Documentary film « Flowers of Ukraine » was released: UP review

How to distinguish quality movie before you buy a ticket and spend 2 hours of your life? Read the review of him and understand whether the film has its own story, whether it is clear, whether it is laid in it intrigue, or intrigue and in general the movie have a solution with the arrangement of dots over all letters « and ».

In « Flowers of Ukraine » all this is. Moreover, the intrigue just created the format of the film – that it is documentary, not invented, and in the beginning gave rise to one opinion about the development of events, and eventually changed it completely.

Documentary cinema cannot have a clear history and its development immediately. Moreover, it cannot be a predicted finale – the director does not know it, because according to the human nature and specificity of the physical world described by Einstein, it is not able to look into the future. Therefore, each documentary is a clean lottery: it remains a mystery whether it will take out interesting moments or not. Because of this, some directors have been filming for years, hoping to find such interesting things and reach a good finale.

« Flowers of Ukraine » may be the same example when the film is shot, as if going on a trip with a ticket without the exact date of return. Director Adelina Borets, a Ukrainian who graduated from Warsaw Film School in Poland, returned to Ukraine to shoot a documentary about Ms. Natalia. The idea was to show an unusual person and his effort to survive in unusual conditions.

It is unusual that Mrs. Natalia lived in a tissued old house in the middle of the high -rise buildings of the left bank of Kiev in 67 years. Why didn’t she move anywhere? Because she did not want it, having goats, rabbits and cane. How legitimate it is – the film does not report, hinting at the possibility of legal illegality on the one hand, but formal right to life on the other.

Of course, the contrast is wild. For this reason, Ms. Natalie is visited by all kinds of court executors, representatives of the district and excavators in order to first persuade or bribe or, if not, just demolish their house, as self -putting on the MAFs. It could all create a noticeable picture. Or ointment.

Frame from the movie « Flowers of Ukraine »

In the beginning, the heroine looks rather strange, causing a rather unpleasant impression than a person should cause, of course, difficult circumstances. It’s all about tangible theatricality, whether it is heating – when a person knows that they are removed and « working » specifically on the camera. To get away from this feeling – that you are offered an Erzatz life – you should delve a little into the entourage.

And the heroine is really surrounded by its own small world, where rural animals emerge from the borders to the local garages and car parks, where roses and sunshine grow, where two strange, not to the end of healthy and no longer young men, or partners of the heroine (two!)

Here the controversy borders with social freedom, relaxation – with violation of all possible rules and limits. And with the duration and immersion in these infinity, a little different Mrs. Natalia appears before the viewer, who was not banal, even extravagant, in vain, living in a shack, which is reminiscent of squad.

Frame from the movie « Flowers of Ukraine »

Observing this elegy, outlined by the central idea of ​​the film, changes sharply under the influence of the same circumstances that define documentary – life changes, going far beyond its local perception.

On February 24, 2022, a full -scale invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine begins. And this, no matter how wildly sounds for the viewer, a wonderful occasion for the director, the expected and rescue, which changes the clear course of existence in a certain charm. Because it causes the heroine to change, moreover – survive.

Shelling of Kiev rockets, which was not yet covered by the « Petriots », which over time provided « deeply concerned » partners of Ukraine, drive Ms. Natalia into the underground repository of preserved tomatoes, now providing a hiding place for a person.

Loneliness (she took out one of her men, the least adequate, to Poland) and the desire to somehow help the defenders of the city, pushes in search of options. Here is Mrs. Natalia gets to the ranks of Troboron, here makes Molotov cocktails, here we weave camouflage nets, here he goes to the places of arrivals, communicating with the locals for « How to help? » and « what to do? »

Another line in the movie is Ms. Natalie’s grandson. Where is her mother, how did she appear, where does she live? No one says anything about it, hiding or at least not publishing personal drama and pain. However, the girl grows up in joy, coexisting with her grandmother, under her naive, but the passionate doctrines of independence, about language and in general about Ukraine.

It is like a continuation of life, as if another way out of it were given by society towards freedom. The grandson is not an independent heroine, only by denoting the new circumstance of Ms. Natalie’s life, but this « circumstance » is important. At the beginning of the film, she notes the focus of the heroine of the film, and in the finale affirms the correctness and future of her progress – if Ukraine is now territorially opposed to the invasion of Russian freaks, then the grandson is the time of Ms. Natalie, and therefore Ukraine itself.

Frame from the movie « Flowers of Ukraine »

In this everything, real to boredom from the initial civilian peace and to the further horror of the war, a constant neighbor, a relative or even an integral spirit was a director, Adelina Borets. She was silently shooting it as Ms. Natalia sunbathing in her chair; She rocked with her in dancing with her husband; She descended into the basement, hiding from shelling; She looked at her through a mesh for masking; Went burning; went to Warsaw; She returned to Kiev. And all the time she lived with this person, marking the flowers of her life – from roses, goats and potatoes, baths, chairs and writing letters to men and grandchildren.

Frame from the movie « Flowers of Ukraine »

This is how the movie with an unpredictable story and a wonderful ending. It took some 2 years of life of two women who just love flowers.