Kids on holiday

8. 7. 2010 / Ema Čulík

The station is run by Sergei Vitalievich Gulybin, an experienced meterologist who has obviously spent years working in this place, having witnessed a number of terrible encounters in his time, and whose only weakness is for fresh arctic trout and his beloved wife and son. With him is Pavel Danilov, in his mid twenties, who is constantly plugged into his mp3 player, and who runs the telemetry -- an automated version of the work that Gulybin does, recording weather data from all the instruments. The two men are quite alone at the station and have been for months. Their only link to the outside world is a radio communicator to the head base, where they send the data once a day.

The two men have a somewhat awkward relationship -- Gulybin is set in his ways and has no interest in making friends. Pavel is, of course, energetic and bored and tries to make a connection with him. However, Pavel is not as careful as he might be, and Sergei Vitalievich does not put up with mistakes and anything less than a completely serious attitude to the work and life on the station.

Unfortunately, Pavel is not as responsible as may be desired. He forgets to load the gun that they must always carry against bears. He oversleeps the one time when Sergei leaves him to hand-record the meteo readings. The relationship between them reminds me a little of one of Russia's eternal problems, as expressed most famously in Turgenev's 1862 novel Fathers and Sons. The differences between two generations are so great that they find it impossible to understand each other. Although Popogrebsky's characters express their generation gap less explicitly than in Turgenev's philosophical arguments, the tension between them is nevertheless almost tangible.

Here, apart from the simple difference in age - and hence mentality, experience - and hence attitude, there is also a technological gap between them. For one, Sergei Vitalievich has spent his life recording the data by hand, learning how to be precise and organising his life around it. Pavel, however, has come up to the station to test a new system that will record the data automatically, basically making Sergei Vitalievich's work obsolete. In daily life, too, he is behind the times. His wife sends him a text message (care of the central base) to say that she and their son are travelling to Kislovodsk, and signs it with a "smailik" (☺). Sergei Vitalievich needs Pavel to translate. It is clear that Sergei is an elder that should be respected, but we are shown that the young also have a certain advantage.

Into this gunpowder keg a spark falls that sets it all off. While Sergei Vitalievich is away fishing, Pavel receives a message over the radio that Gulybin's wife and son have been "seriously injured" in an accident(they are dead). Pavel writes it all down as he should, and probably would have passed it on, too, but when Sergei arrives he asks Pavel to help him with all the fish he has caught. Pavel hesitates to give the news. Then Sergei discovers that Pavel had overslept one of the meteo checks, and, since he is in trouble, Pavel hesitates again. Time goes on, and Pavel misses one opportunity after another to pass on the news. Eventually, too much time has passed to tell, as, he imagines, Gulybin's grief and anger would be multiplied by the delay. We can see that Pavel is not thinking about Sergei Vitalievich at all, but about himself. He is worried about being in trouble, he is worried about what Sergei will do to him on hearing the news. And so he just digs himself deeper and deeper into a mess, and with each dig, the viewer's stomach ties tighter and tighter into a frustrated knot. Thrillers are good when you want to start shouting at the screen, "No, you idiottt!!!!!"

Things just go from bad to worse. At central base they keep on asking for Gulybin on the radio, and Pavel buys himself time by sticking some tinfoil into the wire to cause interference. Then he feels guilty and undoes it. They keep telling him, "Just so you understand, this is really serious". He never appears to get it into his head. Central base decides to send a helicopter, as they know that something bad is going on. Pavel sets off to the South Lagoon to meet the helicopter and Gulybin, who is fishing there. He gets lost in the mist, wastes a flare without being found, then runs into a polar bear and starts fleeing in a panic. He falls down a cliff and is knocked unconscious. Luckily for him, Gulybin finds him and treats his concussion (with a cold fish on the face). We giggle, but Pavel is being put in his place.

They land back home, and it's too late -- Pavel finally has to tell the truth in order for them to be found by the helicopter. Sergei Vitalievich won't listen to him, and so, "Your family's dead!!" he shouts. Sergei turns around, takes a couple of steps towards Pavel, who gets spooked, panic and paranoia take over him, and he tries to shoot. Out of sheer annoyance and surprise, Sergei Vitalievich takes the other rifle and shoots back (missing on purpose). Then Pavel runs away and spends two days on the freezing island with no food (apart from two eggs he finds in a nest), hiding from Gulybin, who, he is sure, is going to kill him. We, though, can tell from the look in the man's eyes, murder is the last thing on his mind. Pavel gets cold and frozen and warms himself on a radioactive isotope beaker. Exhausted, he accidentally falls on it for a second and then rolls on the ground in panic. It's almost embarrassing to see him -- what paranoia and silliness has driven him to. He goes back to the house to steal some of the fish drying on the eaves. It doesn't agree with him and he thinks that Sergei has poisoned it somehow. (Though, might it not be because of the radiation poisoning he has just given himself?) He retaliates by holding Sergei's stash of fish deep in the flow of radiation. The viewer thinks "Argh". All this time Sergei Vitalievich has been looking for the boy, as he is aware of the dangers he faces and wants to prevent any accidents.

They only reconcile once Pavel watches Sergei eat the poisoned fish and then tells him what he has done. Sergei calmly goes and vomits it up. Pavel has realised that Sergei is not going to kill him. The next day a boat comes and takes Pavel away home, Sergei knows he has to stay at the station. Pavel goes back to civilisation and Sergei is left alone with the arctic sky.

Pavel hated being treated like a child, and yet we see that his behaviour merited nothing else. Early in the film, Sergei tells him the seriousness of the situation. Many people have died here, you can't just loaf around. This is not a fun trip for you to write about when you get home in an essay "How I spent my summer" (As all Russian children do every year at school). By the end of the film, we can see that he has done exactly that. He has worked extremely little, and all that has resulted is some bizarre adventure lacking rhyme or reason . The title repeats this phrase, with grammatical inconsistency ( ŤКак я провел этим летомť - it should be just ŤКак я провел летоť) no doubt emphasising Pavel's childishness.

Is it all his fault, though? Perhaps Sergei should have done more to encourage the young apprentice. But is that his responsibility? The relationship between these two men mirrors a situation I see often in Russia where young people think one way and the older people in authority another. Sometimes the youths really are just young and rash and mistaken, but not always. Much of the older generation in Russia shares a very bitter stubbornness and refusal to respect young people's opinions. On the other hand, young people do not make an effort to put themselves in their elder's place. In a country like Russia where society has always been constantly and quickly changing to such a dramatic extent, it is unsurprising that there will be a great difference between generations. Popogrebsky's beautifully organised and subtle and yet gripping film isolates this problem and brings it to life in his penetrating and balanced script and sensitive performances from Puskapelis and Dobrygin. He pushes it to a certain extreme in a warning against not listening to those around us and not thinking about the big picture.

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