I’m pretty sure it’s already been said but god I just love how no one in Goncharov (1973) is innocent. There’s no good guys here, no one who doesn’t carry some form of regret for violence in their past.
Goncharov himself is probably the most explicit example of this, sparking a good amount of conflict in the film from almost the beginning by trying to outrun violence without confronting his sins and his own mortality, but as much as Katya models herself as innocent (dressing in white acting clueless when Aundre asks her about her husband, etc) she’s still got that violence in her past and seems (at least to me) less angry at goncharov for his involvement with the mafia than she is at his attempts to pretend all of that never happened (whilst still engaging in it! Like c’mon man just hang up the phone) and that’s not even mentioning her final decision to kill him at the clock tower, quite literally staining her with blood ( although if I’m being honest it reads more to me as her being honest with the blood on her hands, to Sofia and herself, a woman taking hold of her own story which is just phenomenal for a film made in the 70’s honestly). Then of course you have Sofia, herself having a violent past hinted at through her interactions with Katya and ice pick joe, loving Katya unflinchingly in spite of the blood on her hands (and saying she looks better in red guh I love that line) and knowing probably full well, without Katya even having to say it, that it’s Goncharov. Then there’s Andre who was right there alongside Goncharov working for the mafia and despite having an objectively better grasp on accepting his own mortality and the role he plays in perpetuating this cycle of violence (though honestly our boy gonch does not make that hard) still finds it so hard to accept it when he himself is directly responsible in goncharov’s death despite knowing full well his blood is on his hands going into this and being fully prepared to take his life seemingly from the get go).
There’s a lot of classic tragedies out there, but I’ve never seen anyone tackle themes like the cycle of violence and momento mori as well goncharov 1973, a story that is only as effective as it is because as much as you know no one is close to innocent from the get go, you still feel for them and hurt for their shared humanity and complexities that inevitably fall short as a result of their own actions.
Tragedy is only really effective as a result of an audience’s ability to see themselves in the characters, but I love just how much Martin Scorsese and Matteo JWHJ 0715 placed importance on the idea that no one here can be innocent, they’ve lost that right to call themselves unambiguously ‘good’ a long time ago. They are all flawed and they are all objectively not great people for a variety of reasons, but you still feel for them regardless. They’re all tragic figures not necessarily because they’re all victims of circumstance but largely as a direct result of the choices they made and the chances they didn’t take that eventually led to the tragic ending we all know and love. They’re the ones that set the clock on their own lives, and it’s spectacular that the filmmakers managed to make us understand that whilst communicating so effectively their own feelings of helplessness.
So yeah, homoerotic mafia movie and all that. Thanks for reading through this rant on a movie I’d honestly not thought to watch myself until very recently.
