The film Psychos (2015) by Alexei Kitaytsev is a film about a youth gang, about a counterculture with an acute social political subtext. It is positioned as an anti-fascist cinema. Representatives of the saykobilly subculture obviously didn’t like the film, and shouldn’t have, they were made into ultra-right thugs, fans of psychobily music are shown here as neo-fascists.
Guys like to be naughty, get up to girls, fight, “post” or “flogged” at saiko concerts. In addition to traditional youth entertainment, someone wants to stand out in a party by participating in rallies, protest marches. Psychos are called upon to disperse antifa demonstrations and beat up their participants. They resemble modern pumped-up cynical guys: supporters of Orthodoxy, activists from metallurgical magnates, such unpunished participants in crowded meetings acting on the side of those in power.
In fact, it turns out that the whole saiko party is run by an adult uncle, a certain German “Petrovich”, for his own selfish financial and political purposes, treating young people as meat, expendable material. He orders a murder as easily as he makes a phone call: “Are there unnecessary people that no one will miss? – Yes, we are all lumpen, without a family-a job…”
At first, the film is designed in a gray-brown-red color scheme, then you don’t notice it. At some points, the frames turn into comics. It is not clear why this would be? Apparently, to show the unnaturalness of the characters. The story sort of flips through and goes on. The episodes filmed in Germany suddenly reminded me of Bigger Than Ben – there, too, two Russian guys were wandering around the city, not really knowing what to do with themselves.
Goth girl Maya (Christine Asmus)
The Gothic girl Maya with a coffin bag, the heroine of Christine Asmus, seemed to be pining for Trifon at first, and then quickly defected to the “Psycho” Rebel, despite the fact that she considered him a fascist. Maya filmed the events of the march on camera, being a good hundred meters away from what was happening. Zoom won’t help the case, what are you taking here, this is only suitable for ejection. But Rebel’s romantic line with Maya makes half the movie.
The program “Late” is something like Posner and Solovyov and Malakhov combined, a near-political talk show. In the screensaver of the show, a painted Eduard Limonov flashes, the one who has not been on TV for a long time, but whose national balls probably made up a certain part of the Psychos heroes.
“Psychos” has been compared to the Jumper Stomper, American Story X, but the film obviously does not reach their level. There, neo-Nazis are traditionally skins, and this does not raise questions, but here, for some reason, saykobilly. As the director said in an interview, skinheads are banned in the Russian Federation, apparently that’s why you can’t make a movie about them, but there are a lot of people of different political views, including ultra, among the saykobills.
As far as I know psychobilly fans, almost all of them are not politically engaged in any way, except that someone with obvious sympathy for antifa. And here Psychos are fighting with blacks, commanding migrant migrant workers like an army.
I generally thought that the film was about the saykobilly counterculture, about music, about a sayko party (in Russia, this is primarily Moscow and St. Petersburg), but the music here is only the background. A lot of music was selected for the soundtrack to the film (Moscow Alligators, Jailbreakers, Minsk Mental Bait), but not all the material was played in the film. The fact is that the director played in Jailbreakers and is still a member of Alligators.
Antifa are shown as a kind of shit in arafatki. There are no complaints about Psychos, they are dressed in style. Bombers Lucky’13 and other merch. On the wall in the German’s bunker there are posters of Meteors, logos of the Bop Street store, Alligators and others: old Moscow rockabilly-saykobilly-party.
The cast is well chosen, everything is in its place, the guys (Ilya Antonenko, Matvey Zubalevich) look authentic, Christine Asmus adorns the film. The romantic walk of the heroes against the backdrop of Moscow City skyscrapers is one of the most memorable moments. But the film does not formally sum up any results, there is no clear plot in it, perhaps there was not enough budget, and everything turned out to be rather crumpled. The only thing you can learn from Psychos is that it’s better not to be a pawn in someone’s game.
Watch Psychos (2015) online:
Well, I don’t know… I’m perplexed. Moscow, Berlin, ZHBI, spetsnaz, antifa, saiko… The Germans… in a word, sur…
I looked at the “Awards and prizes of TV and film festivals” – “there” was especially impressive
Festivals are generally a separate topic of conversation. It brought me to these places – they have their own atmosphere there. Soaked in art-house for the marrow of the bones. And an art house is, damn it, an art house. Anything can be hidden under this concept.
I mean, awards and prizes from critics in general and from festivals in particular often don’t mean anything at all.