Russian Federation
This article examines Felix Umarov’s 2024 film The Prophet. The Story of Alexander Pushkin as a contemporary act of communicative and cultural interpretation of the image of Alexander Pushkin as a “canonized” figure of Russian literature for a twenty-first-century audience. The present study has a syncretic character, determining how modern communicative and cinematographic techniques (primarily the integration of contemporary music, choreographic episodes, and dynamic editing) function as psychological instruments and kinetic-kinesthetic (non-verbal) means that translate the internal conflicts of Alexander Pushkin’s personality into a visual-auditory language accessible to the modern viewer. The image of the Great Poet, traditionally presented as a monumental and almost mythologized national symbol, is reinterpreted through the communicative and cinematographic techniques of his modernization used by the director, as well as through specific representational means: Alexander Pushkin in literature and cinema has often been depicted as a detached, flawless genius. F. Umarov’s film disrupts this established narrative by dismantling the static image of the poet and reconstructing him as an emotionally vulnerable, politically constrained, and internally contradictory individual. Drawing upon theories of screen representation that make it possible to establish mechanisms of representing reality and image (or media image), as well as upon the psychology of musical perception and the concept of historical periodization, a contemporary visual image is formed. Special attention is paid to the depiction of personal and social relationships: Alexander Pushkin’s relationship with Natalia Goncharova, his complex interaction with Emperor Nicholas I, and the emotional consequences of the Decembrist uprising. The performance of Alexander Pushkin by Yura Borisov, a young actor who has already become widely known among cinema audiences, is considered as a central element in humanizing the image of the poet and as a factor ensuring the emotional realism of the film’s stylistic experiments and a “new” interpretation of the well-known national symbol.
Alexander Pushkin, national image, director’s concept, communicative and cinematographic techniques, cultural identity, historical myth, cinematic language, representational means
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