Brother for the whole country: how we remember and love Sergei Bodrov

Why do we love him? The easiest way to say this is "Brother." But Danila Bagrov would come out as a tortured type, if Bodrov did not have something that you do not play. An art critic by training, he was not an actor “of the people”, but in the frame was surprisingly real. The guy with “Nautilus” in headphones walked along the streets of St. Petersburg, and the whole country recognized himself, his brother, his neighbor.

Before "Brother" was "Caucasian prisoner", which was nominated for "Oscar". Then "Brother-2" and "East-West" by Régis Varnier, where Bodrov played a young Soviet swimmer Sasha Vasiliev. One of the last roles - Captain Medvedev in "War" Alexei Balabanov. As a director, he shot “Sisters”, and then went to work on “The Messenger”.

A separate chapter is "The View." In the autumn of 1996, Bodrov sat down at a table next to Alexander Lyubimov and worked there until August 1999. The program, as one of its participants recalled, lived under the slogan: politics is when people are engaged, and since no one is engaged in them, we will. And we did. They helped with housing and work: in the studio they read appeals for help, transferred them to the ministries, and employed them. On New Year’s Eve they took the accumulated letters to Santa Claus and fulfilled children’s dreams. One story Bodrov remembered especially: a boy from the province, who asked for a windpipe for his older brother, arranged a surprise: when he returned from school, a whole brass band waited for him at the entrance. Then the pipe was handed in person.

And yet, for twenty-four years, it seems to us that he has not finished. But the most important thing, I said. The only recipe for anything is to be sincere. A child’s letter to Santa Claus, “as to the Lord God, is a prayer.” You always have to fight for the truth. And every issue of "The View" he ended the same way, in between, as if holding on to the doorknob: "In general, everything is just beginning.".