The Soundtrack for Alexei Balabanov's Movie 'Morphine': Cruel Romance with the Passing Epoch

摘要

The article studies the specific features of interaction between music, plot and a recreated epoch in Alexei Balabanov's movie "Morphine". The author analyzes in detail the meanings, which the old-time romances playing in the background bring to the cine-narrative. Firstly, we can see direct plot parallels between cinematic and musical content, for example, the leitmotif of drug addiction of the protagonist. Secondly, there are hidden reasons for the deliberate mismatch of the nature of music and the unfolding events in the film. The author comes to the conclusion that the refined, broken poetics of cruel romances turns out to be consonant with both the pre-revolutionary era in Russia and the fatal passion of the protagonist for morphine.