seem to transcend the reality.

In this film the transcendental is impersonated by an enigmatic newcomer to the town. Koniok, a young cook, is immediately attracted to him, since he's so unlike the others, and this obsession is most unusual (no sexual element here) and makes you wonder how it will be resolved.

The film is set in the 1950s and the period is reconstructed very thoroughly, but it is the "feel" of that era, with people's naive enthusiasm about the country's achievements in space, that seems very true to life.

For viewers not familiar with Russian history this film may be viewed just as a universal story,as it is intended.

A film about cosmos

[vitaky2001 · 6 March 2011]

Anticipation. The main character Konyok is an homo sovieticus. This does not mean that Konyok is a Soviet ideology dupe. It means simply that Konyok's does not have any self, other than the one that consists of Soviet role models, dreams, attitudes and the sense of time. The temporality in which he lives is particularly Soviet and is determined by anticipation, not necessarily of the "radiant communist future", but simply of something new, positive and slightly mystical. Such an anticipatory mood was quintessential to being Soviet. This "being towards the future" is captured in the film's title by the word predchiuvstvie, and can be easily "lost in translation" both in the direct sense (the English title of the film) and in the figurative sense (the reception of the film by Western viewers). Remarkably most of the words that the dictionary suggests as a translation of predchiuvstvie have a negative connotation (presentment, apprehension, foreboding…), whereas the Russian word is neutral and in this particular case has a positive meaning.

At the beginning of the film Konyok befriends Gherman, an athletic stranger (Gherman - German - a foreigner) with a shade of secrecy about him. Konyok instantly turns Gherman into a personal hero and becomes almost homoerotically attracted to him. Gherman has many identities all of which provided role models for Soviet children and youth: he passes for a rig up man, a secret agent, or a would-be cosmonaut (the story takes place immediately after the Soviets launched Sputnik and were about to send the first man to space). Gherman bears the name of the second man whom the Soviets sent to space – Gherman Titov. At the end of the film, Konyok encounters a young pilot Yuri on a train (and there is little doubt that this is in fact Yuri Gararin – the first Soviet cosmonaut).

Cosmos. The film is thus about "cosmos". The director views Soviet dreams about travelling to space as an expression of the desire to escape. German in fact contemplates escape from the USSR by coming to this Soviet port near the Soviet-Finish border. He has a radio and listens to foreign broadcasts, which he, knowing no English, does not understand. A Norwegian vessel anchored off the Soviet shore (symbolizing the West) attracts him not unlike a liner attracts the characters of Fellini's Amarcord, but its night lights prove to be just as illusive. Gherman plunges into the sea and disappears after telling Konyok that, in fact, he used to be a prison inmate, who planned to escape with a friend but lacked courage to do it at the decisive moment.

Konyok likewise escapes the gritty Soviet sea port and goes to Moscow. His girlfriend anticipates a diplomatic career for him and envisions him an ambassador in Brazil (can there be anything more escapist?). At the end of the film Konyok escapes from the crowd of spectators who assembled along the route of a triumphal cortège taking Yuri Gagarin to Kremlin and breaks through the militia cordon to present a bunch of flowers to the first cosmonaut (an episode taken from life). Yet, as Gherman's drowning earlier in the film suggests, there is no escape from the Soviet homeland and the film concludes with a Stalin-era song "Migratory birds are flying" that has the lines "But I stay with you/my dear country,/We do not need the Turkish shore/ and we do not need Africa either."

Being a study of the cultural meaning of space exploration in the USSR, the film also engages the theme of "cosmos" in a deeper metaphysical sense. Cosmos is surely more than the sum total of the existing objects. It is this sense of intimation of reality behind things, a cosmic feeling that makes this film a wonderful specimen of the popular genre of mystical realism. Cosmos transpires in foggy landscape (the director in general seems to aestheticise vaporous clouds, see his more recent film The Edge), in which the objects loose their identity as well as in the formless sounds that accompany the reflections of light in the dark waters. Midway into the film the main characters watch their blurred features in the hall of distorted mirrors and loose the contours of things in the dizzying spinning of an amusement ride. Pursuing the illusive beacons of the Norwegian vessel (and the West), Gherman plunges into the sea and looses himself in its elemental, cosmic enormity. Riding a bicycle into the future, the cheerful Konyok several times is shown to disappear in a similarly in-discrete, cosmic mist. Yet, unlike Gherman, he escapes not so much from a place, as from the present. As a typical homo sovieticus, Konyok lives towards the future and this makes him the real cosmonaut. For cosmos can only be anticipated…

Oh, I forgot to say that the film is actually a love story and that the girls are a pleasure to watch!

Space as a hunch

[Zhorzhik-Morzhik · 9/10 · 8 March 2020]

"Dreaming of Space" is the nostalgic drama of Aleksey Uchitel. The Soviet Union rose from the ruins of the war, launched a satellite into space, and Gagarin's first flight was just around the corner. All these successes of the country are diametrically opposed to the main characters of the film. The duel of characters was remarkably played by two Eugeniy - Mironov and Tsyganov.

Seattle International Film Festival - David Jeffers for SIFFblog.com

[rdjeffers · 5/10 · 14 May 2006]

Saturday June 10, 1:30pm Lincoln Square

Monday June 12, 9:30pm The Neptune

Victor (Yevgeni Mironov) dreams of being a cosmonaut. He meets Gherman (Yevgeni Tsyganov), who longs to defect, at the local gym and they become sparring partners. Victor, or "Horsie" as his girl Lara (Irina Pegova) calls him, follows Gherman around like a puppy and soon they are inseparable friends. Set in a Russian coastal town on the North Sea days after the satellite Sputnik was launched, Dreams of Space has a beautifully muted color palette and the bitter-sweet humor and considerate touch that is a defining feature of Russian film. Victor mimics the English he hears on Gherman's transistor radio and its very hard not to smile and love this guy. Victor, Gherman, Lara and her sister Rimma (Yelena Lyadova) double date, switch partners and even that somehow doesn't seem so bad. Part buddy picture, part melodrama and part romantic comedy, Dreams of Space is warm, sentimental and visually engaging.

Whatchable, but nothing special

[Reviewer123 · 5/10 · 24 September 2005]

What is this movie really about? How bad it was to live in USSR? Or how American music was supposedly better than Russian? And what does all of that have to do with space travel? My take on this: even though made in Russia, this movie was made for the West. Why? Well, first, the story line is primitive and characters are not developed (anticipating viewers ADD and taste). A Western viewer, if he ever goes to see a foreign, or, even worse, Russian movie, expects simple things: grotesque scenes from Russian life, plump Russian girls, drunk Russian guys, "superior" American music and lifestyle, and, of course, something peculiar to Russia - in this case, Yuri Gagarin. It's too bad Mironov has degraded to movies such as this one or "Pobeg". Evgenii Tsyganov's role is too simple: there's almost no acting and he is far from his best (as in "Deti Arbata"). It would be really nice if Russian DVDs had labels such as: "this movie was made for Westerners" or "for Moscovites only" :), so I would know what to avoid...