Hard the first 100 years

Soviet province , the 1980s . The young girl Varia works as a milkmaid , but dreams of breaking out of the gray village everyday life and “leaving somewhere”. She is married to a simple guy Ivan, who day and night is working on the construction of a new large house, by hook or by crook, producing a brick that was scarce at that time. Despite the mother-in-law's friendly attitude, Varya is burdened by her husband's stay in the house. Often in a dream and in reality, she presents herself in a completely different setting. So, in one of her dream visions, she finds herself with a baby in her arms in a tram racing through a city in which there is not a single living soul. In another dream, she wanders through the woods, seeing naked men and women around. She also appears on the seashore among people dressed in beautiful white costumes. One of the men tells her that he is her husband, but then he disappears. A bald-headed man says that her husband was killed and invites Varia to his yacht. Varya remembers her life before marriage - how her father washed down in black, and her mother had a new roommate.

At the weekend, Ivan invites all his friends to help with the construction of the house, arranging refreshments at his expense in the evening. After drinking, Varia confesses to her husband that she hates him and his mother, that she lived with him only because she had nowhere to go, and that she would no longer remain in their house. At night, she sets off for the city, en route to her friends at a disco along the way. In his night dream, Varya sees a shaved bald man in a white suit undress her on a yacht, Ivan bursts in and a fight breaks out, but the bald one easily overcomes him. Then the bald man pounces on Varia, but she kills him with a knife in the back. After that, she apologizes to the wounded Ivan and tells him that she loves him.

Waking up in the morning at the station, Varia buys a ticket for the evening train to Smolensk to return to her mother. In the afternoon she walks around the city, enters the clinic where she asks the doctor to have an abortion , but the doctor sends her away. Varya imagines herself drowning in a pond, and then her body is pulled out under the eyes of a curious crowd. Wandering around the city, she hides from the rain in the porch among other people, then Ivan and his mother and younger brother come up to the same place. However, they do not notice Varia.

When the train leaves (it’s clear from the train window that the action is taking place at Shilovo station), Varia meets Ivan in the vestibule. He reports that he received a summons to the investigator, perhaps because of the bricks. Gradually calmed down and talking, they move on.

The film was shot in the Ryazan region - Kasimov , Shilov , as well as Inyakino and other villages of the Shilov region ^[2] . Filming ended in 1988 . The film premiered in 1989 .

Aristov's film was unusual for its time. According to Peter Smirnov, the film conveys “the horror of everyday life, this nightmare of such an ordinary, such a familiar and such a terrible existence. It’s terrible precisely because of its ordinaryness, “normality” of the abnormal, inhuman being in which millions today reside ”; while the critic noted the realism of the film, which “tells the truth. Bitter, harsh, painful, but true. About how we live and that we can’t continue to live like that ” ^[3] . Veronika Khlebnikova writes that “out of village signs, Aristov created an image of utter emptiness, populated by people by misunderstanding or malicious intent. Someone was building a house, equipping a place that was generally not intended for construction; someone was hiding in his own, inner void, eating kychevian visions ” ^[4] .

In a review published in 1989 in The Soviet Screen , Alla Gerber noted the symbolism of the name of the film and the similarity of its plot to Russian classics: “The name is symbolic -“ It's hard for the first hundred years ”, you should not look for a social hint in it. There is a saying that in marriage it is difficult for the first hundred years, and there, you look, and feel better. The plot is based on the paraphrase of “ Thunderstorms ” by Ostrovsky . Bright soul - Varya’s wife does not love Ivan’s husband. She’s stifled and sick in the dark realm of the modern village in which she lives with her husband and mother-in-law. ” Noting the realism in the image of the modern village, the critic described Varya’s dreams of a better life as “some kind of mishmash from the Bible , Freud ,“ Around the World ”programs and“ Color Yourself ”picture books, and the ending, in which Varya reconciles with Ivan, compared with the song, “which, I am sure, the director Aristov can’t stand (I can’t vouch for the authors of the script),“ My country is wide , it has a lot of forests, fields and rivers ... “”. Gerber’s conclusion was disappointing: in her opinion, to the finale “there was a big untruth in the film, where, it seemed, the big truth was for the director” ^[5] . In 1990, the magazine published a large review of the film by a villager Yuri Tyurin, who positively assessed the picture, although about the scenes of Vari’s dreams, he noted that their “students at VGIK would not review them” and, on the whole, they “oppressed, lead to mannerisms from documenting” ^[6] .

According to critic Irina Pavlova, the fact that Varya’s complex spiritual world was conveyed by the director in a Quichy manner, but there is no author’s irony in relation to him, “creates an effect in our cinema, perhaps, that is unprecedented: the reconstruction of spirituality on the screen aesthetically inadequate form. " She also pointed out the direct connection between the aesthetics of the film and “The History of Asya Klyachina ... ”: “an improvisational method of shooting, a lot of unprofessional performers setting the tone for the special authenticity of screen life” (she is not a professional actress and performer of the role of Vari). As for the heroine’s desire for a new life, the critic compared the dreams of Moscow to the heroines of the Chekhov play “ Three Sisters ” ^[7] .

Oleg Kovalov notes that “the design of the film is so outlandish and unstable that, shrugging its shoulders, they chose not to notice it. He remained unread even today: either a hopeless anachronism , or a premature avant-garde gesture . ” According to the critic, despite the naturalism, this film “was completely devoid of social revelations”, while it “shocked something else: the heroine’s dreams and visions occupied such a huge footage, as if the film was shot by a neophyte of the sixties, crazy about the prologue of“ Strawberry Glade “” ^{[ 8]} .

According to Aristov himself, he was “unlucky” with the film in the sense that it was mainly looking for the social, an attempt to “discredit reality”, which in reality was not ^[9] :

• “It's hard for the first hundred years” in the “Encyclopedia of Russian Cinema”