Why Konchalovsky's 'The Aviator' Isn't Worth Watching

Adapting a novel is the most thankless task. If you convey the plot too detailedly, viewers will say the film is dragged out. If you omit something, it turns out that it was the main idea, without which everything falls apart. And if the actors don«t fit the character types, experts of the original will certainly not forgive it and turn everyone against the film. However, directors don»t give up. Another attempt to turn a book into a film recently hit the big screens. And its name is «The Aviator» (16+).

The film«s director, Yegor Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky, tried to avoid sharp corners: the film is not an adaptation, it is only based on the novel by Yevgeny Vodolazkin. Did this lead to fewer questions? Unfortunately, only more. After all, if you are not at all familiar with the book and see the story for the first time, only one thought will flash through your mind: »It«s clear that nothing is clear.»

The picture begins in the style of «National Treasure» (12+). On screen, Konstantin Khabensky plays 50-year-old Dr. Geiger and his young wife Nastya. The couple is searching for a secret laboratory where experiments on people were conducted in the 1920s. After five minutes of runtime, they (oh miracle!) accidentally stumble upon it due to Nastya«s clumsiness.

Inside, they find not only test tubes and medicines, but also something more serious—13 naked men resting in ice.

Geiger transports all the bodies to a huge ultra-super-derby-modern sterile house on the seashore. It turns out that 12 of them are 100-year-old corpses, but one remained alive. Moreover, he is devilishly handsome, so much so that Nastya keeps glancing at him from time to time.

The frozen man with difficulty comes to his senses and, by the laws of the genre, remembers nothing, doesn«t understand where he is, and with great effort digs out from the depths of his memory that his name is Innokenty. It would seem that now the narrative focus should shift to him. After all, we don»t learn the story of a 120-year-old survivor who traveled to the future without a time machine every day. But not so.

In this film, mostly no one cares about Innokenty, whose surname they still learn—Platonov. At the same time, he doesn«t care about the modern world, inventions, or where humanity has stepped—forward or backward. He easily masters the computer, which he doesn»t want to use, and that«s it.

Throughout the film, everyone only pretends to be concerned about Innokenty»s life. Geiger is worried about a more pressing problem: why his young wife looks so often at the stranger from the past and disappears with him for days on end. Nastya herself, listening to sentimental confessions that she strongly resembles Innokenty«s beloved, who was also named the same, in her thoughts only dreams of a child that she and her husband cannot conceive. By the way, don»t expect that they will explain the resemblance between Nastya and Anastasia from the past century, although in the book it turns out that she is her descendant.

Among the uninterested, there is another one who pays for all the fun—millionaire Viktor Zheltkov. He doesn«t work, but only constantly hangs out, rests on yachts, and throws money around. He has a very specific goal: he wants to learn the secret of human cryopreservation and freeze himself until people learn to cure the disease from which he has only six months left.

Zheltkov is of absolutely no use, because neither he nor his goal lead to anything, do not change in any way, and in general could not exist at all. In the book, by the way, he is not there.

And what about our main character, who at times seems not to be the main one at all? Throughout the film, he trains as if he hadn»t been lying in one position for 100 years, wanders through places of his former youth, and recalls the past in fragments. The flashbacks are the most understandable and coherent part of this film. They could have been compiled into a separate short film and shown without all the rest.

In them, we see a story of growing up, a tale of unhappy love, and how the revolution destroyed lives, families, and long-standing friendships. All this looks clear, interesting, and makes you think, but unfortunately, it«s only crumbs in two hours of runtime.

The film itself is completely devoid of any meaning and core, because of which after watching you would want to sit, think, and argue. What cannot be denied is that it truly turned out to be based on the book, and so much so that without it, it is just a cottony and tasteless set of stories of four people stuck together.

The characters, as they are met at the beginning of the film, remain exactly the same at the end. In the finale, they prefer to safely forget about Innokenty, pretending that he never existed. It»s a pity that the same cannot be done with the time that was spent on this film.