Myra and I are still watching Idiot. One more session to go. But I need something to watch while running on the elliptical machine, so for that I’ve been re-watching Obyknovennoye Chudo. With the music and all the weird scene changes it’s a good one to accompany physical activity.

Speaking of strange twists, this is one I missed before. It’s a scene to make you go, “Huh? Where did that come from?” It takes place at the remote hunting lodge in the mountains. It’s a scene that has nothing to do with anything that has gone before, as far as I can tell. The hunter is comparing his craft to literary or artistic work, complete with the critics he has to endure.

On the other hand, maybe it does have something to do with what has gone before. The volshebnik (writer/magician) who is creating the story that is unfolding wants to do something interesting with his talents. But his creative efforts are for the sake of his wife, not for the sake of innovation or creativity.

As one who has long thought that teaching creativity is a good way to kill creativity, it could be that I agree with Mark Zakharov on the subject. (It’s risky to be absolutely certain about it, given my unfamiliarity with the language. I probably miss a lot of subtle points that would help me understand better.)

It’s hard to know what to make of it. Just when we think we’re getting the idea of what it is, it does something unexpected. There is music that might be from an old James Bond movie, but what is that with a magician and scenes from the wild west (or east, in the case of a Russian movie)? The magician and his wife are definitely not a Usual Magician and spouse. And it’s not a Usual Bear-turned-into-a-man. The role of king seems made for Evgeni Leonov, but it’s not a Usual King. If you like swordfight scenes, there is one with a charming end to it. It’s a love story, maybe three or more love stories, but it’s hard to say whether they’re silly or profound. And it’s hard to say how all the parts are going to come together in the end.

Most of it seems made more for the stage than the screen. The movie is from 1978, from the Soviet days.

Wikipedia tells us that socialist realism requires the showing of the typical life of people, and there is certainly a lot of that in movies from the Soviet era, but there is also a lot that’s far from it — in unusual combinations.

This is a mixed up explanation, but then the movie a mixed up thing, too. We’re liking it so far.