Remembering the Space Age. - Black Vault Radio Network (BVRN)

266 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe
friend intends to defect by swimming out to a foreign ship. Sailors eventually
beat him up for his attitude and for flagrantly walking around town with the
forbidden radio. as their relationship develops, German confesses that his
mysterious secret assignment is to seek out the ten cosmonauts who are training
for the first spaceflight in Kustanay in the Kazakh republic. For a while, German
insists to Konëk that soon men will travel to the Moon everyday, but, ultimately,
he confesses again that he had been in prison in Kustanay, convicted for making
wisecracks while in the Navy. German is last seen swimming toward a shipping
vessel marked “Lake Michigan” as the ship moves away. Viktor (Konëk) marries
rima, Lara’s sister, and they take a train to Moscow.
In Kosmos kak predchuvstvie, space is metaphor for hope. In the movie, Lara
asks Konëk as a plea for reassurance if he can see Sputnik after German seduces
her. a second use of the metaphor occurs during Konëk and rima’s trip to
Moscow. While on the train, Konëk crosses paths with an equally unassuming
young pilot named Gagarin whom the hero and audience believe to be the Yuri
Gagarin. When speaking to Gagarin in the train, Konëk asks him if he is going
to fly rockets. Gagarin responds by asking if he was referring to the predictions
of tsiolkovskii. Konëk replies, “No, German.” Gagarin has not heard of that
scientist, to which Konëk replies, “he is not a scientist, but he has already
flown.” When the pilot arrives at his stop, Konëk asks his name and notices that
his shoelace is untied. Later Konëk recognizes Gagarin by this untied shoelace.
By this time, Gagarin has made his flight and is walking down the red carpet to
greet Khrushchev.
It is through this meeting that the director has tied the meaningless life
of his hero to the equally unpurposeful mission of the space program. the
experienced and knowledgeable character, German, is determined to escape
the Soviet union, even if it costs him his life. the more meandering of the two,
Konëk, identifies most closely with Gagarin. One film reviewer has described
the time between Sputnik and Gagarin’s mission, “the two moments of Soviet
triumph in space that, the contemporary audience knows, led nowhere and
that provide the bookends of the film (the flights of Sputnik and of Gagarin).” 33
these two moments of triumph represent a memorable period that benefited
the nation through their naiveté but provided no objective improvement in its
circumstances.
Fëdorchenko’s Pervye na lune is closer in tone to Viktor pelevin’s novel
Omon Ra in its take on the space program. 34 produced as a mock documentary or
33. Katerina Clark, “‘aleksei uchitel,’ dreaming of Space [Kosmos kak predchuvstvie] (2005),”
KinoKultura, no. October 2005, http://www.kinokultura.com/reviews/R10-05kosmos.html (accessed
on august 11, 2006).
34. pelevin’s novella was an award-winning book in russia in the early 1990s. the book is a
modernist satire that tells the story of a boy, Omon, who wants above all things to become
a cosmonaut. his journey to that goal takes him through the Byzantine depravations of a