Film Yuri Kara premiered

January 18, 2011

Yesterday, after 17 years, the film Master i Margarita, made by director Yuri Kara, was finally premiered in Saint Petersburg. The premiere was atten-ded by director Yuri Kara and the actors Igor Vernik (Yehuda), Sergey Garmash (Ivan Bezdomny), Aleksandr Filippenko (Koroviev) and Valentin Gaft (Woland).

The press was, to say the least, not very enthusiastic, despite the big na-mes of the actors who populate the film. Partly this will have to do with the fact that, in 2005, the public got already  acquainted with the television series Master i Margarita by director Vladimir Bortko - in which Filippenko and Gaft are to be seen too, by the way: the first as Azazello and the second in the dual role of Kaifa and the police chief. Bortko's television series was an immediate success and got the highest ratings ever on Russian television.

On the other hand, we must find the lack of critical acclaim for Yuri Kara’s film also in the shortcomings of the film itself. The technical quality of the film, which has been preserved on photographic film for 17 years, is out-dated. The actors are not always at their usual level, and the choices for the soundtrack were not really successful. In addition, the movie version has been reduced to 2 hours, which was done in a fairly awkward way, so that some dialogue are cut in the middle of a sentence.

We'll have to wait until the movie comes out on DVD for a final evaluation. The DVD version would contain the full movie of 3 hours and 20 minutes.



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