#Evgeniy Tsyganov

[agentnico]

Master and Margarita (2024) review

Oh when in Soviet Russia…

Plot: Based on Mikhail Bulgakov's novel "Master and Margarita". 1930's, Moscow. A famous writer is censored by the Soviet state: his novel is banned, and the theatrical premier of his new play about Pontius Pilate - canceled. In just a few days he becomes an outcast. Inspired by these misfortunes the writer conceives a new novel in which the devil, named Woland, satirically revenges all those responsible for the writer's downfall. He knows this novel can never be published in the USSR, but Margarita - his muse pushes him to write it no matter what.

I truly believe Master and Margarita is one of the most powerful pieces of literature to come out from Russia. Yes I am aware War & Peace is more talked about, but look, I read all of its 1000+ pages and though it is an epic in every sense of the word, it does drag quite about. As for Master and Margarita, Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov created a satirical, quasi-biblical allegory that represents themes that are crucial to the human experience, such as struggle between good and evil, corruption in government and high society, human fragility, religion and prophecy, and the endurance of love over all. It’s a masterfully written piece of work, and one that is truly hard to adapt to screen, due to how much happens through its pages. However I’m all for directors giving it a go, with Michael Lockshin taking the challenge with a motion picture that was originally a co-production between Russian studios and Universal Pictures, though the latter pulled out following the Russo-Ukrainian War, even though most of the filming was already complete. Nevertheless after multiple delays the final product is here, so let’s digest.

Let’s talk through the positives first. It’s nice to see a Russian production of such grand scale, that even gives Hollywood a run for its money. There are some truly spectacular set pieces, and also interesting visuals, especially of a futuristic post-modern take of the Soviet Union, that reminded me a little of the recent Atomic Heart video game. Also the inclusion of August Diehl who plays the central Satanic figure Voland. This casting choice was a truly inspired one, as Diehl both looks and feels as if he came out straight from the pages of Bulgakov’s novel. There’s just this presence to him, as you can tell the power behind his eyes, yet he can also be really charming and witty. Whenever he was on-screen, the movie fully came to life, as he managed to perfectly balance the damning mocking tone with a deep inner understanding of things beyond the human mind. Look, there’s a great reason why they casted an actor outside of Russia for this part, as Diehl honestly was incredible. Funny how this is the same guy who got his testicles shot off in that WW2 Tarantino flick. Evgeniy Tsyganov as the titular Master too felt perfectly apt for the role, in some ways personifying Mikhail Bulgakov himself. The Master is a character that can so easily come off as dull, as he’s generally very stoic and constantly deep in his own thoughts, so it was a nice interpretation with Tsyganov breathing more life into him.

Unfortunately this is where the positives end. Look, I think it is truly impressive for the entire novel to be transferred into a 2hr 30min film, and of course I expected certain parts to be rushed. However the movie shoots itself in the foot by trying to approach the source material in a different way. Messing with various realities and reorganising the events of the novel in a completely different order, the result is messy and all over the place. I can say with full certainty that if I haven’t read the book before that I’d be so confused as to what the hell was going on in this movie. From the way it jumps from one place to the other in non linear fashion made it so difficult to be engaged and feel connected with the characters. There was a lot of extra narrative elements added to an already overstuffed plot (with a lot of creative choices being outright baffling) as such causing the movie to need to rush even more certain other key plot points that again, it was really disorganised and jarring.

Also, I know that ever since Batman it’s now cool to go dark with everything, but The Master and Margarita is a novel that doesn’t shy away from raising a few eyebrows. In fact it goes out of its way to be as weird and ridiculous as possible, with the inherent horror and tragedy that befalls each of its characters being felt only later, after the laughs have died down. The humour in the book, especially the dark stuff - that’s sort of famously the Russian novelists’ coping mechanism against, uh, being a Russian novelist. Yet this new 2024 film hardly allows a single joke, and instead tries to cover everything with a dark dramatic tone, and I feel that really takes away from the charm of Master and Margarita. Heck there are even sequences in the film that are supposed to be played for laughs, like the Behemoth cat’s shootout with the KGB cops that screams for physical comedy potential, yet the movie kind of glosses over it in a very monotonous way.

Aside from August Diehl and Evgeniy Tsyganov, the casting left a lot to be desired. Yulia Snigir made for a really bland Margarita. Voland’s entourage of demons, who in the book are a cause for some truly entertaining if silly shenanigans, here are completely wasted, and in fact are borderline annoying. Yuri Kolokolnikov as Korovev, the main member of his entourage, was actually horrendous. In the source material Korovev is a trickster, yet there was still wiseness within his madness. Here however Kolokolnikov plays him as if he were some kind of deranged clown, screaming every single line and maniacally laughing for absolutely no reason. The talking cat, who is one of the book’s best characters, in here is just a CGI cat who says maybe only two lines of dialogue in the whole film, and even then it’s a lazy mumble courtesy of actor Yura Borisov. Claes Bang as Pontius Pilate looked bored out of his mind. To be fair, the whole biblical side plot of Pilot and Jesus suffers the most here by being downgraded to maybe 5 minutes, which at this rate I feel like they should have cut the whole thing out entirely as the 5 minutes added nothing to the overall film. But yes, Claes Bang was evidently there to collect a pay check, and part of me wishes that instead we just had James McAvoy reprise his comedic take of Pilate from The Book of Clarence that came out earlier in the year.

It was never going to be an easy feat adapting Bulgakov’s epic into a movie. The narrative lends itself so much better to a TV series format, and in fact there is a wonderful 2005 limited series adaptation from Vladimir Bortko, and now that right there is how you make Master and Margarita work! That series featured great music, amazing performances, and plenty of breathing room to give every nook and cranny detail of the book its proper time. 2024’s Master and Margarita doesn’t come anywhere close to it, and though I do admire Lockshin’s ambitions, in the end it all falls flat on its face. August Diehl however is truly phenomenal in this, and honestly I really need to watch more of his acting work. I hear A Hidden Life with him is supposed to be good. Adding that to my watchlist as we speak.

Overall score: 4/10

[movienized-com]

Tserber

Tserber (Serie 2023) #KirillKäro #VeraKolesnikova #EvgeniyTsyganov #SergeyMarin #AleksandrGorbatov #DmitriyUlyanov Mehr auf:

Serie / Цербер Jahr: 2023- Genre: Drama / History / MIsterija Hauptrollen: Kirill Käro, Vera Kolesnikova, Evgeniy Tsyganov, Sergey Marin, Aleksandr Gorbatov, Dmitriy Ulyanov, Timofey Tribuntsev, Konstantin Vorobyov, Yakov Shamshin, Nadezhda Melnikova, Ilya Iosifov, Denis Kozinets, Evgeniy Lyamin … Serienbeschreibung: 1826., Sankt Petersburg. Nach der Unterdrückung der Rede auf dem Senatsplatz…

[watchingalotofmovies]

Mermaid

Mermaid    [trailer]

In Moscow, a young woman disappears after falling in love with a new man.

Coming-of-age film from Russia with touches of magical realism that's very memorable and quite unique.

Though the ending is unexpected. A little too "Russian".

[spellofwinter]

Why would anyone need a property on the moon? To have somewhere to escape. And you, do you have a lot on the moon? I don't need to escape anywhere, I feel shitty enough here.

Rusalka (2007) dir. Anna Melikyan

[fromthesixteenthfloor]

Russian Movies (1/_) || “Battle For Sevastopol” (2015)

"Gentlemen, I am 25 years old and I have killed 309 fascist occupants by now. Don’t you think, gentlemen, that you have been hiding behind my back for too long?"

[movie-titlecards]

The Ninth (2019)

My rating: 5/10

Is there a name for the kind of story where some Jack the Ripper knockoff serial killer commits ritualistic murders in a mid- to late 19th century setting, and a police detective with A Haunted Past and much manpain has to stop them? Because there's kind of a lot of those.

Anyway, this is one of them, with very little to distinguish it, but reasonably well made. Forgettable, but watchable.

[h-200-decloth]

tsyganovevgeniy• Когда сталкиваешься с неудачами и трудностями, недостаточно просто не беспокоиться. Когда сталкиваешься с труднос­тями, нужно смело и радостно бросаться вперед.#бусидо 

pokapretband  Introduce yourself. Needs no introduction.🕶🎤🎸 @tsyganovevgeniy

[lietulietas]

[elaena]

Oooh that house Stark gifset... Yesss!! Who are the fancasts? (And where are they from?)

Hi! I used footage mainly from the following shows:

- Sofiya/Софи́я (2016)

- The Terrible/Грозный (2020)

The fancasts I can't easily identify are Lyarra's (character briefly appeared in The Golden Horde/Золотая Орда 2018), Eddard's and Benjen's (both from The Terrible), but the rest are:

- Rickard*: Evgeniy Tsyganov (Sofiya)

- Brandon: Ilya Ilinykh (Sofiya)

- Lyanna: Milena Radulovic (The Terrible) - unfortunately much older than actual Lyanna, but I really liked her face + I think it matches with the general vibe Lyanna had

[genevieveetguy]

The Man Who Surprised Everyone (Chelovek, kotoryy udivil vsekh), Natalya Merkulova and Aleksey Chupov (2018)

[sdrebelion]

Alma Maldita: Estreno en Perú + Poster

[Publicado originalmente el 5/11/19 en blogger, republicado aquí porque alguien nos denunció por derechos de autor o una cosa así. Whatever]

Más cine de terror ruso sigue llegando a nuestra cartelera, y este 14 de noviembre es el estreno de Alma Maldita (Provodnik), la historia de una joven capaz de comunicarse con los muertos, habilidad que usará para encontrar a su hermana desaparecida y en manos de un posible asesino en serie. Dirige Ilya S. Maksimov. Protagonizan  Aleksandra Bortich, Evgeniy Tsyganov y Vladimir Yaglych. Aquí el trailer oficial doblado:

POSTER OFICIAL

[areszero]

To the person asking about a movie: Pavlichenko had one based on her.

Iconic.

[beejay71]

About Love by Anna Melikyan (with english subtitles) 2015 from Anna Melikyan on Vimeo.

Starring Maria Shalaeva, Evgeniy Tsyganov, Sasha Bortich, Renata Letvinova

[movs4up-blog]

A Rough Draft

Young Muscovite Kirill is a talented designer of computer games. One day, he is completely erased from the memory of everyone he knew and loved. Kirill learns that he has been chosen for an important and mysterious mission: to become a customs officer between parallel worlds, of which there are dozens in the universe. Will Kirill unravel the mystery of these worlds and who controls them? And is…

[sabryna88rsi]

Guardiani dei mondi (2018)

Guardiani dei mondi (2018)

Cliccare QUA per il film su AKvideo

Cliccare QUA per il film su WStream

Chernovik Russia, 2018 Genere: Fantasy Regia di Sergey Mokritskiy Con Nikita Volkov, Severija Janusauskaite, Yuliya Peresild, Irina Gorbacheva, Evgeniy Tsyganov, Evgeniy Tkachuk, Vilen Babichev… TRAMA DEL FILM: Kirill ha una vita perfetta: è un giovane che lavora come programmatore di giochi, ha genitori che si prendono cura…