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Zerkalo Dlya Geroya
Mirror for a Hero
USSR 1987
produced by Sverdlovskaya Kinostudiya
directed by Vladimir Khotinenko
starring Sergei Koltakov, Ivan Bortnik, Boris Galkin, Feliks Stepun, Yakov Stepanov, Viktor Smirnov, Sergei Parshin, Valentin Aronyan, Aleksandr Peskov, Yelena Kozlitina, Denis Tsys, Mikhail Cheronbrovkin, G.Korenova, Jüri Krjukov, Yu.Krupin, Tamara Reshetnikova, Vyacheslav Tikhonov, V.Ustinov, Yelena Volskaya, Leonid Yudov
screenplay by Nadezhda Kozhushanaya, based on the book by S.Rybas, music by Boris Petrov
review by Mike Haberfelner
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By some kind of miracle (which is never explained), Sergey and Andrey
are transported from present day (1987) Russia to Russia in the
Stalin-era. And once there, they are doomed to relive the same day over
and over again. Andrey, who has spent years in prison for a coal-mine
cave-in, tries to change history and make the accident not happen, but
finds himself unable to fight communist bureaucracy - and after all, he
has just one day to change the chain of events. Sergey meanwhile meets his
father he fails to understand in present times, and his mother who is
pregnant with him. Ultimately, Andrey gets so frustrated that he blows
himself up - which finally transports Sergey back to the present, with a
new understanding for his father ... Of course, from today's
point of view, all films that have their protagonists live the same day
over and over again, will seem reminiscent of Groundhog Day - yet Mirror
for a Hero was made 6 years earlier and was probably one of the
inspirations of the American film (though I have no way of proving this).
Anyways, while Groundhog Day was a deeply flawed and cheesy film rendered likeable by
an ingenious performance by Bill Murray, Mirror for a Hero tries to
transmit political as well as very personal messages - but has no actor of
Murray's talent to carry it. What remains is a film that is at times
annoyingly blunt in hammering home its messages while the playfulness that
the time-travelling concept suggests shines through all too rarely. Plus,
any kind of irony - something else the film's concept strongly suggests -
takes backseat here and often gets lost in the movies attempts to make its
point (yet again). What we're left with it not a total loss, but you might still be
better off with watching the way more harmless and way less politically
ambitious, less original, flawed but sweet Groundhog Day again instead
...
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