There is nowhere you can see him
Today every article about Oleg Menshikov (further referred to by an abbreviated, or maybe complete name O.M.) starts with the statement that he does not appear anywhere, rarely gives interviews and leads a secluded life of a real star.
At last! "Let's be patient, and we shall become people as well", says Russian proverb. So, our "teenager country" as Mayakovsky called it, finally, after a lot of sufferings, gave birth to a true star. O.M. is elected as star in a most democratic way - by the public in general as well as by the thinking public, that is the critics, in particular. He is being buried in awards and moved aside to the sky. It looks like "Go away and stop showing up!" We urgently need our own, Russian, home-bred Greta Garbo. We deserve her! The artist himself wrongly thinks that the myths and legends about him are made up by the journalists. Journalists do play a certain role in it - they are like bearers of some general concept about O.M., which spontaneously appears in the masses. Who was the first to say that O.M. will star in Stephen Spielberg's film for 7.5 million dollars? Silence. No-one said it, but he will most probably work with someone of this kind for approximately the same sum of money. That is what Russia wishes him. The myth about Spielberg and O.M. started its independent life in the mass media. The extreme stage of this social madness was embodied by a woman, Bela Sherstnyova, who during a whole week recorded her messages on the auto responder of TV presenter Sergey Sholokhov and persistently asked him to pass a screenplay for Spielberg through Oleg Menshikov. It's only with the help of a determined will effort that I stopped this triple spiral of madness… When I was amusing my friends with stories about our native "Kinotavr" festival, every time the communication interrupted at the same place: that is, at the effort of telling them about O.M.'s presence on this festival. People would look at me with distrust and caution (perhaps, for my mental health?). " But guys, that's true, I saw him with my own eyes - he was drinking vodka with watermelon, just like everybody". "Vodka with what?" "With wa-watermelon", said I, already starting to doubt in the truthfulness of my own impressions. Finally, I had a brain-wave. They did not need that image, quite lively and attractive, which I was trying to transmit. They are tired of the general accessibility and cliches. They want someone heroic and ineffable, inaccessible, unapproachable, divine. Excuse me, what watermelon are you talking about? But if I told them that, according to my secret information, O.M. lives in the castle of the Snow Queen and wants to form the word "eternity" from ice, everything would fall into place. Soon we would read in the newspapers that O.M. knows for sure how to form the eternity from ice, but he did not agree with the Snow Queen about the price: O.M. demands the whole world and the skates in addition, but it's just the skates that the Queen does not want to give him… I meat an acquaintance of mine, a young director, let's call him M.P. "I am going to shoot a movie, says he, I need actors". "Take O.M." "Oh, no, it's impossible, no one can get through to him". "Well, M.P., I say to myself, a person who can't get through to the actor he needs, probably is not a director". Come on, people, find a way and get through. Time is right to do the impossible.

There is nothing you can read about him
I mean, if you have bought in the underground the "Ogonyok" magazine, with O.M. on the cover, no one will certainly take it away from you. And if you didn't - that's it, that's the end. I went to the theatre library with the intention to read what people had previously written about O.M. I don't like writings of the kind "Hey everyone move away, I am going to speak". You should mind the viewpoints of the people who thought about the same things that you do now. O.M. has quite a rich bibliography. But there was almost nothing to read. All materials were torn out, cut out, stolen and carried away by the passionate hands of unknown bacchantes and maenads! (And, as I think they are planning to steal my article as well, I beg them, don't do it. Poor things, I understand the passion that overwhelms you, but it is forbidden to steal from the libraries. Because - it is forbidden. Go and buy "Seans" No.15). Anyway, I still managed to read something. The opinions of the critics are quite similar. Alexandr Timofeyevsky unreservedly calls O.M. a "genius". Alexandr Sokoliansky with a straightforwardness which is quite unusual for him, considers O.M. to be a "hero of our time". And these are the male critics. As for the female critics, everything is clear without any explanations. The fatal quality of the stars is to arouse love. This is necessary for something, I suppose. Perhaps, for the "increasing of the amount of love"? God knows. I - don't.

Does he really exist?
O.M. is of medium height, well built. Interestingly pale. He has black eyes, just like the majority of Dostoevsky's favourite characters. "Ochi chernye", so to say. These eyes can express everything. A divine inspiration as well as a demonic mockery. By the way, he is not a tenor, he is baritone. I found out about O.M.'s early theatre works from a miraculously saved article by Svetlana Kurach ("Theatre", 1986, No.5). She used to think like that: "The images created by Menshikov are not pierced by one uniting theme, important for the actor. The common trace of all his personages is the love for life and thirst for activity" (p. 90). The critics of that time were pierced by the idea of a certain "theme" that should pierce the actors. I remember very well that we, who were born in the late '50s - early '60s, at the moment of '80s were united by this very "love for life and thirst for activity". But I can't recall any theme… It is clear from the critical works, that O.M. has been a classical, traditional Russian actor of the Hudojestvenny Theatre School since his youth. He could have performed in that very inimitable Russian play with Vsevolod Meyerkhold as Trepliov and Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky as Trigorin. He understood his characters and reincarnated in them completely. He performed the spoiled boy Bulanov ("Forest" by A.N. Ostrovsky) without any condemnation: "Of course, writes the critic, he is somewhat silly, a bit of a coward, too obsequious, but we have no intention at all to stigmatise him as a scoundrel" ("Teatr", 1986, No.5, p.92). As for the description of Ganya Ivolgin performed by O.M., it coincides with the words of Dostoevsky himself: "There is a touch of devilry in the unkind brilliance of his black eyes, fixed upon the duke, and in the caustic smile, curling from time to time his thin lips" (in the same passage). So, like a real Dostoievsky's character, O.M. has inside himself devil as well as God…
The intelligentsia went to the theatre. As for the public in general, it got acquainted with O.M. in the image of Kostik from M.Kozakov's "The Pokrovskie Gate". Nice boy, easy, cheerful, smart, fantastically charming. Tatiana Mitkova herself (!), Madam NTV, called Kostik her favourite film character in the famous "Seans" questionnaire (No.7), dedicated to our generation. Most probably, I liked the film, but I didn't pay much attention to O.M. I liked such easy people in life, but it were the dismal passions and great struggle that I sought for in the art. It was the stern wave of the "Red Russian Rock". It was the time when I was standing on the backs of chairs in the ruined palaces of culture and was shouting to Konstantin Kinchev "We are together!". It was the time when Sergey Sholokhov in his "Fifth Wheel" TV program was inventing Sex and Eros for the Russian people, and they believed him. It was the time when we were fighting the Dragon! We appreciated the fantastic charm of O.M., but we did not need it. Flowers are useless during the war. In Mikhalkov's "Kinfolk" and Balayan's "Flights In Dreams And In Reality " O.M. played a kind of a general "portrait of the youth". It was impossible to say anything definite. A good young man. Brash. Arch. He knows for sure on which side his bread is buttered. Who can say what he is capable of? We know that further O.M. played my favourite childhood hero Maximilian Robespierre and Caligula from Albert Camus' drama staged by Peter Fomenko. How did he play? Virtuously, of course, how else. Somebody saw people who heard something about those who saw it. Here the pages of our narration are lighted by the image of Vanessa Redgrave, filled with sublime sorrow. The main personage of Antonioni's "Blow-up" having decided to play the role of the famed dancer Isadora Duncan materialises in Russia with a piquant task - to find a Russian actor who would be the exact copy of the great poet Sergey Esenin. The result of this tense and somewhat torturous search was that the eccentric English lady abducted our O.M., who resembles Esenin as much as Eltsin resembles Gorbachiov, but it looks like she didn't care about that anymore. Blow-up! It was a quick and painless abduction. England was the privilege of our prince Hamlet, and so the public sighed with understanding and let him go. Thus parting lovers whisper to each other: "It will be better for both of us"…All in all, our Homme Fatal passed under Vanessa Redgrave's wing the time of the social economic structures replacement, privatisation, everything that we had had enough of here - and as they say, in a relative financial wellbeing. It is good. What would he do here, receive coupons for vodka in the house operation office? He was conferred some European award for the role in the drama "When She Danced". We don't know how he played there, and so we won't waste words and will just say that, after she had finished dancing, O.M. returned to his homeland and performed in the piece "N". This is what I saw myself and what I will write about. "N" was based on the diaries of the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. Redgrave must have infected O.M. with the idea of dance. When I was a child, I used to write fairy-tales. One of them began with the words: "Every night, when snow was falling behind the windows, the sofa would slightly move. But it wasn't a sofa anymore!…" So, it wasn't Nijinsky! Here are two evaluations. Nina Agisheva ("Teatr", 1993, No.8, p.15-18): "A real romantic hero is born very seldom, once in fifty years perhaps. Maybe, there has been no such hero since the time of Pavel Orlenev. Menshikov appears to be an artist of a theatre which is even more realistic than the Hudojestvenny Theatre of Moscow <…> time favours him. <…> In all his roles Oleg Menshikov besides all other things always plays a clown and a child, that very God's Clown that the insane Nijinsky dreamed of. There was something of the Little Prince even in his Caligula, something touching, childish and veracious". Of course, the critics of our generation acknowledged him at once as one of their circle. Although it's hard to agree with the statement that O.M. is more realistic than the Hudojestvenny Theatre. It is an excess. But the words about the "veraciousness" are right. O.M. in the role of "N" was veracious, his existence was the one of a genius, but it didn't remain on one and the same height. It was a strange piece, it had no director - the performance sometimes flew up, and sometimes fell down. Here are the words of the experienced Boris Lvov-Anokhin: "I don't know whether Menshikov's technique, so rare among the actors of his generation, is a gift of nature (like the one of M.I. Babanova), or it was cultivated by a lot of work, which is rare for his contemporaries. But in any way it produces an astounding impression. <…> Nijinsky was a murky, silent, reticent genius. As for Menshikov in this opus, he is full of fascinating sociability, irresistible geniality, charming artistic attractiveness, deftness, archness, vivacity, worldly promptness. <…> There is something mischievous, sly, almost joyful in his insanity, something of a skilful mystification. <…> O.M. interprets the misfortune, loneliness and insanity of Nijinsky in a dandy, light way, "frisking and having fun". All this is just a pretence, an occasion to demonstrate a brilliant actor skill. <…> A flippant venture." ("Teatralnaya Zhizn' ", 1993, No.8, p.10). The complicated life of the play "N", I suppose, sometimes made O.M. not know himself, but remain himself. I think that the description of N made by the critic is the description of O.M. in everyday life. But there was creative work as well, a lot of people saw another N - and it's hard not to believe such unanimity of the critics. I trust Agisheva, but I myself saw the same as Lvov-Anokhin. Yes, O.M. can be a "romantic hero", but he can also be a nice sweetheart, Mr. Actor. Let's go back to our old cinematography. At last we arrived to Alexander Khvan's film "Dyuba-Dyuba". We have come to the turning point. It is a very important moment. It is the point of materialisation of existential character. It is a boundary situation, as Sartre and Camus called it. O.M. chooses who he will become - an executioner or a victim? He doesn't know yet what life is, but he understands already what death is - the death, which makes life precious. And he makes an unprecedented choice. From this time he becomes an executioner as well as a victim.

Any project with his participation becomes a success
Where is that nice, vague prettiness of the good boy from the last soviet films? Our USSR came to an end, dispersed like the smoke. It was the beginning of Russia. It was the beginning of the choice. And the face of O.M. oozes out, his real face. In "Dyuba-Dyuba" he chooses the evil. He decides that "everything is allowed" - and he will answer for this choice in "Burnt By The Sun". Everything is possible! With such forces in the soul, when you can create any script, and everything will happen according to the plan! I say, what is wrong with torturing a man during two days, knocking the money out of him! I do what I want. God, how this very "Dyuba-Dyuba" started to make merry in Russia, and the blood started to pour, and the dirty money started to jump around… The personage of "Dyuba-Dyuba" seems to have a kind of justification: he wants to save from prison a girl he used to love. When he was Kostik from "The Pokrovskie Gate". Hello, Kostik, there is no more love in you. The great Russian mystic Daniil Andreyev wrote: "the demons love only themselves, and with an exceptional force which is unknown to any human being". The saved beloved is obviously disgusting to the hero of "Dyuba-Dyuba". But he still tries to do something in an absolutely machine-like manner. He tries to play his script to the end: right here, at this point, when I saved her, I should have been happy. And I am miserable. He does not understand that happiness is impossible if you made your choice in favour of evil without being Satan's loyal servant. Satan's servants never try to save anybody and they usually do not write scripts in their life. They move according to their plan, healthy, happy, safe and sound. As for the personage of "Dyuba-Dyuba", he will pay with his death. It should have been the end of Alexander Khvan's film. But Alexander Khvan appeared not to be able to do what Nikita Mikhalkov did. He could not fulfil the favourite precept of Ingmar Bergman: "Kill your favourites". In 1992 at the Cannes Festival Khvan was answering Sergey Sholokhov's questions, and he said: "Menshikov is my inside ego". "Is your inside ego so cute?" - smiled Seryozha, taking away with the help of irony the obvious tragedy of this confession. Here we see the "usual miracle", as Evgeny Shvarts called it. Khvan's love for Menshikov's personage revives him! After death our hero, as if nothing has happened, goes to some mystical bar of some mythical airport to toss off a glass. There is a hard task before him - he makes his way right to Nikita Mikhalkov's film "Burnt By The Sun". The film which will be awarded with the first Russian - not soviet - Oscar in that very America, where the miserable personage of "Dyuba-Dyuba" was going on probation. Now I will quote the critic Tatiana Moskvina, who seems to have done for this film everything that a critic can do for an artist. The article "In Search of a Lover" ("Seans", No.10) - an article which provoked an awful laughter of some gods whom I don't know - in any case, I hear their joyful chortle. "Something happened, something went wrong with the merry boy from "The Pokrovskie Gate", and he came back ten years later, with flickers of hell fire in his strange glances, with a "languor of hopeless sorrow", with the villain habits of a man who "stepped over the line", with the ineffable fascination of his shattered egocentric soul and other charms of the Fallen angel. <…> In "Burnt By The Sun" demon's history is reproduced in all its succession: Menshikov's personage, banished from the paradise, returns to the heavenly abode where his beloved lives, to destroy everything. He is more powerful than any other character of the film. He takes delight in pretending to be a good boy, an old acquaintance, but he can't conceal the secret knowledge that shimmers in the depth of his eyes (and demons are generally strong in the "secret knowledge", as they vertically crossed the Universe). The remains of something weak, dear, suffering, human, and inhuman impudence and pride are intertwined in Menshikov's personage to such degree that his every look, every cue is two-faced and ambiguous" (p. 67). The role is based "on the tragic contrast of the desired and already impossible", as Elga Lyndina remarked ("Ekran", 1995, No.1, p.9). Yes, everything is decided and signed. Dmitry Andreyevich, an excellent operative of NKVD, will never reincarnate in himself - young, talented, full of love and happiness. The angel has fallen once and forever. He knows it very well. He wants only one thing - quick death. But the pistol does not fire. The fate tells him: no. Go your last way. Now right to the end. To the very bottom of hell. N.S. Mikhalkov threw an unprecedented accusation into the face of Russian intelligentsia! He told them: "You choose the evil yourselves". It's not about the brave commander of division, noodle, victim of the Great Deception! He served the Satan, but he thought that he worked for the people, for the Motherland! But the one who was supposed to serve God and went to the Satan - he is more guilty than all the others. O.M. - Mitya - is still charming. It's impossible to take it away from him, he is a former angel anyway. But there is so much passionate, tense evil in his existence which is still exceptional. There is so much terror and ecstasy in his wild, frenzied, inhuman eyes, fixed upon Stalin's face. Terror - because he understands excellently who is before him. Ecstasy - because he is a small servant, and this is the Master. And the servant salutes the Master. After that - only silence, and the veins to cut "not here, but right here", just as his former love used to say. "Something happened, something went wrong with the merry boy from "The Pokrovskie Gate"… And what happened with those people of our generation who chose the evil? What happened with the merry boy Alexander Nevzorov, who would steal into the meat factory in order to expose somebody, disclose something, grab a roasted fact and carry it to the "600 seconds"? And now look at this fat, quarrelsome, clamorous old woman. What happened with Sergey Kuryokhin, a brilliant musician, who should have become Mozart of our time? Playing a farce and mixing up the blood with the cranberry juice, he created a grotesque party of "national bolshevism" together with the treacherous and virtuous Limonov Edichka. The "lonely miscreant" Edichka does not even care about that party! He will still have time to frisk about in this world. And Sergey Kuryokhin will not. His heart stopped beating and all the tears we weep for him won't bring him back… So, we leave the film "Burnt By The Sun" where it is supposed to be - under the rays of fame - and move on. Although it should be mentioned that, when I reread my article about the lovers, remarkable for its impertinence, the words about the "strange glances" and "ineffable fascination" of O.M. made me laugh. No, critics should not write like that. A critic should be like a rhinoceros. "Here came artist so-and-so, performed amateurishly". As for me, if I praise something - then I praise it just like that! If I criticise - I do criticise! No measure at all.

At the end of the film he must die
The story about the existential character who, being in a boundary situation, becomes an executioner as well as a victim, repeated three times. "Dyuba-Dyuba", "Burnt by the Sun" and "Prisoner of the Mountains" composed an original trilogy of O.M., a story about life and death in the absence of love. A film by Sergey Bodrov, clear-cut, well-arranged and of good quality. I have a soft spot for his creative work… But why a soft spot? This is the first swallow of Russian political reasonableness, which to my mind will be highly appreciated in the homeland of this very reasonableness. The "mister Green" that I wrote about ("Seans", No.11) will notice his bird, kind-hearted, gentle and benevolent. "Why are we here with guns?" - asks Pavel Lebeshev's camera in puzzlement. "We have to open here a bar after the war" - suggests Sasha to his co-prisoner Vanya (Sergey Bodrov - junior). We will open it, Sasha, but without you… Something irritated me in O.M.'s work. I understood that he played excellently and as usual, but the irritation remained. At last I understood that I wanted to unstick the moustache from this face. The moustache fitted him in the youth, when it was the secondary sexual character. But now it hampers him. The moustache of orphan Sasha who has a sick son in Chita and who tells stories about balls and condoms, hampers O.M.'s face, receiving all possible Russian, European and world awards for the actor's work. Alyona Solntseva wrote quite well about this image: "I am surprised how refined Menshikov who leads a supersecluded life, managed to notice this particular street grace, this rogue cruelty, this charming thoughtlessness and lonely restlessness of a Russian mercenary and give authenticity to this film, very beautiful, although shot in close-to-life decorations" ("Ogonyok", No.29, p.54). Bodrov's film reproduces the archetypal situation: two fighters, two friends, two soldiers on the fatal Russian war with Caucasus. One is choleric, the other is phlegmatic. One is a man of war, the other - a man of peace. One has mother, the other has none. O.M. easily and excellently played all the character layer, addressed to the wide audience. The public immediately accepts him and laughs with approval. They get pleasure from the fact that the star came down and plays "one of us". But the thing that attracts the wide audience, irritates a part of the educated public. The tedious craving to unstick O.M.'s moustache is provoked by the wish of this part to see its hero. But the intelligentsia has no right to appropriate O.M., and we will never unstick this democratic people's moustache from the face of Sasha from "Prisoner of the Mountains". O.M. performed for the people as well as for the intelligentsia. For the people - his unchangeable Kostik who learned to kill and who liked it. For the intelligentsia - the existential character who decided to become an executioner and by no means a victim. He lives in the film with an exceptional tension - and the eternal Kostik is as joyful and light-hearted as usual. Sometimes he chatters, laughs and dances, sometimes he sits dismally, his eyes flashing with anger. There is a splendid scene in which O.M. sobs to the march "Proshchanie Slavianky". He bemoans the Russian soldier, who finishes the history of the battle glory of Russian arms with such a disgrace, horror and tragedy. Where have you come to, two friends, two fighters? What have you done? But the war was necessary. "We have to do it, Vanya, it is war" - says O.M. in the film. Disgrace, horror and tragedy were inevitable. And the character accepted it. And when he brought vodka to "comrade major" and with a complete unconcern started to fire the machine-gun into the night haze, it became clear that death is the only possible end of all this. The "Sinenky Skromny Platochek" will sound for the last time. The hand, jerked up as the last hello to his friend. And the death itself, when O.M. with somewhat unruffled gesture tries to put back his head, falling from the slashed neck… But Sergey Bodrov is a kind and generous man. He revives his wonderful son as well as O.M. "There's no death, guys!" - says he. Look, O.M. is happy, he smiles, he feels well there… But the death exists, and the character of "Prisoner of the Mountains" there will not feel well.

He is connected with his generation
It recognised and acknowledged him. The merry boys and girls who grew up at different pokrov gates love their actor. And how could he have been lost, how could we have ignored him? Everything goes according to the plan. His is not the single "hero of our time". There are a lot of them. Somebody lost his way, somebody got tangled, somebody hasn't found someone. But, as Vasily Belov (and where is he?) once mentioned: "Everything is before us".

He is probably a genius
Such suppositions appeared more than once. What can I say? Boris Eltsin is a genius as well but he should never hear this. I don't know within what limits this can be said to O.M. In any case, genius is an ability to fulfil all the tasks confronting you, and not an evaluation of your merits. If he does it, then it is possible to tell him that he has genius.

He is probably us
Actually, we all have genius. It's just that some know it, and some yet don't.

...,
but it's not the right moment and place to speak about it. Some other time, my friends…

Submitted by Maria Srogovich
Presented by Irina