The film is based on a real space flight. Moreover, the famous flight - March 18, 1965 in outer space the first person came out - and it was our Alexei Leonov. For many years, the details of the flight of the Voskhod-2 spacecraft were classified - they say, everything went smoothly. And the fact that the astronauts appeared on TV screens only three days after returning to earth? So they rested at the dacha of the regional committee of the CPSU.

In fact, the trouble began already two hours after the start.

And there were seven of them! Seven! If everything was shown in detail, the film would take 24 hours! - Hero explained twice at the premiere of "The Time of the First" Soviet Union Alexey Arkhipovich Leonov.

Yevgeny Mironov came up with the idea to make a film about the Voskhod-2 flight. And somehow it so happened that he became the performer of the main role - cosmonaut Alexei Leonov.

Centrifuge and a little nervous

Evgeny Vitalievich, I know that the impetus was what you watched documentary about emergency situations in Leonov's flight and called the producer Timur Bekmambetov ...

No, first I called Leonov. I got a phone number, I was very worried ...

And he told you: "Come!". You came and talked to the famous cosmonauts and decided that you would play Leonov yourself...

That's exactly how I did not decide! Leonov when he flew was younger than me. Although at that time all the members of the first detachment looked older than they really were. I just really wanted to tell this story.

Then how did it happen that you got the role of Leonov?

Yes, something like that, of course. Timur said: "It's clear to me that it's you who should play." And we immediately decided that Kostya Khabensky should play the crew commander Pavel Belyaev because he is very similar. And I was happy about it, because I had never played with Kostya together before.

I know that for the filming of the film you pulled up your physical form according to a special program in the fitness center. The question is why? You, in my opinion, are already in great shape, you can withstand such difficult performances ...

We were engaged in a special program in the World Class, doing endurance exercises. The problem is not even that in the frame we had to spin the sun on a swing or show what kind of overload we are experiencing. We worked in a spacesuit almost the same as the astronauts had - and it is more than forty kilograms. There is one at the Cosmonaut Training Center... Kostya! - Mironov turns to Khabensky, who is sitting at the next table. – What is it called? Centrifuge?

Cut off from his own conversation, Khabensky does not immediately grasp the essence of the issue.

This is when they sit on a chair and spin around their axis? - I'm trying to help.

No you! Such a streamlined, like a drop capsule on a long tube...

It's a centrifuge!

Here you go! For astronauts in flight, overloads reach 8G (this is when the whole body increases 8 times - Auth.) I was allowed to test 2G, and I asked for 3. They went to the doctor, he checked me and then they allowed me: "Let's!".

Have you ever flown to weightlessness in a laboratory plane?

We had an idea, but we abandoned it. We were given the same plane that makes slides, and during these slides weightlessness sets in in the cabin. But weightlessness there is short - about 25 seconds. And it takes us almost an hour of screen time to fly a ship. Can you imagine how many slides you would have to make to shoot everything?

And just to experience weightlessness? Few get that chance.

I'll tell you a case from the life of Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier - they played in the same picture ... Dustin - then a young artist - had to play a bum in the episode. He walked through the garbage heaps, spent the night under the bridge. And Laurence Olivier was already aged. Once he was sitting in an armchair and asked Hoffman passing by: please tell me, young man, why are you in such a state and why do you smell such an unpleasant smell? Dustin says - I'm getting used to the role. Then Olivier asks him: “Have you tried to play?”

Here is that case. We had so much material, including documentaries, a lot of technologies that were invented specifically for our film ... I didn’t need the feeling of weightlessness in space. I had to adjust to the suit, to the fact that you have to play while suspended on cables ...

I saw a photo from the shoot - it feels like you were in space...

We went through everything except weightlessness. And they went for real.

holy people

For me, as a person who has been writing about astronautics for more than twenty years, it is important that in the film, besides Korolev, there are other designers, doctors, without whom the flight would not have taken place ...

- "Time of the First" is a blockbuster, a disaster film, there are laws of the genre. Since there are heroes, there must be their antagonists ...

Good and evil...

Yes. And we even tried to link the images of some specific employees of the Korolev design bureau, those who stood at the origins of Soviet cosmonautics, to the role of a scoundrel who interfered with everyone. And then we realized that there were none and could not be! The people who then moved our astronautics are generally saints! All! And the main antagonist is the circumstances in which the astronauts found themselves. And then the story will be honest.

In the last century, after watching a heroic film, children played its heroes - for example, Petka and Chapaev ... Today's teenagers will not play Belyaev and Leonov. Maybe it was worth making a computer game “go into space with Leonov”, “land the ship Voskhod-2” in parallel with the film ...

Now in many cinemas there will be such an attraction - it will be possible to put on virtual reality glasses and repeat the feat of Leonov, go into outer space.

And when we shot the film, we thought that it would be of interest mainly to the generation of 25-30 year olds. But we did focus groups and it turned out that this story is very catchy for children under 20. So maybe they will play astronauts again.

All details are accurate

Your suit was simplified, it looks like you put on only the top layer, a thermal shell ...

What are you? Mironov was almost offended. - This is a documentary story! The details are reproduced exactly! Chief consultant Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov did not let us down. If somewhere in the frame the jacket wrinkled or the hats on the mourners were not in the fashion of that time - how we got it! Some scenes even had to be re-shot!

But the pressure in the spacesuit was released by Leonov in outer space, and not in the airlock! How would he have gotten into the airlock if he had not relieved the pressure?

Well, this is already the law of dramaturgy ... And this does not diminish the feat that Leonov accomplished.

And our spacesuit, probably, was even heavier than that of the astronauts. A system of suspensions was also attached to it. And I had to shoot in the capsule of the ship, and there is very little space. And this is despite the fact that we increased the volume by perhaps 20 percent so that the camera could enter.

We came up with the system of an orange, the ship was opened along the slices so that the camera could enter, the other slice was closed and the enclosed space remained. It was very difficult to part ways with Kostya in the ship and not hurt him.

And now you have practically been in space. What did you dream about when you were filming this movie?

What did you dream? Yes, I did not sleep almost all the time! What do you?! For the first time, I was also the producer of such a big story. Here the load is to play a role. And I still have many other tasks, there were a lot of non-acting ones. During the filming, we also had a lot of emergencies - except that there were no mortal dangers.

ALL WORLD

We are looking for a radio amateur who saved the Voskhod-2 crew!

When Voskhod-2 landed in the remote taiga near Perm, the astronauts had only one transmitter - they could only transmit two letters in Morse code - "VN" (everything is fine) to report that they are alive, - I talk with Evgeny Mironov . - Not so long ago, you said that you wanted to find a radio amateur who was the first to receive this “VN” signal and reported to the police - although he was clearly running into trouble in this way.

I understand how difficult it was at the time. After all, it meant admitting that you have a radio station, that you can intercept messages. I really hope that some documentary evidence of this person has been preserved ...

You know, space veterans write about this story in different ways in different memoirs. Someone says that the signal was received in Kamchatka, someone - in Alma-Ata ...

You know, for me, this radio operator is a nameless hero ... A real one! The same hero as Leonov and Belyaev.

Then let's "Komsomolskaya Pravda" will search. It is unlikely that the radio operator is alive - after all, 52 years have passed. But maybe one of the relatives remembers this story!

Yes, let's announce! I will be very grateful to you.

So, " TVNZ"and Yevgeny Mironov are looking for a radio amateur who, on March 19, 1965, was the first to receive a message from the just-landed Voskhod-2 crew. We will be grateful for any information about him. Write to the address [email protected]

Dear readers!

Judging by the box office, you are more likely not to have seen the feature film "First Time" than you did.

During the first weekend, the picture collected about 154 million rubles (at the time when I am writing this, the data is being specified). That is, almost half the forecasts (280 million rubles). This is despite the support (at least formal) of Channel One, despite the high rating on Kinopoisk and mostly positive reviews.

Why the domestic audience showed little interest - one can only speculate. For example, the following:

1) The domestic audience got tired of the “Soviet biopics”: filmmakers and especially TV serials worked too hard on the topic of the fate of celebrities in the 1950s and 1970s, and the viewer could not bring himself to go to another movie about the fates of half a century ago.

2) The domestic viewer is tired of the orbital-space theme: over the past couple of years, he has watched quite a lot of orbital films, from the super-spectacular disaster "Gravity" to the unsuccessful alien fantasy "Alive", which was shown just now.

3) Or maybe they just didn’t promote it.

It could be added that the viewer does not much trust the domestic cinema in general - but this would not be true: only recently the "Crew", "Attraction", "Viking" and "28 Panfilov's Men" successfully swept. Paintings with different audiences and different artistic value - but found their audience.

Therefore, we can state that the picture of D. Kiselyov was simply unlucky at the start - and move on to the actual work itself. Moreover, this is the rare case when the reviewer is not accused of spoilers.

First, the film, of course, should be praised. No comparison, for example, with the painting “Gagarin. The first in space” (2013) cannot be here. A film about Gagarin, shot for about the same money ($7 million), was frankly a helpless craft. It featured a lonely young man Yu.A. Gagarin, who, thanks to his superhuman virtues, took off into space; lone wizard in s.p. hat Korolev, who created a rocket in an open field with the power of thought and launched the virtuous Gagarin in it; a table, a few chairs, a couple of supporting characters, and a few minutes of inexpensive spaceflight graphics. As well as the bewildered question of the viewer, where the budget money has evaporated.

At the "Time of the First" money was clearly not sawed: the picture was made with a clear desire to fight back at the box office. Therefore, the film is cheerful and beautiful and filled with plot ups and downs according to all the rules. It begins with the fact that the pilot Leonov's engine catches fire in flight, and he, unable to eject, lands the plane. For this recklessness, they take him to the cosmonaut corps, where, because of him, his partner pilot Belyaev immediately gets injured, and Leonov does what he can so that Belyaev returns to duty. At the same time, a space race is shown, because of which Korolev (he is also wearing a hat, but not a lone wizard, but surrounded by a very real OKB-1 staff) has to reduce the time for preparing for a spacewalk and quarrel at the samovar with cozy Brezhnev. The risk increases, the test ship crashes, but Leonov and Belyaev express their willingness to take risks. And Korolev sends them to risk, and Leonov goes out into outer space very close to reality and, despite a difficult emergency, returns, and Belyaev, in the event of a failure of the automatic landing system, manually lands the capsule, and (here the creators are already starting to inflate even unnecessarily) both barely they do not freeze in the taiga, but at the last moment everything goes well and they are found. The pace is sustained, the special effects are at that modern level of naturalism, when the view from the cinema hall no longer distinguishes graphics from reality, the action does not freeze.

Since Ilyin plays Korolev, Khabensky Belyaev, and Mironov Leonov, there are no questions for acting. Of course, the wise-eyed 50-year-old Mironov does not quite fall into the reckless youth of 25-30-year-old Leonov. But he is not to blame, this is already a question for a ruthless time that spares no one, including Tom Cruise. Of course, the astronauts' wives look colorless - but these are also nit-picking, especially since there are so many of those wives in the picture.

And now for the bad.

I know that the film was shot with the close direct participation of the Hero of the Soviet Union Leonov himself - and he liked everything.

But I don't, dear readers. I sharply disliked the way the creators of the picture saw the very essence of the Soviet breakthrough into space.

They saw, in short, only the space race. And this race in the picture is presented as a particularly large-budget and especially dangerous sport in which everyone - from astronauts to Korolev - participate as if under duress. And not even under compulsion of the ruthless state machine, no. Cozy Leonid Ilyich, talking with Korolev over a samovar with bagels, also does not strongly insist that the astronauts give a damn about the risk and fly to probable death. It’s just that over Brezhnev, and over Korolev, and over Leonov and Belyaev, some kind of ruthless fate hangs, the distinctly evil Fate of the Russians, forcing them to exploits.

This evil doom to a feat is mentioned in the film too often to be just an accident.

Here are the cosmonauts complaining to Korolev about uncomfortable spacesuits: “how to fly space in shackles?”. To which Korolev suddenly declares (neither to the village nor to the city): “Our people have been flying in shackles for centuries. And if the shackles fell, everything would collapse.

Here Leonov convinces Korolev that despite the risk he is ready to fly: “My father was taken away as an enemy of the people. The neighbors came, took away our food, things, furniture, kicked us out of the house, took off my pants ... Then the war, victory - but at what cost! How many relatives from the front did not return. And in every normal family we have this, Sergey Palych, we live like this. I will gnaw a hole in this hatch with my teeth. That is, the readiness for a feat is explained by the fact that the price of the life of a Russian person is a penny, why feel sorry for her, we are all suicide bombers.

But a radio amateur from Sakhalin accidentally received the Morse code of the landed cosmonauts and winds up the telephone dial to call the KGB and report. But his wife appears in a nightgown and for some reason informs him that he will be imprisoned for this (?!), and the radio amateur hopelessly answers her: “Well, how?” - and, having submitted to the Russian Fate, he calls and informs, thereby saving the lives of the astronauts.

Hey citizens. Everything is clear, of course - life was hard, tragic and full of trials. But first:

Russian life both 80 years ago and half a century ago also had a sunny, festive side. For example, Father Leonov, an enemy of the people, was rehabilitated in 1939, when L.P. Beria accepted the case and made his first Beria rehabilitation. And returned to the family, and allowed to raise children. This fact, apparently, did not fit into the concept of the film - and therefore was not reflected.

And secondly and most importantly:

There was such a thing as a dream of space - and not just fantasy, but realized right in front of the astonished eyes of citizens.

I'll just remind you how it all happened:

On May 13, 1946, I. V. Stalin signed a decree on the creation in the USSR of the rocket branch of science and industry.

In October 1957, the first artificial Earth satellite was launched into orbit.

In April 1961, Yu.A. Gagarin launched into space on Vostok-1.

In December 1962, the Soviet station flew by Venus.

In 1965, the American Mariner 4 reached Mars.

In 1969, three Americans led by N. Armstrong landed on the moon.

Thus, between the decision to "create a branch of science" and the launch of the first man into space, 15 years passed. Between the first flight into space and the first landing on a neighboring heavenly body- 8 years. Between the first satellite in orbit and the first station near the nearest planet - 5 years.

That is, in practice, the spirit of the times was expressed in simple words"dream", and the dream was the zeitgeist. And it was to her that everyone was ready to make sacrifices - led by Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, the main ideologist of the gambling "space race" on our part. And astronauts (by the way, for curious young readers: we had exactly two space disasters - the same number as the Americans. Four astronauts died in them. This is five times less than NASA).

About the dream as the spirit of the times - it's not my decision. This is what was written, sung, said and felt half a century ago - by everyone, on both sides of the Atlantic and in all social groups of the leading powers. Today, cosmonaut A. Leonov can evaluate the past differently - just like S. Lem in the 2000s anathematized his own dream work "The Magellanic Cloud", "inclining people to communism." But this was real.

And today we live in a world where the dream of space, for a number of reasons, has long been recognized as unprofitable. And, what is more tragic - in a world where it is easier to explain a dream by some fatal fate than by itself.

That's why, dear readers, with all the undoubted artistic merits of the movie "First Time" - I personally will not be too upset if you don't go to see it.

By the Day of Cosmonautics, Dmitry Kiselev's film "The Time of the First" will be released on the screens of the country. The picture tells about Pavel Belyaev and Alexei Leonov - the first people to step into outer space. The producers of the film, Timur Bekmambetov and Yevgeny Mironov, decided to recall the feat of the crew of the Voskhod-2 ship and tell in detail how it happened.

Mironov not only produced "The Time of the First", but also played one of the main roles - Alexei Leonov. The role of his partner was played by Konstantin Khabensky, and Vladimir Ilyin reincarnated as designer Sergei Korolev.

In addition to the filmmakers, Heroes of the Soviet Union cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova and Alexei Leonov, the widow of cosmonaut Pavel Belyaev, as well as Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky, Deputy Minister Alexander Zhuravsky, President of Sberbank German Gref, singer Philip Kirkorov, actor Sergei Bezrukov with his wife Anna came to the premiere. Mathison, TV presenter Elena Malysheva, singer Yulia Samoilova and other famous people.

The creators of the film urged the guests of the premiere to be the first and start helping those who need it more than others. Volunteers from the Mironov, Bekmambetov and Khabensky charitable foundations stood in the lobby, accepting donations. Among those who were not indifferent was Alexei Leonov. He is directly related to the "Time of the First" - the astronaut advised filmmakers.

It was Leonov who told director Dmitry Kiselev about the problems that arose during the flight aboard the ship. Kiselev found confirmation of his words in the archives, having listened to more than 70 hours of radio communications between the cosmonauts and the MCC.

Our picture is very close to the reality of 1965: all the stages of preparation for the flight, all the problems are reflected in it, - Dmitry Kiselev admitted to Izvestia. - We even showed facts that until recently were classified. But 50 years have passed and now the information is available.

It turned out that an excess of oxygen arose on the ship due to a malfunction of the equipment. The crew could die, the ship could explode. But the cosmonauts fixed the problem and manually landed Voskhod-2. They were silent about this, because in the USSR equipment did not break down. True, it was not possible to find the astronauts for a long time. Morse code signals, which Leonov and Belyaev began to transmit in a critical situation, were detected not by the MCC, but by two German radio amateurs.

In order to get used to the images of astronauts, the actors had to undergo real space training, which was confirmed by the mother of Evgeny Mironov Tamara Petrovna.

I know what these shootings cost my son, ”said Tamara Mironova. - He and Kostya were freezing in the forest, somersaulting in the pressure chamber, so that Zhenya even lost consciousness. I told him: "Zhenya, you could die, you're not 25." He was advised: "If it's bad, press the bracelet." Yes, it’s even difficult to breathe there, let alone press the bracelets!

After the premiere, Izvestia asked Alexei Leonov how the on-screen reality coincided with reality.

I liked the film, but in reality it was even worse, scarier than on the screen, - admitted Alexey Arkhipovich. - This cannot be transferred to the cinema, even with such opportunities as Timur Bekmambetov has. But I liked the acting. I am proud that Pasha and I were not embellished and we are in the cinema the way we were in life.

Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky compared "The Time of the First" with Alfons Cuarón's film "Gravity". And the comparison, in his opinion, was not in favor of the Oscar-winning picture.

A lot of unexpected and tragic things happen to George Clooney and his comrades. But it's all fiction. And what happened to our cosmonauts is not invented, it is an amazing, unpredictable, tragic and heroic story, - the minister shared his impressions.

To agree with the first viewers or not - every movie fan will be able to decide very soon. The film "Time of the First" will be released on the screens on April 6.