Potty and Awe: A film about an iconic punk band takes it into a fairy tale

The full—length sequel to the series "The King and the Fool" is not about life after death, but about a life in which death simply has no place. There is only freedom, creativity, the energy of punk rock, and a pretty decent number of charismatic freaks who have given themselves up to their own imagination. The Pot and the Prince find themselves in the space of worlds created by themselves, where wanderers who have been hit on the head roam, romantic proud people catch lightning with their hands, and then all run away and jump off a cliff. The dark, absurdist and insanely attractive universe of KISHA is coming to life on the big screen for the first time, and this musical promises to become one of the main events of the Russian film season. Izvestia was one of the first to appreciate the novelty and share their impressions.

What is the movie "The King and the Fool. Forever"

Fans of the band and the series waited for February 19 with some apprehension. On the one hand, it seems to be in the movie "The King and the Fool. Forever" is promised to be the same, only better. The director is Rustam Mosafir again, Konstantin Plotnikov plays Gorshka again, and Vlad Konoplev plays the Prince. This is just a continuation of their story. But there is one caveat to this "just": the 2023 series followed the entire real life of the Pot, and we know what happened next. He died, "KISH" ceased to exist, but there is a group "Knyazz", which is still actively performing and recording albums.

But in the finale of the 2023 series, the Pot flatly "refused" to die. He simply "moved" into the rich world of his songs, into the "fairy tale", and not alone, but together with those who were close and dear to him. Almost like a pharaoh with an entourage, but without the mummies and pyramids. So the viewers of the series were left with hope, although they had to say goodbye to the line of the real "King and the Fool" — maybe for the best.

The success of the series turned out to be deafening: in the first six days, more than 1.3 million people watched it on Kinopoisk alone, KISHA's songs broke into the music charts (22 tracks at the same time), and the band experienced a real renaissance among the young audience, having been infected on TikTok.

And now a movie is coming out about how things could have gone further. And I would like to joke that the Duffer brothers, the creators of "Very Strange Cases," should adopt the method of the authors of the Russian series, because the finale of the Netflix hit was as little satisfied with the audience as the fans of the band were with its tragic breakup.

How did the sequel turn out?

The full-meter plot reconciles the two lines of the series quite gracefully. Depressed by the death of the Pot, the Prince goes through grief to such a catharsis that he blurs the line between reality and fiction. The villain Necromancer (Ilya Grishin) makes his way into the fairy-tale world. He raises an army of the dead, seeking to get Pot's beloved Widow (Daria Melnikova) and destroy this world. The trouble is that because of his actions in the real world, the songs of "KISHA" begin to disappear without a trace, which is why the Prince is considered crazy. In a desperate attempt to save the day, the fantasy Pot (Konstantin Plotnikov) kidnaps Andrei Knyazev (Vlad Konoplev) from the real world in order to fight back against the villain together.

Of course, the director of "The King and the Fool" Rustam Mosafir, as a true mystic, cinephile and aesthete, the creator of "Skif" and "Shaman", relies on classics in developing the concept of the film. It is clear that at VGIK everyone watched Fassbinder's Berlin, Alexanderplatz, where, after the serial line, the epilogue transported us together with the hero to the other world, and it was a completely independent work. Then David Lynch used the same technique in "Twin Peaks" and Lars von Trier in "Kingdom." This has also been seen in feature films — in Bela Tarr's "Satanic Tango", in Fellini's "Eight and a Half", and many others. Mosafir tends to Western cinema in general, his first notable film is "White—White Day", a short film noir, after which the young director was immediately noticed.

"My tooth was knocked out, and someone shouted, "Look, the Pot!"

Actor Konstantin Plotnikov — about returning to "The King and the Fool", the law of the second performance and popularity

Now, in a somewhat hooligan manner, he has transferred the technique used by world-renowned masters to Russian cinema. Of course, by lightening the shape, but also, on the other hand, by giving yourself the pleasure of playing with the macabre aesthetics that reign in the universe generated by the fantasy of the Pot. Here the disagreements between the Pot and the Prince switch to another register, but, on the other hand, only here they can overcome them. Like in the cult series "Virtual Reality", which Mosafir, like all his generation, watched in the 90s.

It's both conceptual and spectacular. A punk fairy tale booms throughout the hall with your favorite hits, ambiguous images of "KISHA" songs come to life before your eyes, costumes and decorations become connecting threads between the plots of individual songs or echoes with the real biographies of the characters. Everything is designed for the effect of recognition, so that the fans of "KISH" feel at home, as if they have been living in the fantasy world of a Pot for a long time. And the rest of the audience can just relax and enjoy themselves, like watching a Gozzi play or an expensive Halloween party.

It looks expensive. The artists spent several months building an eclectic three-story-high tavern town in the hangar, looking like a Colosseum or just the perfect venue for a big punk concert. Brightly painted sofas with teeth and "goats" are juxtaposed with medieval elements. On the walls there are frescoes based on drawings by the Prince and works by Bosch.

Konstantin Plotnikov seems to have become even more like a real Pot. Laughter, the way he speaks, even the absence of teeth — sometimes this incredible mimicry makes you feel uncomfortable. Vlad Konoplev's prince, who was advised by the real Andrey Knyazev, is constantly torn between two realities. The necromancer performed by Grishin is stylized like David Bowie — thin, audacious, shocking and frighteningly attractive. Not scary.

Bremen Town musicians will also appear here. Not computer-drawn zombies, but live actors with complex makeup. The role of a zombie named Sid was played by Anton Lissov, the leader of the Jane Air musical group. In one interview, he admits that the reference for this role was two jerks from Pirates of the Caribbean, one of whom had a rolling eye. In addition, Jane Air recorded a cover of the song "Dead Anarchist", which sounds in one of the key scenes of the film. Stas Baretsky and Gosha Kutsenko will make a cameo appearance.

The fact that Andrey Knyazev and the band's music producer Igor Gudkov personally supervised the creation of the film has obvious advantages and disadvantages. Here, everyone decides for themselves how to treat it. We all remember the recent Netflix hit "Becoming Led Zeppelin", from where Page cut out all rock and roll and left only music and pure and bright friendship. This does not prevent the picture from remaining an absolute must-see, even for those who are not too interested in the band. The creators of the movie about "The King and the Fool" managed to give the Pot the very eternity he so wanted to believe in. And give us a chance to be with him in this eternity, too, shouting the choruses of his songs and choosing an outfit for the next Halloween.