The premiere of the short-length movie “The Enemies” took place in Yerevan recently. The director of the film, screenwriter and producer Davit Matevosyan, has turned the synonymous short story of Russian writer Vsevolod Garshin in the dramaturgical basis of his film. He did that with advice given to him by his father, the great writer Hrant Matevosyan, who had once said that Garshin’s short story may turn into a very touching film, and the filming would not require a lot of money.
The plot of the short story and the film are simple – two soldiers, two people, who fight in opposing armies, get injured and are on the verge of death, and realize that in reality they are not trivial enemies, rather people with the same destiny, whom nobody needs in this world and who may consider themselves human beings only by forgetting about the war and remembering the essence of being human. Garshin is a very delicate, emotional, and severely honest author, and is often called the “Russian Hamlet” because he constantly wants to find the answers to the most uncomfortable and painful questions.
Garshin’s heroes are often above the times and a certain space; they are concerned about the struggle between good and evil, and do everything they can to get rid of injustice. In one of the short stories, for example, the heroes pick the allegoric, evil-incorporating “red flower”. For Garshin, one of the most brilliant manifestations of injustice is war. Being a participant of the Russian-Turkish war, he has seen the slaughter of mankind, that which breaks destinies. He has noticed that wars originate not from the hatred towards the enemy or the understanding of the truth of oneself, rather the unconscious, destructive inner force. There are never winners in a war, because all are losers. The only counterbalance to war is the wholeness of man, which prohibits man to split and turn into a beast.
These are the thoughts of Garshin, and Davit Matevosyan has turned them into a simple film, almost without action.
The subtitle “In the 20th century, somewhere”, which appears in the beginning of the film, reminds the viewer that the author wants to generalize the issue.
“The enemies are the Armenian and the Azerbaijani, but they could also very well be Georgian and Abkhazian,” he says.
Only one of the episodes of the film pinpoints that the film deals with the Karabakh war, as the viewer hears the conversations of Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers, shots are heard in the mountainous villages, and mines are exploded. Then silence…two injured enemies rely on hope. The Armenian (Edgar Minasyan) and the Azerbaijani (Ashot Adamyan) are in the same immobile situation and are doomed to die together. They can either die by cursing from their lips and the weapons in their hands, or try to be useful to one another. Such plots serve as an occasion for interesting psychological observations; it is enough to recall the famous American film “The Chained with one Chain” where the heroes first lie to each other and then in the end become friends, because they understand that the salvation of one depends on the salvation of the other. Salvation, in all times and situations, depends on remaining human. In Garshin’s and Matevosyan’s “Enemies” man also wins; he slowly comes out from the inside of the heroes on the verge of dying. The Azerbaijani makes the first attempt to help the enemy. He is older and more mature, is ready to offer a couple of sips of vodka to the Armenian and, understanding that he is on the brink of dying, cover the enemy with his own coat.
“Your enemy covered and saved you. That also happens,” say Armenian medics who put the Armenian soldier in the car and take him away at the end of the film. Garshin’s plot may be easily used in any situation, because it has a happy ending similar to that of a fairy-tale. It is not by chance that the author has called most of his short stories “fairy-tales for adults”. In the Armenian film, that fairy-tale can be first seen in the subtle acting of Ashot Adamyan. He has created the role of a man who has come home from war tired, and all the more wise; has not overdone his acting or softened the inner conflicts of man. The aggression in his character has changed into natural kindness. What can people give to each other? Just a couple of drops of warmness. That is both the least and the most precious thing at the same time. At first, Matevosyan really wanted to have a real Azerbaijani play the role of the Azerbaijani and had even asked a couple of actors; but the Azerbaijanis had refused to take the risk of participating in the Armenian film because they didn’t know how that would be interpreted in their homeland. The film “Enemies” is a little schematic in structure (there are also songs/memories of the Armenian hero sung by a small Armenian girl, and those songs are supposed to symbolize the idea of the native land), but it has a very clear message. It is hard to say how it will be interpreted in Armenia because the consequences of the war are still fresh and painful in the hearts of many, and many people are not ready to move from the reality to the abstract. The film may be successful in international film festivals. “Enemies” is the first film by Davit Matevosyan. It required a lot of work on the part of the author, who had a very small budget. A part of the needed funding was provided by the Swedish “Focal” company.
“I wanted to say that man must never change his way in any situation,” says Davit, who has outlined that idea very precicely in his film.