Running as a visualization of internal conflict in the screenwriting of Alexander Mindadze from 1980 to 2010

Bol'shakov Dmitrii Aleksandrovich ORCID: 0009-0001-6688-8490 Postgraduate student; Department of Drama and Film Studies; St. Petersburg State Institute of Cinema and Television 13 Pravdy str., 1311, Saint Petersburg, 192102, Russia dima.bolshakov@inbox.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

In the second half of the 1960s, a period of thaw came to an end in the Soviet Union. The socialist ideal of the future is being devalued, and this leads to a reorientation of cinema: if earlier films were popular about a young growing up generation that is imbued with trust in the world ^{[1, 1988, p. 198]} and thinks about the future ("Ilyich's Outpost", dir. M. Khutsiev, 1964; "I walk through Moscow", dir G. Danelia, 1964; "July Rain", directed by M. Khutsiev, 1966), in the 1970s, works appeared in which characters experience the destruction of former ideals. The characters of such films are united by common features: as a rule, the characters are in adulthood and experiencing a psychological crisis, moving away from their family ("Autumn", directed by A. Smirnov, 1974; "Autumn Marathon", directed by G. Danelia, 1979, "Flights in a dream and in reality", directed by R. Balayan, 1983).

During this period, screenwriter Alexander Mindadze makes his debut, who, in tandem with director Vadim Abdrashitov, creates films about characters experiencing the consequences of catastrophic accidents. In the early scenarios, these events are local and fit into the framework of private life: an episode of violence ("A Word for Protection, 1976) or an accident ("Turn", 1978). Throughout his work, Mindadze made disasters more global and in the 2000s independently shot his own scenarios: a railway accident ("Train Stopped", 1982), a shipwreck ("Armavir", 1991), a crashed plane ("Separation", 2007), an accident at a nuclear power plant ("Saturday", 2011), the explosion at the defense plant and the Second World War ("Dear Hans, dear Peter", 2015).

In the same years, there was another cluster of films dealing with such collisions, but created in line with the Hollywood disaster film model - it includes such films as "The Crew", directed by A. Mitta, 1979; "The 34th Ambulance", directed by A. Milyukov, 1981; "Highway", directed by V. Tregubovich, 1982. Genre-wise, these films are defined as a production drama and tell the story of representatives of various professions (pilots, machinists, miners) who save other people at the cost of their lives. In the "34th soon", the central turning point is the fire of the train carriage, which detaches from the rest of the train. First, the heroes rescue the passengers who are on fire. But then the carriage rolls down the slope of the mountain onto the train, and flames engulf the entire train with passengers rushing down. The goal of the heroes is to prevent even greater casualties. In the climax, the railwaymen jump into the carriage on the run and, risking themselves, rescue the remaining people, while the firefighters extinguish the fire. The disaster becomes a plot attraction and a visual event that defines the genre of the film.

Unlike the films described above, Mindadze's scripts are not based on entertainment. The catastrophe in Mindadze's work is an initial event that exposes an existential and cultural gap, when reality ceases to be explicable and manageable, which is expressed through a change in the body code. In many scenarios, the hero runs, but not escaping from disaster, but reflecting on it through physical action.

Methodology and methods

The emphasis on physicality requires an analysis of the body as a cultural structure. Anthropologist Marcel Moss explores running in the context of the theory of bodily practices, the traditional ways in which people in various societies use their bodies. Moss points out that depending on the people, epoch, traditions and habits peculiar to each society and generation, bodily techniques can change. He classifies techniques into two groups: rest and wakefulness. The second group includes movement techniques, which include walking and running. The elements of walking are represented through body position, breathing, arm waving, and body swinging. Running adds endurance and type of running ^{[2, 2011, pp. 318-319]}. For an objective analysis of body technique, it must be considered from three sides: mechanico-physical, psychological and sociological ^{[2, 2011, p. 308]}. This approach can also be used in the analysis of running as an artistic image inherent in the characters of scenarios: the mechanical and physical side is the visualization of character movements; psychology is the manifestation of internal conflict through bodily technique; sociological manifestations are a portrait of society, relevance in the context of the era.

Alexander Mindadze's work was analyzed by Vladislav Korshunov ^{[3, 2014, pp. 63-79]} and Maria Kuvshinova ^{[4, 2017]}, however, it was viewed through a different lens – narratological and cultural-historical. Meanwhile, it is the physical score of Mindadze's characters that becomes an articulation of the attitude towards disaster, but not a sign of the will to save, but a sublimation of feelings caused by the experience. Cultural and anthropological methodology opens up new opportunities for studying the scenario text and its implementation as a model of human behavior in a state of extreme experience. The effective score of Mindadze's characters performs not a descriptive, but a sense-forming function, manifesting conflict through the bodily and spatial experience of the characters.

Alexander Mindadze's scripts "Fox Hunting" (1980), "Magnetic Storms" (2003), "On Saturday" (2011) and films of the same name based on them were chosen as the object of research. The focus is on physicality as an expressive system of Mindadze's poetics, combining the physical, psychological and socio-cultural dimensions of action.

To understand the specifics of the body score of Mindadze's characters, one should turn to the formation of Soviet body techniques, since the characters are either within the culture of the USSR or came out of it. In the 1920s, cultural and educational programs appeared, teaching how to brush teeth, how to wash and develop muscles. New industrial gymnastics (scientific biomechanics) are emerging, which were developed by the Central Institute of Labor, in particular Alexey Gastev ^{[5, 1972]}.

Visual anthropology studies the movement of the human body in the context of culture and art. In film studies, the concept of film anthropology has two meanings: as a method of narrative and as a scientific method of analyzing the screen image ^{[6, 2016, p. 130]}. Film researcher Oksana Bulgakova, analyzing the bodily behavior of characters in twentieth-century films, applies a historical and cultural approach and shows how the representation of the bodily behavior of a Soviet person in cinema was formed and changed depending on the era. The ideas of scientific biomechanics are developing in constructivist aesthetics, and theater represents a projection of organized labor and a new bodily language. New acting schools (Vsevolod Meyerhold's biomechanics, Boris Ferdinandov's metrorhythm, FEKS, Lev Kuleshov's workshop) focus on a clear rhythm resembling a mechanism rather than the movements of a biological body ^{[7, 2021, p. 241]}. In the cinema of the 1930s, these ideas developed as techniques of discipline. Rituals of march and labor are being developed: in the film "Circus" (directed by G. Alexandrov, 1936), the characters move synchronously; in the film "A Start in Life" (directed by N. Ekka, 1931), the re-education of criminals takes place through orderly labor movements (shoveling), reminiscent of athletic achievements; the heroine (Lyubov Orlova) "The Bright Path" (directed by G. Alexandrov, 1941), having received the Order of Lenin, walks with a straight back and a straight head ^{[7, 2021, p. 397]}.

Exploring the films of the thaw, Bulgakova shows how running becomes a marker of a cultural shift – bodily liberation from the previous ideological regulation. The field of action becomes an open city, which the characters explore, and movement is the main characteristic of the characters of the thaw ("I Walk through Moscow", directed by G. Danelia, 1964; "Ilyich's Outpost", directed by M. Khutsiev, 1965; "July Rain", directed by M. Khutsiev, 1968). Running becomes a sign of youth – energy overflowing the body, and the characters move relaxed, straightening their shoulders and waving their arms, changing the pace, bouncing, accelerating and slowing down ^{[7, 2021, pp. 753-755]}.

Bulgakova limits the study to the thaw period. However, in the 1970s, when Alexander Mindadze began working, cinema faced a different type of character - the hero of the late stagnation, whose body score changed relative to the films of the thaw.

The development of the body score in Soviet cinema in the second half of the 20th century is associated, among other things, with archetypal changes in the cultural code. The concept of cultural gaps by philosopher Nikolai Khrenov can serve as a theoretical optics for analyzing this process. The scientist means that the "wanderer" (a person who moves, moves forward) is the main Russian archetypal image in the second half of the 20th century. Khrenov refers to the philologist Boris Uspensky, who describes the medieval archetype of space: there is a righteous and a sinful land. If a person does not find the holy land on his territory, he becomes a wanderer. According to Khrenov, the Russian person is predisposed to wandering, and this shows the archetypal nature of national consciousness. However, in the Stalin years, this archetypal image gave way to settlement, since the Soviet space was presented by propaganda as righteous, and the need to wander in heroes dried up ^{[8, 2008, p. 66]}. In the era of the thaw, on the contrary, the image of the nomad is revived – the heroes of the films strive to find new spaces, explore the area, and all this is recorded by the culture of the 1960s ^{[8, 2008, p. 383]}. With the onset of perestroika, society ceases to feel stable, and the characters tend to go beyond the boundaries of the known – this is how the archetypal image of the wanderer remains relevant in Russian culture in the second half of the 20th century ^{[8, 2008, p. 69]}.

"Fox Hunting" (1980)

In Alexander Mindadze's script "Fox Hunting," the main character Viktor Belov is severely beaten by two teenagers. One of them, who lives in a full family and is well-off, is released from responsibility by the court. Belikov, a street kid, is sent to prison. Disagreeing with the court's decision, Belov begins to visit his abuser, driven by a maniacal desire to raise a teenager. From that moment on, the hero increasingly goes to prison, moving away from home and family.

The generation of the late stagnation existed in conditions of stagnation – the external stability of the state system and the internal mutation of its meanings. The symbols and rituals remained the same, but people followed them automatically, without thinking about them or understanding them in their own way. For example, as Alexey Yurchak notes, at party ballots with a single candidate, voters did not need to delve into the meaning, but it was extremely important to participate in the ritual – to raise their hand and cast a ballot ^{[9, 2014, p. 71]}. Analyzing this period, Yurchak refers to the ideas of philosopher Judith Butler about corporeally embodied social norms, according to which the existence of a subject is possible only through repetition of normative acts ^{[10, 1993, pp. 108-109]}. The automatic plasticity of the Soviet citizen of the 1970s and 1980s echoes the biomechanics and discipline of the 1920s and 1930s: the movements of the heroes become restrained, tense – by analogy with a society that must preserve its former form. However, now there is anxiety inside the person. The film hero of the stagnation period is a man who has fallen into a state of crisis. Film critic Evgeny Margolit points out that the characters of the 1970s are experiencing a "collapse of moral values" and "mutual alienation of man and the environment" ^{[1, 1988, p. 207]}. The film "Autumn Marathon" based on the script by Alexander Volodin is a vivid example of a film of this period, in which the key technique of the hero's body is running. Buzykin (O. Basilashvili) is physically active for almost the entire film, but still remains inert. Volodin emphasizes this with remarks in the running scenes: "Bill ran proudly, prancing like a circus horse. Buzykin trailed behind him. Passers-by followed them with their eyes" ^{[11, 2022, p. 12]}; "They ran the usual route. The Englishman ran today as sporty as ever. Buzykin could barely keep up with him" ^{[11, 2022, p. 18]}. Volodin contrasts the athletic Englishman with the frail Buzykin, pointing out that he does not run, but "stretches." In the film, Basilashvili embodies the hero's depression through shortness of breath, dangling arms, and hunched back. In other scenes, Buzykin is just as physically trapped, although gradually the desire to radically change his life is maturing inside him. Being a man of the sixties, 15 years later Buzykin became the antipode of the heroes of the thaw.

The characters in Mindadze's early scripts also become Soviet citizens of the stagnation period. In life circumstances, Belov is similar to Buzykin: both belong to the same generation of the sixties, both have realized themselves as husbands and fathers, but they feel uncomfortable in this status. The main distinguishing feature of Mindadze's plots is that he exposes the hero's crisis through an extreme, shocking, traumatic event, which in Foxhunt becomes an episode of violence against Belov. For this reason, the hero's bodily behavior is nervous and twitchy, and this is formed in the script at the remark level.

In one of their scenes, some time after the teenagers' attack, Belov paints the walls. The wife, feeling her husband's inner tension, pesters him with domestic issues. He responds to her with a repetitive action, which Mindadze describes several times: "Victor was silent, moving his brush, and this silence further inflamed Marina" ^{[12, 2007, p. 153]}. In the film, Abdrashitov slightly changes the scene: Belov (V. Gostyukhin) is in his favorite place, the garage (where he will return more than once), repairing a motorcycle. The hero is even more dynamic: he walks from side to side, searches for tools, picks up a wheel. On an anatomical level, the body is fixed in a limited space, and, whether it's brush strokes or tightening the nuts on the wheel, Belov mechanically repeats the movements. On a psychological level, his gesture is a form of self–complacency ^{[13, 1998, p. 233]}. On a sociological level, this scene demonstrates the bodily routine of a Soviet man during the stagnation period. His score is a bodily reproduction of the Soviet order, where every movement is functional but meaningless.

In another scene, a visit to the cinema with my son, shows a Soviet vacation. This is how Mindadze describes her: "While waiting for the session to begin, Victor made his way through the lobby crowd to the buffet, bought a bottle of beer, and ice cream for his son. He drank the beer from the bottle, without leaving the counter and almost without looking up. The son, Valerik, was still standing, looking away, and clutching a stick of popsicle in his palm, which he had not touched" ^{[12, 2007, p. 154]}. On an anatomical level, Mindadze contrasts the score of father and son. In relation to Valerik, he uses the verbs "stood" and "clasped in the palm of his hand", describing his static and tightness. Belov's actions are the opposite: the remarks "broke through" and "drank from the bottle, almost without looking up" show how Belov stands out from a relaxed environment with passive aggressive bodily behavior. His body is fixed in an upright position, like a predator in the wild that has reached its prey. On a psychological level, Belov's every action is an attempt to fill an inner void, to wake himself up. At the sociocultural level, the form of leisure is a performative reproduction of the norm of Soviet recreation. Going to the cinema was significant for Soviet citizens as a social action of a private person who goes out into the world of urban entertainment within the framework of cultural scarcity. The screening was a demonstration of self-collectivity, which was not imposed from above, but formed spontaneously ^{[14, 2019, pp. 138-139]}. As part of this vacation, the hero is uncomfortable. The peculiarity of Belov's body score is most evident in his fox–hunting game, the scenes that gave the name to the script and the film. The essence of the competition is that the participants run through the wilderness in search of a radio signal. Fox hunting appears three times in the script, but the hero's run is shown twice: after the tie and in the finale. Throughout the film, Belov never finds the signal, and in the last scene he refuses to search.

"A man in a helmet with headphones was running along a path that kept disappearing into the bushes. <...> He took a step to the side, then another step – the squeak sounded stronger, as if indicating the direction, and the man without hesitation plunged into the thicket, straight ahead, pushing the branches apart with his hands <Stumbling over an invisible pothole, he fell face first into the corn, did not get up immediately, wiped the sweat from his face – there was a forest ahead <...> Victor started running again, feeling the proximity of the target. And suddenly the call signs stopped. He froze in confusion, started to move in the opposite direction, came back again" ^{[12, 2007: 128-129]}. On an anatomical level, Belov's score is based on constantly overcoming the resistance of the environment, which is expressed through the phrases used by the author: "pushing through", "without hesitation", "pushing the branches apart with his hands". His movement is convulsive and fragmented. In Abdrashitov's film, Belov's plasticity is emphasized by Gostyukhin's play: the hero runs vigorously, swings his arms for stability, his shoulders are straightened, he jumps over pits and tears through branches with his hands. But when he stops and spins quickly in one place, runs from side to side, stumbles and falls into a puddle, and his T-shirt pulls up, running becomes convulsive and more like panic. Belov's body works in jerks, he acts impulsively, as if looking for a way out of internal tension. The characters of Khutsiev or Danelia in the 1960s moved freely, waddling, while Belov's bodily score is nervous, impetuous, almost hysterical. She is subject to uncontrollable internal impulses.

On a psychological level, the scene expresses an identity crisis through loss of orientation. At this point, the hero wonders about the motivation of the teenagers' attack on him and the injustice of the judicial system. Metaphorically, this manifests itself in moving along the sound, which sets the direction. When the call signs stop, he loses his bearings and freezes in confusion, which translates into slowing down and wandering through the same places.

Soviet physical education, a healthy lifestyle, and work are all poster markers of male activity. In Foxhunt, the illusion of participation is embodied: the hero seems to act, but the goal always eludes him. In this regard, Belov's bodily score is a reproduction of a Soviet myth that is disintegrating right in front of the viewer's eyes.

If we turn to Khrenov's concept, Belov's run is a manifestation of the image of a wanderer who is moving towards a better world. The hero plunges into an existential movement, the search for a radio signal echoes the desire to re-educate Belikov. However, the hero does not achieve his goals: the second time Belov runs after the climax (the scene of the second fight between Belov and Belikov is cut from the film), when the hero not only does not find communication with the teenager, but also succumbs to his aggression.

Mindadze describes the final scene as follows: "Having got out on the path, he ran for a long time, then stood in front of the railway embankment. I ran along the sleepers again… And again there was a forest, a path. He was running. And then he was standing again... standing, having lost the signal, taking off his empty headphones. No squeaking of the "fox", no celebration with a motorcycle roar. I couldn't hear anything. The forest was noisy" ^{[12, 2007, p. 157]}. The final scene captures the moment of the final disintegration of not only the ideological, but also the bodily order of the hero. His movement gradually loses its rational integrity and turns into an autonomous bodily action, not motivated by competition, social duty, or search.

On an anatomical level, Belov's body is experiencing a breakdown: when he takes off his headphones and freezes, the body loses dynamics. In the on-screen incarnation, the hero hides behind bushes, makes sure that no one sees him, and continues his slow movement through the forest: his steps are heavy, his breathing is halting, his arms are lowered – his body is tired, but still tense. Mindadze shows the hero's exit from the Soviet socio-cultural system through how the silence and noise of the forest replace the sounds of a holiday and a radio signal, which anticipates future scenarios ("Parade of Planets" (1984): the heroes are "killed" during military exercises and, having got rid of social roles, go on a trip around the neighborhood).

The physical score is based on the gradual weakening of the hero: from active, directed movement to a stop. This is the essence of the crisis of Mindadze's late Soviet hero: the body goes beyond the foundations laid down in the biomechanics of the 1920s and the discipline techniques of the 1930s, ceases to be an instrument of ideology and becomes a carrier of catastrophe.

Magnetic Storms (2003)

The 2000s in Russia were a time of political, economic and social stabilization after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the crisis of the 1990s ^{[15, 2018]}, when Russian film production declined significantly and cultural influence shifted towards the import of Western products. Due to the widespread distribution of foreign films in the Russian market, it became necessary to create a competitive and diverse genre film that competes with Hollywood cinema. The first blockbusters appear ("Night Watch" and "Day Watch", directed by T. Bekmambetov, 2004-2005), melodramas and romcoms ("Walk", directed by A. Uchitel, 2003; "Peter FM", directed by O. Bychkova, 2006), action films ("Brother 2", directed by A. Balabanov, 2000; "Boomer", directed by P. Buslov, 2003).

At the same time, a new generation of directors is emerging who are abandoning genre conventions and attraction in favor of documentary, realism and naturalism ^{[15, 2018]}. Critics have called this trend the phenomenon of the "new quiet ones." Boris Khlebnikov explained it as a feeling of "a premonition of some kind of horror, fear of power, of life." <...> we're backing away and kind of whispering" ^{[16, 2011]}. The initial event of some iconic "new silent" films is some kind of tragic accident, disaster, catastrophe. In the film "Koktebel" (directed by B. Khlebnikov, A. Popogrebsky, 2003), father and son (I. Chernevich and G. Puskepalis) are experiencing the loss of their wife. In the movie "Shultes" (directed by B. Bakuradze, 2008), the main character (G. Chitava) suffers from amnesia after an accident. A young meteorologist (G. Dobrygin) in the film "How I spent this summer" (directed by A. Popogrebsky, 2010) learns about the death of the family of his colleague and mentor (S. Puskepalis). Each of these dramas is based on a crisis of identity and communication, and this is expressed through the plasticity of the characters.

In Schultes, a former athlete who has lost his memories of himself steals other people's things, which is a way for him to contact people ^{[17, 2008]} and attempts to appropriate someone else's identity. It is impossible to say unequivocally who Schultes is – what interests he has, what kind of character, since the hero himself is deprived of this knowledge about himself. This is expressed in repeated scenes with a morning jog: the hero's run is just an athletic run. It is polished, rhythmic, assembled and functional. Schultes' body is not embedded in the social order and does not resist it – it just exists. In this blurring of the meaning of bodily plasticity, the intonation of the era is manifested: the inability to gain stability after a catastrophe.

In the film "How I spent this Summer," the workdays of polar meteorologists consist of monotonous and highly concentrated activities – regular measurements of radiation and telemetry, as well as data transmission. The physical score of the young trainee Danilov is initially set as energetic and dexterous. The film opens with him running across the ice floes to the beat of music from headphones, a constant accessory of the hero, with which he avoids communication. While resting, Danilov plays a shooter game, where, running through the open world, he tries not to get into the radiation zone. Peace and control are disrupted by the disaster that occurred off-screen with the family of his colleague Gulybin. Danilov needs to tell his partner the news, but he is horrified by Gulybin's alleged reaction and the event itself. The plastic of the character changes: the hero runs, stumbles and falls, crawls convulsively on the ground, twists his back. Danilov, who in the past was confident in the order of his world, does not know what to do when life becomes more complicated. He prefers to escape from disaster, to erase it from reality ^{[18, 2010]}. But the cataclysm penetrates through real radiation, which, through Danilov's fault, infects both heroes.

The catastrophic intention on which the above-mentioned films are based makes them related to the work of Alexander Mindadze. In his scenarios of this period, "Magnetic Storms" (2003) and "Saturday," disasters are more widespread than in his earlier works (urban riots and an explosion at a nuclear power plant), but at the same time, the characters' plasticity becomes more dynamic.

In the script "Magnetic Storms" and the film of the same name by Vadim Abdrashitov, the main character Valery is a factory worker who participates in street fights with his colleagues at night.: they are fighting fiercely for the corporate magnates Markin and Savchuk. An obsession with violence ruins Valery's relationship with his wife Nina (Marina in the film).

The plot of the scenario is similar to "Fox Hunting", but now the conflict goes beyond a private, domestic clash. The gesture of violence that Belov and Belikov submitted to has become an element of everyday life, which is reflected in the hero's bodily score. One of the remarks reads: "They're his, after all. They somehow got to the shore, stood waist–deep in the mud, drank plenty of water, and pulled the rope with the loot, pulled… The palms have already been stripped to the point of blood, the faces are fierce" ^{[12, 2007, p. 556]}. Mindadze does not describe a fight, but fishing, but the language of the scene is structured as if it is about continuing the fight. Anatomically, the hero's body functions according to the laws of violence – it is wounded, exhausted, but finishes off the prey. On a sociological level, the hero is placed in the space of a post-Soviet provincial hungry life, when he had to survive rather than live. Therefore, psychologically, violence becomes a part of everyday motor skills. In Abdrashitov's film, the scene is changed: Valera (M. Averin) with Marina (V. Tolstoganova) and several other couples are digging up potatoes from someone else's field. Visually, it resembles a Soviet collective farm, but the greed with which Valera and Marina, squatting on their heels, furiously tear off the fruits from the tops, embodies the dominant cruelty, predation and hunger set in Mindadze's scenario. The violence characteristic of modern times has been absorbed into the bodily markers of Soviet labor.

This ragged structure reproduces the disoriented rhythm of the body moving in affect. Unlike Belov's convulsive but meaningful running, Valera's body movement is determined not by will, but by the pressure of the environment – a former Soviet town drowning in crisis. On a psychological level, Valera's running embodies a state of affective infection. The hero loses the ability to choose and loses subjectivity – this happens when he hits his friend in a fit of a fight. Valera's dynamic turns into an act of bodily submission to disaster. Sociologically, the running scenes express a change from the model of gymnastics and sports (which was in the films "Fox Hunt" and "Autumn Marathon") to the state and social revolutionary upheaval that took place in the 1990s.

In the running scenes, which are repeated many times in the script and are almost always associated with episodes of violence, Mindadze enhances this artistic image: "Turns, turns again <...> On one leg and jumped away from them"; "and he runs through trenches, through tricky passages, dives into craters"; "And they run in smoke. They don't know where they're going. The crowd rolls out from around the corner <...> They are alleys at night, squares, courtyards... without a road. Nowhere. And it is no longer clear who is following who"; "And of course the crowd along the alley is blind… I've got Valera, that's it! He's in a vise, grief on his face. He's waving his arms and legs, not trying to escape! And he runs, runs..." ^{[12, 2007, pp. 550-566]}. On an anatomical level, the body score is fussy – Mindadze describes running through short, ragged remarks. In the film, Valera runs abruptly, turning in different directions, on bent legs, clenching her fists, making short jumps. Abdrashitov emphasizes the fragmentary and chaotic nature of the movement with general plans of the fleeing crowd, and then highlights Valera's face in close-up, and sometimes even allowing all the characters to disappear in the blinding light of night spotlights. This ragged montage reproduces the disoriented rhythm of a body moving in passion.

If we turn to Khrenov's concept, he refers to the period of the 1990s as "the time of troubles in modern Russian history" ^{[8, 2008, p. 60]}. The road, which in Soviet cinema was an image of the wanderer's choice, becomes a reality that subordinates a person, forcing him to start the journey. It is "a symbol of a life that has strayed from the usual rut, an instinct that is being released from moral norms. This is an explosive reality. And one collision leads to another. The plot is a chain reaction of such unforeseen steps through the minefield of life" ^{[8, 2008, p. 399]}. Unlike Belov's convulsive but meaningful running, Valera's movement is set not by will, but by the pressure of the environment – a post-Soviet town drowning in a social crisis.

On a psychological level, Valera's running embodies a state of affect. The hero loses the ability to choose and loses subjectivity – this happens when he hits his friend in a fit of a fight. Valera's dynamic turns into an act of bodily submission to disaster. The sociological functions of running record the transition from the model of Soviet physical education – a disciplined, normative movement – to chaos, the revolutionary surge of the 1990s, when the body score is no longer regulated by cultural attitudes and becomes an expression of social and personal disintegration.

Saturday (2011)

The political and social situation in Russia in the noughties and early 2010s was more or less stable: open borders remained after the collapse of the USSR, but the crisis of the 1990s was replaced by an economy that got back on its feet. However, during this period, the country was shaken by catastrophic incidents ^{[4, 2017, p. 130]} – for example, terrorist attacks. As a rule, Mindadze's character always exists in a modern context for the viewer and experiences actual cataclysms. In 2007, Mindadze made his directorial debut and shot a story about a plane crash ("Separation"). However, during the same period, the author begins to refer to the past in his scripts. For the first time in Mindadze's filmography, it becomes the time of action (the 1950s) for the characters in the script "Cosmos as a Premonition" (directed by A. Uchitel, 2005). Mindadze's second directorial work "On Saturday" opens the creative period of the 2010s, the characters of which are placed in the past. The events of this film take place in the late 1980s and are inspired by the Chernobyl disaster ^{[19, 2011]}. The following projects are also built around a retrospective view: "The Eight" (directed by A. Uchitel, 2013) is addressed to the end of the 1990s, and "Dear Hans, dear Peter" - to the era of the Second World War, when the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was concluded between the USSR and the Third Reich.

The second feature of the film "On Saturday" is that it has the largest catastrophic initial event in Mindadze's work (at the time of its release), namely, an explosion at a nuclear power plant. During the period of contrast between stability and cataclysms, Mindadze's work returns to the late USSR, the radiation accident that preceded the geopolitical tragedy around which he built the narrative of most of his works. The author combines a global catastrophic event with a holiday motif.

The main character is Valery Kabysh, a junior party worker who accidentally witnesses a man–made disaster at a nuclear power plant. Realizing the threat, he tries to leave the infected city with his beloved Vera, but they do not catch the last train. Deprived of the possibility of salvation, the heroes find themselves drawn into the rhythm of a Saturday afternoon: outwardly, life goes on as usual, and Kabysh, along with his comrades, plays music at the wedding, while radiation, invisible and unknowable by most, a deadly infection, is already spreading through the city.

The increase in the scale of the disaster in Mindadze is accompanied by an increase in the bodily dynamics of the character. If Belov from Foxhunt is immersed in bodily peace in many scenes, and his condition is irritated and disappointed, and Valera from Magnetic Storms reacts to reality with outbursts of aggression and submission to the spontaneity of the crowd, then Kabysh is the first hero whose bodily behavior is motivated by fear. This is how Mindadze describes the scene in which Kabysh and Vera, who did not catch the train, go to the store to choose new heels for the girl: "And she measured these pumps, pair by pair, and everything was wrong for her, she went crazy. She also made sure to get up from her chair, demonstrate to Kabysh, and he winked approvingly every time. Tomka was hopping back and forth with boxes, she was already off her feet, trying to please her friend. And the queue grumbled in vain. And once Kabysh winked just in time and quietly walked around the hall with a smile glued on. And then hurry up, hurry up, crowding the Saturday shoppers. And on the street, without hiding, he ran as fast as he could. He put his head into his shoulders in fright, he didn't know where he was going" ^{[20, 2021, p. 145]}. Vera, knowing about the disaster, but not fully realizing its scale, tries on shoes – when else, if not on Saturday? However, excessive activity, nervous change of couples and fussiness of her gestures signal inner anxiety. Kabysh, on the contrary, retains a social mask of calm ("smile glued"), but physically gets out of control (ran, "he didn't know where"). At the anatomical level, fear manifests itself through a protective bodily reaction: "head into shoulders in fright," which means the predominance of the need for self-preservation over social movement. In this minor scene, Mindadze demonstrates the conflict of the scenario through the plasticity of the characters and the environment around them: the turmoil of the holiday and anxiety, which turn out to be similar in their physiological manifestations.

This contrast is gaining momentum in the scenes of the wedding festivities: "In the wedding crowd, they grabbed Kabysh, shackling him in their arms. And they even dropped him to the floor out of an excess of feelings, staring drunkenly into his eyes. And that the guest fought back with all his might, shouted out incomprehensibly, so it turned out anyway, rejoicing with everyone. <...> But what kind of sweet trap was it that he immediately forgot himself behind the drum and went into a rage, putting his sleepy partners on their ears a little after that? He sat there with sticks in his hands, and his foot was on the pedal, as if he had never stood up. <...> I also took the brushes and knocked on the brushes, I missed them. And the orchestra was winking at each other in a fever, but they didn't know how to keep up. <...> The fear did not let go in any way, on the face of Hiroshima" ^{[20, 2021, p. 156]}. With a remark about "Hiroshima on the face," Mindadze illustrates how a catastrophe becomes an external sign – the boundary between the physical and the catastrophic is blurred. The fun of the crowd consumes the hero, and the inner fear is sublimated through feverish drumming, an instrument that requires maximum bodily coordination and continuous motor effort. In the film, Kabysh (A. Shagin) moves hysterically, with his whole body, shouting standard ritual wishes to the newlyweds into the microphone – joy and panic turn out to be indistinguishable. Anatomically, the vector of movement remains the same: the impulse to escape is transformed, but does not disappear, but is expressed through accelerated body work, limb activity, body rocking, which does not find rest, and motor skills become manic, continuous. Psychologically, anxiety is displaced through hyperactivity: fear, which cannot be processed cognitively, is processed into bodily ecstasy.

The traditions of the Soviet wedding took root in the 1960s, when the holiday became a phenomenon of great importance for the state. It was accompanied by a collective ritual (the participation of relatives, witnesses, and friends) ^{[21, 2017, p. 157]}, which is evident in the scenes of the celebration: the community holds the Boar in the disaster space, replacing the act of rescue with an act of participation. His bodily score is the result of the pressure of a common, outwardly benign, but internally violent form.

A famous scene – a frame from it is shown on the film's poster – is Kabysh's run from the destroyed nuclear power plant: "Kabysh was rushing, the reactor was shooting at his back. And the instructor zigzagged, running, hiding behind fences. And in the open, he's completely dead from the rays, or even a worm on the ground, but what else? I just dived into the machine room and came back immediately as if scalded" ^{[20, 2021, p. 137]}. The remarks are similar to fragments of the "Magnetic Storms" scenario: in both cases, the hero's movement is fragmented, chaotic, and subject to affect. However, Abdrashitov and Mindadze have different approaches to the implementation of the script on the screen. While Abdrashitov worked mainly in general and medium-scale, periodically highlighting the hero's face in close-up, in Mindadze's film, the hand-held camera runs with the hero, filming the movement in close-up, allowing the viewer to feel his shortness of breath ^{[22, 2011]}. The installation is kept to a minimum: a single gluing translates the running from close–up to the middle plan, where the hero's plasticity is clearly visible - long strides, sweeping arm movements, constant turns of the head towards the reactor and its lowering into the shoulders. Physically, the hero shows signs of shock and confusion, and running becomes a form of psychological sublimation – an imitation of action when it is actually impossible to act, which leads to a closure of movement within a catastrophic space.

Film critic Vladislav Korshunov, analyzing the film, formulates the principle of "goal deviation": the event is postponed and ultimately does not occur (escape from the city), the goal remains unattainable (salvation), and the hero's trajectory is a system of constant deviations from this goal ^{[3, 2014, pp. 64-69]}. Kabysh's movement turns into the opposite vector: in an effort to escape from the reactor, he loses his orientation and runs up to the source of ignition; when he runs with Faith, he freezes and fixes his gaze on the reactor, as a result of missing the train ("Kabysh got up with Faith and stood spellbound, motionless. And, stumbling, they rushed off the hill" ^{[20, 2021, p. 143]}). Running out of the shoe store, Kabysh returns back. Finally, in a scene with a passing freight train, he sees a couple running and follows them, "but he was still lingering" ^{[20, 2021, p. 168]}. Being at the same time a hero of the 1980s and 2010s, Kabysh demonstrates the synthesis of the bodily scores of Belov and Valera. He runs consciously, because he knows about the danger, but embodies the post-Soviet archetypal image of a wanderer, subordinated to the road, and not his own will. The hero's movement goes into the mode of impulsive, irrational activity. Combining agony and hysterical merriment, Kabysh remains both inside and outside the Soviet holiday ritual, as each of his forgetfulness ends in a nervous breakdown. Infected by radiation and unable to leave space, Kabysh becomes a literal carrier and carrier of the catastrophe.

Conclusion

Alexander Mindadze forms a special type of hero of the late Soviet and post–Soviet era - a man who sublimates the experiences of catastrophic events through plastic. Mindadze's heroes' running score is related to the socio-cultural background of Soviet and post-Soviet society. In Foxhunt, Belov exists within the Soviet discipline of the body, but in the finale he goes beyond it. In Magnetic Storms, Valera is physically integrated into the chaos of the 1990s: his movements are aggressive and in a state of passion. In "On Saturday," Kabysh summarizes the features of the score of the heroes of the previous two scenarios – the hero is afraid of disaster, but does not achieve the goal of salvation from it. Through running, Mindadze shows how the characters do not avoid disaster, but become its bearers.

Cultural and anthropological methodology allows us to look at Mindadze's work as a chronicle of a post-Soviet body that is searching for a lost landmark. The dynamics of Mindadze's characters' body score becomes the key to understanding the historical and emotional state of society and correlates with the development of collective experience: from the "lack of mobility" of society during the stagnation period to the confusion of the 1990s.

The article is published in the version approved by the reviewers (after receiving a positive review recommending the manuscript for publication) with corrections made by the author (after receiving the editor’s comments, if any).
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