FROM ALEKSEI UCHITEL'S PRESS CONFERENCE

rockfilm.ru

"Sources for the film are mostly the diaries of Bunin's wife, of Bunin himself, of the writer Gurov, and the diary of Galina Kuznetzova, which was actually called "The Grasse Diaries". The thing is, though, that even "The Grasse Diaries" contain not a word about a romance between Bunin and Galina. Everything is veiled, it's like "I'm a student and no more than that". Although the story was the talk of pretty much the whole émigré community back then. That's why, even if we've added something fictional, it's only in the details.

Our difficulties were mainly financial. The picture was made possible with funds from the State Cinematography Commission, which funded almost 90% of it. In September 1998 we had planned and arranged for an expedition to Tunisia, where we were supposed to shoot the whole Grasse period of Bunin's life. I mean, all the contracts were signed with the local studios, the hotel was booked, the locales had been chosen, equipment was brought in. The filming was supposed to start on September 5th. And then in August of 1998 the market crashed.

We had to stay home, losing all the deposits we'd made. Back then I thought the project was dead. But strangely enough, the pause was good for us creatively: the screenplay was altered, new actors appeared. In the end we'd shot it in Yalta, but not because it was any cheaper. Klimenko, the cameraman, had talked me into it: "Let's go to Yalta, it looks a lot more like Côte d'Azur." And it was true.

His Wife's Diary is a film about loneliness.

That's the most important thing. Paradoxically, this theme is very up-to-date. Lots of people are suffering from loneliness now. In the film loneliness is a constant feeling, it's floating in the air. I really wanted the viewers to feel sorry for every character – that was what I was after. In the end, Bunin's only friend is a dog: he lets it sleep in his bed and reads to it from his manuscripts.

The film is about a truly remarkable man. But, firstly, it is not a straightforward biography, and secondly, I tried to show, through his personal life, what had enabled him to write like that. He went through the shock of having the young woman he was desperately in love with leave him for another woman, he kept silent for three years, and then he wrote Dark Alleys. An amazingly youthful, erotic work, as if he wasn't 70 years old at the time!

When I met with my American viewers I kept asking them: "Why did you watch it? You don't know Bunin, you don't know his work..." You know what they told me? That they'd felt an emotional response to the story, because each of them had found some parallels in it with their own lives. I think the main objective of cinema today is not just to get the viewer to like the picture but to make a person recognize himself in it. That's when empathy grows ten times as strong.

There was one great moment during the filming that convinced me I was on the right track. The house where we were shooting was literally a house, not a pavilion or a piece of scenery. We lived there too, actually. And we had some locals living there that moved equipment for us. One day one of them came up to Smirnov with a book by Bunin and said: "Mr. Bunin, could I have your autograph?" Smirnov laughed and signed, and I knew we'd struck home."