Why Apple TV’s ‘Mayday’ will make Russians laugh until they cry
An agent from the former
Most Hollywood movies about the Soviet Union have one thing in common: a tangled mass of cliches. Gloomy people and run-down five-story apartment buildings, perpetual snow, total dreariness and the obligatory views of the Red Square and St. Basil's Cathedral. If you're lucky, all of this spiced up with beautiful Russian girls. These days, online maps allow you to see the streets of any Russian city in detail, but the image of a country where savages live side by side with bears keeps popping up on the screen. In this context, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein's ‘Mayday’ stands out pleasantly from other movies about Russia. While it certainly has its share of clichés, it must be acknowledged that the filmmakers tried to create a believable image.
According to the plot, U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Troy Kelly (Ryan Reynolds) is tasked with photographing Soviet missile launcher silos: all he has to do is fly a ‘Blackbird’ reconnaissance plane 900 km deep into Soviet aerospace and return. But, the operation doesn't go according to plan; he’s forced to engage in a dogfight with a Soviet fighter jet and crashes somewhere in the middle of the vast Siberian taiga. There, he’s found by former KGB agent Nikolai Ustinov (Kenneth Branagh), living as a hermit in the area. And this is where the fun begins. First, the Russian turns out to be a fan of the United States; second, he speaks excellent English and agrees to escort the "ideological enemy" to the border. And third, he's not opposed to emigrating himself.
Everything that happens next is a nonstop road movie filled with shootouts, fights, terrifying KGB agents (the most "Russian" of them all, with his heavy punch and Schwarzenegger-esque mannerisms from ‘Red Heat’, is convincingly played by Polish actor Marcin Dorociński) and a portrayal of the "dying countryside". In other words, at first glance, everything seems quite stereotypical. But, the rest of the movie is a post-ironic narrative about a Russian and an American searching for (and finding) common ground. Because of this, all the ‘Hollywood Russia’ clichés serve more as a deliberate frame for the plot, with a few design and programming “glitches” thrown into the mix.
The Red Square is not red at all
A must-see stop on any Moscow tourist route is the Red Square. In ‘Mayday’, Russian audiences will want to rub their eyes – could this be a hallucination? There's the Historical Museum and, somewhere in the distance, St. Basil's Cathedral. That's where the similarities end. But, instead, you get the feeling of being in an alternate reality. Instead of cobblestones, the square is paved with tiles, with a meandering pattern. A statue of Lenin rises in the center. There's no sign of the mausoleum, but there is a colonnade and a huge building with an antique portico. Thus, the movie eclectically blends the actual filming location – Budapest's Heroes' Square – with Moscow's Red Square.
A brawl with songs & counterintelligence
That all having been said, fiction and reality are so intricately intertwined in ‘Mayday’ that before you have time to laugh at one thing, you're already fuming over another. Russian audiences will be thoroughly baffled by the beetroot-infused moonshine with bear meat and the real-life ‘Altai’ communications system, the brawl set to a song by Anna German and the dacha of a high-ranking official that looks like it came straight out of an Aspen real estate catalog, not to mention the rustic American-style café in the middle of a taiga outpost and the hotel called ‘Zakholustnaya’ (which loosely translates as ‘backwater’).
Of course, one could nitpick on a larger scale. In 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev wasn't yet president (it seems somewhere in the script, the words ‘general secretary’ and ‘president’ became synonymous) and children in Russia are unlikely to be named ‘Gorgo’ (a fine name for a Spartan queen, but unlikely for a child from the USSR, unless the Russian ‘Georgiy’ is confused with the Serbian ‘Grga’). Roman blinds are also hard to find on Soviet commuter trains, but they're easily found on trains in the former Yugoslavia.
Such a bizarre mix should outrage Russian audiences, but there's one caveat. Two, actually. First, Kenneth Branagh's performance. The Shakespearean actor is so at home as Ustinov that it's hard not to fall under his spell. His duet with Ryan Reynolds deserves special mention: it would be a shame if their characters didn’t get a sequel. Second, and most importantly, ‘Mayday’, thanks to its absurdity, defends itself against any accusations of implausibility. It feels more like an imaginary dialogue about the differences and similarities between mentalities. And, in that case, any means are fair game!