Looking For a "Good Boy" Hero For Russian TV Serials.

The problem of a positive hero in Russian films and TV serials of today is quite far of its solution. May be, the contemporary life of Russia and its society has no suitable examples for this. In this case, the main hero of "Russian Translation" ("Русский перевод") (2006) TV political detective series, which premiere took place at the First Russian federal TV channel since 9/11 2007, is a real exception. May be, because of the serial story, which returns the spectators to the end of the1980s, the last years and months of the SU.

Andrej Obnorskij, the main hero of "Russian Translation" series, is a real good boy and a romantic man, the character for whom the Russian film and serial makers are looking for without visible success. And that is despite of a wide popularity of Obnorskij as a main character of a big number of the Russian criminal TV series shot after Andrej Konstantinov's best-seller novels based on St.Petersburg’s 1990s criminal reality and this popular Russian journalist and writer’s own life experience.

The criminal journalist Andrej Obnorskij performed by Aleksandr Domogarov in "Gangster Petersburg" TV series and Andrej Sokolov in "The Silver Bullet" Agency" TV series, the experienced stringer-journalist and investigator of the early Russian capitalism era of the 1990s became a very popular TV-hero for millions of the Russian TV everyday "box-watchers". Even the author and the prototype of Obnorskij, the leading St.Petersburg journalist and writer Andrej Konstantinov, whose " The Journalist" novel of 1996 was screened in "Russian Translation" ten years after, is looking at Obnorskij of this latest serial as the same of the early ones. However, the young Obnorskij of 1980s is very different from "him" the grown-up of the 1990s. Because in "Russian Translation" series he is the hero of the "Leningrad's time' (as it was named in Boris Grebenschikov's song) jet.

Andrej Obnorskij of the Eltsin-Sobchak's epoch is a real man living in the real world taking the terrible reality of the formerly great imperial city it as it is, as a fact. He is making his professional money from its researching and media-presentation of this reality, thus performing the true and the important social mission. He is a member of the media-community, often named "the fourth power", and the man of the free trade choosing a target as well as means for its obtaining - and then telling the price which he likes to get. For making his clients sure that the price is correct he says: I am a military translator. He means his work can not be for less money.

This is a real fact from the author’s of the novel biography: he studied at the Eastern Faculty of the Leningrad State University and has had his student practice as an Arabic military interpreter in Aden in 1984-1985. After graduation, he has worked as a military Arabic interpreter in one of the Soviet Defense schools and in Libyan Jamahiriya. And his novel "The Journalist" is a story based on this experience.

However, Obnorskij of this novel is quite different from him of the 1990s. As well as Obnorskij of "Russian Translation" even more. He is a positive romantic hero as he once has been. The screenplay of Eduard Volodarskij helped this a lot, because all of women's lines but one from "The Journalist" novel are absent in a series screenplay. The hero of this series isn't married (Obnorskij in the novel was married two times), his love to the Aeroflot Soviet aviation company hostess Lena is not passionate but romantic even in Libyan, the most frank part of the film.

Andrej, like any other young military Arabic interpreter/translator of that time, has a slap-dash "romantic" relations with his foreign currency wages making his "khabirs" (Soviet military specialists), who are counting every "ana" and every "fils" angry. He does not look at this money as a general equivalent so far. Moreover, he does not have a fear before his homeland - the USSR - in fact, being not allowed to feel so. As well as being not allowed to have his own opinion and to say it aloud - but he is doing this every time as a real romantic.

The Obnorskij-hero is mainly reflecting features of the early medieval genuine heroism of knight romances. H
is Middle Eastern missions help this a lot, and his relations with the beautiful lady are shaping this powerfully: he breaks his romantic relations when he disclose that she is not a "Holy Grail" but a secret service agent.

What’s more, the character of Andrej Obnorskij is not only a sequel of the European romantic tradition. Its roots lies closely to its Arabian origin - the Arabian Bedouins legends of the pre-Islamic times full of wandering, clashes, and every time danger of the desert and filled the cult of honor and warriors glory. And an unshared and impossible love. Just like Antar's - Antarah ibn Shaddad's - life and love.

Obnorskij like his first ego A.Konstantinov knows it well: he studied this in his Eastern faculty. Above it, getting to the medieval Antar's desert he has to show his "warriors skills" to a modern Antar - Ali Ahmad Naser "Antar", a vice-president of PDRY and an Army brigadier, one of real (fictionalized) characters in the series. One of the "red wolfs" of the South Arabia ( killed then on January 13th, 1986 in a coup attempt but finally won over his rivals), who was thus among the first to recognize the Russian interpreter as a real hero.

Along all the eight episodes the existing "system" fights against Obnorskij: this conscientious but independent and thinking young man of so called "simple-soviet man" origin: he likes to go his own honest way at for the appointed Soviet system defenders it looks like the most dangerous form of the genuine antisovetchik (antisovietist). Above this, he knows Arabic!

Being used widely in these series, Arabic language and its colloquial varieties spoken by Yemeni, Palestinian, Libyan and Russian interpreters characters along all the 404 minutes of the film, tends to be "one more hero" of the serial. Helping the main hero of it to win.

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(The text of this Wiki-article is mine).
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