On the specifics of a contemporary film interpretation of village prose: Brothers and Sisters by F. А. Abramov — Two Winters and Three Summers by T. R. Esadze

Abstract

The author focuses on the recent film adaptation of the iconic work of village prose — the novel tetralogy Brothers and Sisters by Fyodor Abramov. Teimuraz Esadze’s TV series Two Winters and Three Summers (2014), which was shown on Russia 1, is considered as a part of a large-scale process that sociologist Boris Dubin has called reconciliation with the Soviet past (an important symptom of this process was a wave of film adaptations of Soviet classics in the second half of the 2000–2010s). Insisting that Abramov’s novels are classics of Russian literature, Esadze sought to extract from them, first, relevant formulas of collective identity, and second, explanatory models capable of shedding light on social processes in late- and post- Soviet society. In the article, the way the director uses the conceptual apparatus and imaginative and rhetorical system of village prose is interpreted as an attempt to reanimate the critical discourse of late-Soviet neopochvennichestvo in new conditions. The article examines the ambivalent strategy of Esadze’s TV series, on the one hand, oriented toward a precise reproduction of Abramov’s text, and on the other hand, taking into account the narrative and figurative logic of the TV series, usually addressed to a mass audience. The article concludes that such a strategy has a low analytical and reflexive potential, depending on the generalized media image of a Russian village, internalized through literary, film- and television representations, collective (family) or personal memories.