Maidan of The Guide

Inquisitive Chinese, in their efforts to define what can be called beautiful in all manifestations of life have noticed the ability of tongue to feel the taste. It turns out that the bitter taste is felt by the part of this organ which is closer to throat, whereas the sour taste is felt by its sides, and sweetness – by its tip. After all, sweet was found to be the beauty of food. As is known, they have in their cuisine, in our point of view, many strange combinations, like sweet sauces with meat, fish, let alone vegetables. Before this knowledge such notions as bitter memories or sweet feelings has never had a physical ground for me.

The pre-premiere screening of The Guide was both bitter and joyful, my heart sank and raged, I could get a full chest of air in silence. Most various evaluations of the picture united in their recognition of the worthy artistic taste of the creators of the film, its indisputable artistic coordination with present-day world moviemaking. The forecasts regarding the Oscar future of The Guide vary as well. I have seen the Oscar-winning films, when simply attention paid to them came as a surprise to me, let alone the recognition.

And the leader in the artistic fate of The Guide will be the audience who since today will be able to join the reflection about the picture, go through it as it is     its own experience, recalled from what our ancestors went through, in 150  movie theaters of Ukraine. Such scale of the premiere appears to be an artistic Maidan of our tense nationwide dialog about present day, where there is glory and shame, defeats and victories, sin and rightfulness, torments and joy of all generations of Ukrainians.

The director of the film avoids psychologism, he consciously steps aside from the analysis of the behavior of the heroes, revealing the motives that make the groundwork of the events. This includes the perpetuum mobile of memory which enables us to add our biographies to our previous and future earthly embodiments. It seems that it is not by accident that the love triangle, the actress who is a beloved woman of an American engineer and an NKVD officer, evokes associations with Stolen Happiness by Ivan Franko. And it is quite a surprise that this plot does not become the central line of the film. And it is the audience who will decide which plot is the most important one. The director develops several themes in the film.

A son of an American escapes the attack of NKVD officers. He is led through all of these ordeals by the faith that his father will survive. In fact his father gets killed for the documents that prove that the Soviet power was purposefully annihilating the Ukrainian people. In fact, they are hidden in Shevchenko’s Kobzar and kept by the boy, who becomes the next target. He will be hunted down till the final of the film, and it will be a blind kobzar who will rescue him from his pursuers. So, Shevchenko’s word gets the meaning of an amulet of kobzars, who saw the truth not with perfect eyesight, but their inner eyesight, with their eyes looking inside of a soul.

Long ago Kobzar miraculously survived, but lost eyesight as a result of an attack of a betrayer on his brothers-in-arms, currently the abovementioned NKVD officer from the love triangle. Together with the American orphan the blind man goes to the meeting of kobzars on the eve of the congress, which in fact is convened with an aim to destroy all kobzars.

On their way they visit the kobzar’s beloved woman. They dig a well in the determined place, listening to the earth. That is how the boy gets an ability to hear nature. The gets to know the language of smells, because it smells good where you are being waited, and calmness and comfort have mom’s smell. So, the quite strange slogan of the film, “Close your eyes, watch with your heart” is gradually understood as a formula of fullness of taste of life perception.

The film’s merits include the admiringly high level of Ukrainian actors’ masterful performance. From the leading roles till the smallest scenes the performance is powerful and skillful. I’m sure that like the work of the cameraman, the talent of the artists and workers of all spheres of moviemaking process will be highly estimated by their colleagues and audience all over the world. In this sense Oles Sanin copes with the mission of the leader who brings our culture and history of our nation to the nations of the world.

“There is no certain time for poets, but there are poets for certain times,” Lina Kostenko said. This film teaches us to recognize the leaders in the hurricanes of time, leaders through time, who may be quiet and loud, bright and hardly noticeable, with closed eyes, sharp hearing, and sensitive heart. Surprising as it may seem, our bitter history fills us with faith in our future. Flowers believe that the sunrise will come.