Scarecrow (1984 film)
| Scarecrow | |
|---|---|
.jpg) |
|
| Directed by | Rolan Bykov |
| Produced by | Sergei Woolman |
| Starring |
Christina Orbakaite Yuri Nikulin Elena Sanayeva Rolan Bykov Svetlana Kryuchkova |
| Music by | Sofia Gubaidulina |
| Cinematography | Anatoly Mukasei |
|
Release date
|
|
|
Running time
|
127 minutes |
| Country | USSR |
| Language | Russian |
Scarecrow (Russian: Чучело or Chuchelo) is a 1984 Soviet drama film dealing with bullying directed by Rolan Bykov.
Full of dramatic collisions, the film is loosely based on the novel by Vladimir Zheleznikov.
The film opens with two colliding scenes in a rural Russian village. In one scene, school children are ruthlessly bullying and harassing a young girl, who begins running away from them as they increase the level of taunting and pressure. At the river's edge in the village, a ferryboat with tourists is pulling up to the dock while a tour guide extols the historic and architectural beauty of the village they are about to visit. As the passengers are getting off the boat, the mob chasing the young girl comes into view. The children push her down, then kick and beat her while the horrified tourists look on and express their shock. An old man runs up and yells "How shameful!" and the bullies scatter. The old man picks up the girl and takes her away.
In the next scene, the young girl is in a house with the old man. She is Lena Bessoltseva, living with her grandfather, a military veteran and art collector. He dresses her wounds and asks her what the attack was all about. She equivocates, but then slowly reveals the reason for the bullying over the course of the film, which is told in a series of flashbacks. When she arrived at the school, she acquired the nickname "scarecrow" due to a clumsy fall in class. She then develops a liking for the most popular boy in class, threatening the established social order. The young girl Shmakova, once the favorite of the class hero Somov, now has to move to another desk. This tension leads to much of the drama later in the movie.
The students are excited about an upcoming spring break trip to Moscow, but are told by the teacher to get the money for the trip from their parents. Lena comes up with the idea of raising the money by working at a nearby farm. The teacher is supportive and the project gets under way, with Lena and Somov getting closer as friends. But when the group returns from work to the classroom and see the note from the teacher about a literature lesson, they instead come up with the idea of running off to the theater to watch a movie. Somov insists that they must follow the teacher's directives, but other students berate him for thinking he's in charge. To save face, he agrees with the plan to go to the movies. They rush out, but Somov forgets the money, and Lena falls and gashes her knee when running back to get it. Somov returns for the money, and Lena returns for a bandage, where she overhears a heated exchange between the teacher and Somov, who admits that the class ran off to the movies.
...
Wikipedia