There are two thresholds in filmmaking, and authors cannot prove themselves without overcoming them: this is a feature film debut and the next feature-length film after this. Otherwise speaking, a successful start creates a palpable obstacle in front of the beginner: since the expectations are high, the author is expected not to fail and create something better.
In fact, 11 children from Morshyn is exactly about it. This is the second work of 50-year old Arkadiy Nepytaliuk who impressively debuted in 2017 with a comedy Pryputni. That picture, built on the clash of characters in the small village, made an exploding impression: first time for many years we have seen a bitter but a really funny Ukrainian comedy.
Imagining 11 children from Morshyn (overall budget – 15,3 billion hryvnias), producers stressed that they were guided by Hollywood models of adventure comedies with the participation of children. The accent was also made on the actors: in the list, there’re Ada Rogovtseva, Volodymyr Horyanskyi, singer Serhiy Babkin, businessman and a public figure Garik Korogodskyi.
Thereby, it was a transition to a different league for Nepytaliuk: from author’s (Pryputni) to a pure producer’s cinema. In which the author doesn’t fully control the script and the selection of crew. This is an important moment.
Shot from the film 11 children from Morshyn
11 children from Morshyn is a story of the protagonist’s revenge, the director of children’s theatre Sashko (Oleksandr Piskunov), an evil schemer Snizhana (Olena Lavreniuk) who deceived him into grabbing the money from the charity fund. Even with a simple retelling of the plot, the questions arise: where are actually the children? No, of course, they’re the troupe of aforementioned theatre and they’re present in the frame namely. However, they don’t influence the events – only mess up in the first two primary episodes. That is, there’s no a promised team of little daredevils who punish the evil (I quote the advert words “gathered in a single whole for an overarching goal, they started the battle against injustice”). Predominantly ingenious Sashko plays. He has to restore his reputation, to take revenge on Snizhana and return beloved Ksenia (Ksenia Zhdanova) who is going to marry Snizhana’s brother Artur (Oleksandr Skichko). Such a plot ambiguity can affect the box office of the film which is devoted to the family audience but it will be difficult for children to identify themselves with characters who are tangled up in non-childish collisions.
The shooting of the film 11 children from Morshyn
Dramaturgy seems to consist of vulnerable sides too. The plot trips over, can’t pick up the speed or fails to be persuasive. For instance, the scenes of chasing in the shopping mall are blatantly staged; the episode with Olga Freimut’s appearance on the train – it doesn’t fit here; the turn with fortune (Snizhana wants to benefit from Artur’s and Ksenia’s (the heiress of a shopping mall) marriage is legally incorrect. And instead of conveying the pivotal points of Sasha’s and Snizhana’s confrontation with the means of the screen expressiveness, they are hectically retold: the rifling of flashbacks go, and Piskunov’s voiceover reports on what and how was in reality. In the action movie, such a technique is an obvious fail.
Another trouble is with the actors. If in Pryputni the images perfectly fit the actors, here unnaturalness, patterns and even falsity come to the fore – both with adults and with children. Olena Lavreniuk bears the same bitchy expression on the face, terribly overacting with this. Same pathetic stiffness inherent in all chief actors, including Oleksandr Piskunov and Ksenia Zdanova – the motivation of her eternally suffering heroin remains unclear. Oleksandr Skichka’s Artur is worked out a bit better – such a reckless hypocrite. But the ones who completely coped, oddly enough – these are Korogodskyi and Babkin, because they played themselves. Garik looks very organically in the role of colorful provincial mafiosi, and Babkin – in the role of a musician. Already under the titles, he performs the song specifically written for the film – gay and viral that sweetens the overall impression.
Shot from the film 11 children from Morshyn
I repeat, the main reason for misfortunes is that Nepytaliuk, took on the project, basically, having entered into new territory for him and worked with an unfamiliar material for him, not always controlling the process. But he didn’t have any other choice. This is the drama of his generation – that one which tried to start a job in the 1990s in the midst of the complete collapse of the industry. Hence the debut in 49 years and actual absence of choice: you’re the filmmaker, you have to shoot and the time is definitely against you – so, you have to take what is offered especially when State Cinema Agency of Ukraine rejects your ideas (an extremely interesting author’s project of Grub wasn’t approved at pitching).
And besides, the negative result is also the result. I hope that the experience of 11 children from Morshyn will strengthen Arkadiy as a professional and give him necessary work connections – and in the near future, we will see his new work, in which his talent will manifest himself in a worthy and full measure.
Dmytro Desyateryk, The Day – specially for opinionua.com