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Do you remember Tales from the Crypt? It was fun in the late 20th century. a series of light horror genres of the decade, when each episode was sarcastically presented with a terrifying quote such as a doll skeleton of an angry Soviet salesman.
Today, sensitive people would call this presentation “tacky”, or perhaps even “offensive,” as if it had jumped before Sunday mass. that commentator uttered in all extremes – Andrius Užkalnis, who similarly laughs at the stormy reactions to his usual provocative album “Decipher Russia” about Soviet or Russian film masterpieces.
Through these films or series, Užkalnis, who revealed in his criticisms the whole being of a mafia, complex and vicious neighboring country, undoubtedly did not enrage anyone for whom Russian cinema and television, and especially Soviet ones, are a reference. . That Russia has not changed, only the attitude towards it has changed.
Even the so-called West in Lithuania (part of which we already are anyway) seems to have finally seen it: compiling lists of hostile countries, critical of poison and bullets both in themselves and in the territories of the EU and NATO countries. Trucians, explosive and favoritism and fidelity to oil otkatais Russia, which is grateful to its lawyers in the West, has shown its true face. His only friends are the authoritarian regimes of China, Belarus, Venezuela and North Korea.
And the West stayed to speak the language of sanctions when the Kremlin, like that boastful and antisocial neighbor who stands up, again threatened everyone with its fist to teach them to respect and love it. After all, Russia and its spokesmen are now threatening the West with their nuclear weapons. How do we get to that point and find ourselves in a world reminiscent of the grim Cold War of 1983?
It is our fault, we could say, in favor of the Kremlin. And you know, we’d be right in a way. But not because we have offended Russia, but because we Westerners do not understand it. And who better to show this naivety and misunderstanding of us, if not our beloved and hated irritant of the mass consciousness and imagination: Hollywood? Many movies have been made about stereotypical Russia.
One of them stands out: “The sum of all fears”, translated in Lithuania by distributors as “The price of fear”, based on Tom Clancy’s novel about terrorists who detonate a nuclear charge in the United States to provoke a nuclear conflict. between Washington and Moscow. .
With the original book, as T. Clancy herself admitted, this movie has little in common, just the title, some of the heroes and their stories. Filmed in 2001 and released on screen in late May 2002, the film was profitable and critically acclaimed as a mediocre summer thriller.
But it is valuable in another way. A truly mediocre early 21st century adaptation of T. Clancy’s 1991 book above all reveals everything that goes wrong with the Western understanding of Russia: from traditional stereotypes and cliches to the naive belief that a strong but convinced Westerner values, so a wise leader will lead his country from confusion to peaceful coexistence with West.
How symbolic it is that the real “strong Russian leader”, the former KGBist, is dealing with the world in 2021. And similarly in the movie, only a much older KGBist helps save the world and looks like such a cute and wise guy. : In the park in front of the White House, he shrugs, smiles, and stops at sunset. Well what’s wrong with that?
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