A Hollywood-made action “Wanted” by Timur Bekmambetov is attacking the Russian audience. 850 copies have been put on our distribution and exhibition system simultaneously with the American premiere. 

This guy from a Kazakh city of Atyrau, the graduate from Tashkent institute (his specialty is “artist for theater and movie”), the soldier who served in artillery forces near Ashkhabad, the author of a tragic story about Russian prisoners in Afghanistan (Peshawar Waltz) - he is the man the bosses of the oldest Hollywood studio, Universal Pictures, staked on. This alien from Russia the Planet was trusted to make a movie version of popular comics Wanted by Mark Millar and G.Jones.     

Naturally, Hollywood was attracted not with Peshawar Waltz and not even with grandiose commercial clips of the Imperial Bank. The budget of $150,000,000 was given to Bekmambetov after his Night Watch and Day Watch, which are not clear but really appealing with recklessness and director’s dare, which still attracts the buyers of the disks in the US and England.   

The plot of the new blockbuster is focused around turning an office “shrimp” Wesley into a superman, a killer of genius. Sure, it happens not without interference by fortune. The hand of the fate, Angelina Jolie, dotted with ciphers and codes, grips Wesley in a local supermarket and places him into a whirl of events.             

Now we speak with Timur Bekmambetov about the purports hidden inside of the expensive pack of the movie and about future Russian films to be made with American money.  

Q: Timur, how far were you interested in ideological context of the story? The keepers of the Fortune Lathe affirm the right of the old theory: “Kill one and save thousand”. Unfortunately, this idea is greatly demanded in our history, including the actors of Russian pre-revolutionary terror.  

A: To tell the truth, I’m an expert in this question. I used to want to shoot a movie about Alexander the Second and Sophia Perovskaya. 

Q: There is a dangerous appeal about the story of turning a humiliated clerk into a superman and a killer… 

A: I think the devil is hiding in every clerk wearing out the seat of one’s pants in an office. This is the opposite side of a personality, tread down with papers. What you hide on the bottom will always go up like a flame. 

Q: Once again the magic powers of good and evil struggle in your picture. But in your “Watch” you kill the Russian oddball, played by Khabensky, practically at the beginning. And then the evil forces start to rule without limitation.     

A: Evil forces are also good forces. The good can only be produced out of evil. This is the creative impulse of the “earthshaking commune”.   

Q: You mean “Faustus”: “I’m part of the force that wants eternally the evil and does eternally the good”? Your “weavers” are a kind of a secret society like free masons, the orders of Grande Lodge…  

A: They were called “Khlysts” in Russia, and “catarrhs” in France and Italy. Somewhere else they were called “weavers”. The appeal by similar societies is great. We have shot a made-up world where weavers rule. And the fact this designed world seems to be authentic and convincing on the screen, this should be merited to Angelina Jolie. She has believed in it. I’m sure if you give her a gun and say about a certain man that he is about to kill a lot of people, she would shoot him. Well, anyway, she believes in it.

Q: Like it was in your “Watch”, the super-real powers are raging in the new movie, and there are binary codes, witches and wizards… Does your mysticism have Kazakh roots?    

A: I don’t’ know. Isn’t Russia a country that exaggerates the meaning of fate? Aren’t our compatriots featured with believing in fate instead of believing in themselves? This is why this new movie is much of Russian. The idea of taking one’s own fortune in one’s own hands and not counting on the man in the Kremlin or some miracle – all this is an actual problem for us, unsolvable yet.   

Q: And those ciphers seen on the Angelina Joliet’s hands, is there any meaning in them? Or is this a pure fantasy? 

A: No, this is a made-up but rather well-composed theory. Me personally, I believe in it. This is like a certain Lathe of Fortune exists above us. It’s all a spoof on matrix, a kind of synthesis of cinema and video. People like to see attempts of interpretation where the Supreme Information comes from. Actually, this is a variation on the ancient myths. The sisters Moiras, Zeus’s daughters that weave the threads of human fortunes.   

Q: You have reconsidered the Eisenstein’s “editing of attractions” in your own way. Did you think about that?  

A: It’s good you speak about it. I’m convinced that cinema historians have talked so much about “editing of attractions” that now the essence is emasculated. There’s only a term for using it in articles. Very few have tried to realize this technique in films. And for me this is the main thing. I have not studied the theory of editing the attractions specially. I was approaching the method in an intuitive way. This experience is like shamanism to me. The great cinema looks like shamanism. Have you ever seen a shaman call up spirits?     

Q: Only in a movie.  

A: This is an absolute movie. They show you a “film”: they drum the rhythm, then goes dancing and singing. Everything is done in regulated proportions. It would be called a good editing in the cinema. I did not analyze the research by Eisenstein, as the analysis mortifies the flesh of creativity. But when I am doing something and this turns into a creative act, there sorcery begins. I don’t even try to predict the trajectory of those invisible “rays”. I have had a good training while doing commercial clips. There I learnt to realize the responsibility for what I do. The power of the influence of the art of movie is unbelievable. A man who knows the laws of editing, like a shaman who feels the rhythm of the drum, such a man can hold the spectators on edge for two hours.        

Q: How has Hollywood influenced Bekmambetov? And is it too early to speak about reciprocal influence? 

A: It’s not about Hollywood, it’s about concrete people. I worked with a brilliant artist John Maier (“Geisha’s Memoirs”, “Elizabeth”, Oscar received for working at “Chicago”). I worked with film editor David Brenner who did all the films by Stone. There was the composer Denny Elfman (“Batman”, “Bribe’s Dead Body”, the cartoon series about Simpsons). That was a good school where I learnt much, though I was not an obedient pupil. On the contrary, I rushed into that world and dared to teach impertinently. They got interested to deal with a man who came from somewhere unknown and began to tell them how to make movies. Film director is a kind of profession where you teach everyone how to make movies. As a result, I myself learnt a lot.    

Q: Could you specify?

A: First of all, I learnt to tell the story clearly.

Q: And you have brought your share of madness into the verified scheme of the Hollywood movie.  

A: Probably so. That’s about our irrationalism.

Q: Tell me about the fantastic project by American producers: Russian film directors with Russian actors shoot movies for Russian audience …with American money used. If I understand it right, this is another attempt of penetrating our home rapidly developing market from the rear. This is an attempt of getting money out of making “Russian movies”. Is it true that you got engaged with creative producing under a contract with Universal?   

A: Americans realize it’s getting more difficult to compete in the local markets. They understand that Russians want to see Russian films. The first movie is under construction at the moment. It’s titled “Vostok…” This is the story about Soviet Union, telling it still exists. There is a big country inside of us. It will be alive as long as people are alive born by it.   

Q: What’s the American role?

A: Only financial one. The rest is decided by me. We have a lot of projects.   

Q: What has amazed you most of all in Hollywood?

A: I was really amazed with the fact how strong a stereotype inside of us is about American producers enthralling a creative personality and subordinating the freedom of the film director to their own laws. That’s an absolute lie.    

Q: Really?

A: You either don’t believe. You have seen the movie, isn’t it a proof of absence of any totalitarianism? They only helped me. That’s a cunning thing. As far as I understood, the meaning of working by the producer is finding the right person, believing this person and then helping this person as much as possible for best realization of the project. The pressure on me was hard, but that was about creative matters. Two years I lived in a state of stress and I felt pressure from all sides: producer, actors, artist, cameraman, editor. But when we reached the result at the end, I realized that the huge efforts of all those people intended to make the movie as good as possible.