The Garage

"I'm involved with contemporary Soviet satire." "That's really remarkable, you're involved with something that doesn't exist..." An approximate paraphrase of one of the dialogues of Ryazanov's film, which, however, proves the opposite. For its time and the intolerance of the Soviet apparatus, this is in fact a bold project based on the director's authentic experience. The meeting of members of the team for the construction of garages at Mosfilm is alternated in the film by the same association at the Zoological Museum, but the initial conflict is the same – due to the construction of the highway, 4 members must be excluded and deprived of garages. The cascade of excellently written dialogues and situational gags that follows has a clear social overlap and satirizes socialist society with all its hypocrisy, feigned justice, organization, empathy, and subliminal crap with which one buys one's little safe space. Each of the participants take care of the acting concert, also thanks to the fantastically written characters, who often profile themselves in a minimal space and provide a very wide register of characters and motivations. An interesting counterpoint to people is the environment of stuffed animals, which somehow quietly comment on the absurdity of the surrounding events (the pendulum in the form of piranhas will stick with me for a long time). The intimate and theatrically tuned story, which only exceptionally leaves the spaces of the exhibition hall where the meeting takes place, offers honestly constructed filmmaking, prototypical work with dynamics, with pointing out of the situation... Basically a social satire in full force, whose fate was long-term contempt and projection in the hidden cinemas of the Moscow underground... Over time, it can only be stated that Ryazanov's film did not lose its relevance with the change in the political system, and although it clearly advocates a socialist establishment (surprisingly to the fullest), most caricatured features are relevant to modern times. With a bit of exaggeration, one can draw a parallel with Forman's film The Firemen's Ball... (29.03.2007)