The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed

The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed
DVD cover
Directed by	Stanislav Govorukhin
Written by	Vayner brothers (novel & screenplay)
Starring	Vladimir Vysotsky Vladimir Konkin Zinovy Gerdt Armen Dzhigarkhanyan
Cinematography	Leonid Burlaka
Edited by	Valentina Olejnik
Music by	Yevgeni Gevorgyan
Production company	Odessa Film Studio
Release date	1979
Running time	359 minutes
Country	Soviet Union
Language	Russian

The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed (Russian: Место встречи изменить нельзя, [Mesto vstrechi izmenit nelzya] Error: {{Transliteration}}: missing language / script code (help)) is a 1979 Soviet 5-part television miniseries directed by Stanislav Govorukhin. It achieved the status of a cult film in the USSR, and along with Seventeen Moments of Spring became a part of popular culture with several generations of russophone TV viewers. The series star the famed singer-songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky in one of his final screen appearances. Legendary Soviet actors Sergey Yursky, Armen Dzhigarkhanyan, Zinovy Gerdt, Yevgeniy Yevstigneyev and Leonid Kuravlev also appear in the film.

The film was released in the West as The Age of Mercy, the title of the novel by the writing duo of brothers Arkadiy Vayner and Georgiy Vayner, on which the film is based.

The film follows a police procedural storyline enriched with elements of drama, powerful message on human rights in a totalitarian law enforcement environment, and rich sociocultural background of the post-World War II Moscow.

Plot

The film is set in post-WWII Moscow. Lieutenant Vladimir Sharapov (Vladimir Konkin) is a young decorated war hero (a tactical intelligence officer) from a Muscovite intelligentsia family, who was just demobilized after the war and assigned for police service with the famous MUR (Moscow Department of Criminal Investigations). There he becomes part of an elite detective team led by the brilliant, tough, no-nonsense Captain Gleb Zheglov (Vysotsky). Unlike Sharapov and vast majority of Soviet men, Zheglov was not drafted to the frontline, instead staying in the rear to fight crime and, as it occasionally turned out, was even decorated for that service. The duo becomes embroiled in two seemingly separate investigations: that of the murder of young aspiring actress Larisa Gruzdeva, and the hunt for a vicious gang of armed robbers that calls itself "Black Cat" and constantly manages to evade capture. Investigation combined with in-process mentoring by Zheglov provides idealistic Sharapov with a sobering insight into well-established criminal underworld of his native city with its distinctive ethos, slang and culture.

While suspicion in Gruzdeva's murder initially falls on her estranged husband Dr. Gruzdev (Yursky), it gradually becomes apparent that the two cases are connected, as a Black Cat mobster and Thief in Law Foks (Belyavskiy) is implicated in the murder. As a result of Zheglov's successful high-stakes operation to capture Foks, Sharapov inadvertently finds himself undercover at the Black Cat hideout, sparring with the gang's menacing leader Hunchback (Dzhigarkhanyan). What ensues is arguably one of Soviet television's most memorable and suspenseful finales.

Much of the series revolves around the relationship between Zheglov and Sharapov. While the two become close friends and roommates, they also clash throughout the film. The source of the conflict is Sharapov's disagreement with Zheglov's "ends justify the means" approach to law enforcement. Zheglov thinks that "a thief's place is in prison, and the public couldn't care less how I put him there". To that end, Zheglov thinks nothing of using dubious tactics such as planting evidence to justify the arrest of a known pickpocket. Sharapov, on the other hand, considers that law is a higher value for its own sake and cannot be used merely as a tool. A tense conflict also arises when, in order to mislead Foks, Zheglov elects to continue to hold Gruzdev under arrest even after it becomes clear that the latter is innocent.

Selected cast

• Vladimir Vysotsky — Gleb Zheglov
• Vladimir Konkin — Volodya Sharapov
• Sergei Yursky — Dr. Gruzdev
• Viktor Pavlov — Levchenko
• Leonid Kuravlyov — Kopchyony
• Aleksandr Belyavskiy — Yevgeniy "Foks", Thief-in-Law
• Evgeni Evstigneev — Petya "Ruchechnik" Ruchnikov, Thief-in-Law
• Armen Dzhigarkhanyan — Hunchback, Thief-in-Law
• Larisa Udovichenko — Manka Obligatsiya
• Stanislav Sadalskiy — Kostya "Kirpich" Saprykin
• Valeriya Zaklunnaya - Hunchback Girlfriend
• Zinoviy Gerdt — Mikhail Mikhaylovich
• Aleksandr Abdulov — Gang Driver
• Yekaterina Gradova — Woman with "Ruchechnik"
• Ivan Bortnik — Promokashka

Production

The film's title is a reference to the finale, where Sharapov's botched attempt to withdraw after making contact with the gang forces Zheglov to follow a previously discarded plan for a high-risk sting operation without communication with undercover Sharapov. Hoping that Sharapov will lure the bandits to the scene of a prior robbery as they have previously rehearsed, Zheglov utters: "The place and time of the operation cannot be changed."

The series' historical and cultural accuracy regarding police work is explained by immediate life experience of its creators. On one hand, both screenwriting Vayner brothers received legal education; the elder brother, Arkadiy, was an actual Moscow militsiya detective before becoming a professional writer. Elements of several actual criminal cases were used in the plot.

On the other hand, lead actor Vladimir Vysotsky is known to be having certain interest in criminal culture and befriending several ex-convicts. According to some recollections, Vysotsky played a major creative role in the making of the series. He conceived the idea of turning the novel into a movie after receiving an advance copy of the book from his friends, the Vayner brothers, and he actively campaigned for the part of Zheglov (actor Stanislav Shakurov was the director's original choice) despite the fact that the character in the novel was a much younger man. During the making of the film, Vysotsky frequently substituted for Govorukhin as director, including directing the entire scene of Dr Gruzdev's interrogation, and he also invented the comical attributes of the character of Kostya "The Brick" Saprykin (a good-natured pickpocket with a speech disorder).

Young supporting actor Ivan Bortnik (a close friend of Vysotsky) was appraised for his vivid and accurate portrayal of underdog gang member Promokashka - the role that dominated his further film acting career. Currently perceived as a stereotypical Russian criminal, Bortnik is coming from a Moscow academic family who never submerged into underworld. He created his iconic part only by recollecting his occasional street contacts with young criminal wannabes.

Authors of the 1979 series attempted to portray 1940s Moscow with the use of historical neighborhoods in Moscow and Odessa as well as extensive resources of the Odessa Film Studio. There were, however, visible inconsistencies such as Sharapov's walking past a railway line with modern Electrichka and refrigerator train cars moving along it.

In 1998, Russian TV star Leonid Parfyonov made a commemorative documentary "Место встречи. 20 лет спустя" (Meeting Place, Past 20 Years), putting history of the series' creation in the wider social context of both the plot and the production eras. Parfyonov interviewed members and acquaintances of the cast and crew as well as actual police detectives and criminals of the 1970s.

Sharapov's love interest patrolwoman Varya Sinichkina dies at the end of the novel. The ending was altered in the movie because the studio administrator thought it was too depressing. The Vayner brothers later admitted that they liked the new happy ending better.

The series were originally intended to have 7 parts, but the Soviet broadcast authorities ordered to trim them down to 5. As a result, many scenes were left out of the final cut, with creators struggling to maintain the flow of the narrative

Cultural impact

The film's massive popularity made its texts and messages a major source for the Soviet and post-Soviet culture.

• For instance, "The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed" was the first mention of the Thief in Law organized crime phenomena in Soviet cinema and television, although it is a background plot element.
• Armen Dzhigarkhanyan lampooned his own performance as The Hunchback, in a 1998 installment of a popular Armenian sketch comedy series Our Backyard.
• In 2010, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin used Zheglov's famous "a thief's place is in prison" line in widely criticized remarks against the jailed tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
• A sculpture featuring Vysotsky and Konkin (as Zheglov and Sharapov) is installed outside the Internal Affairs Ministry building in Kiev, Ukraine

External links

• The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed at AllMovie
• The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed at IMDb
• "МЕСТО ВСТРЕЧИ. 20 ЛЕТ СПУСТЯ" - Leonid Parfyonov's documentary Template:Ru icon:
  • Part 1 on YouTube
  • Part 2 on YouTube