Stilyagi

File:200px-Stilyagi 662.jpg

Стиляги (Stilyagi) is a 2008 Musical Dramedy by Valery Todorovsky set in 1955-1956. Iosif Stalin has been dead for two years, but Nikita Khrushchev has not yet denounced the Cult Of Personality, and the Soviet Union has just begun to be liberalized. Young people are experimenting with Rock and Roll, jazz, Mod style, and other trademarks of American pop culture. In the secret rock clubs and cocktail lounges, they find freedom from Soviet life. But the Komsomol (Communist Youth League), acting in the role of Culture Police, is constantly hunting these youth, who are called "stilyagi," a rude term roughly translating as "hipsters" or "mods."

One evening, Komsomol are patrolling a park and find a secret dance party. They break up the party, but one of the girls, Polly (Oksana Akinshina), escapes. The Komsomol leader Katya (Eugenia Brik) orders her friend Mels (Anton Shagin) to chase Polly. He finds her, but falls in love with her, and she escapes the Komsomol punishment. Mels is captivated, and tries to find Polly. One day, he finds her on the street with her other stilyagi friends, such as Fred, Bob, Drin, Betsy, Ellie, Sophie, and Lizzie. All of them dress in colorful clothes, wear makeup, sculpt their hair in wild styles, call each other by English names, and have secret rock parties. Mels decides to join the stilyagi, and learns dancing from Bob. He manages to get rock songs, makes a colorful suit, and begins to go out with Polly, gradually having fun and becoming his own man. He even takes on the English name Mel.

Mel gets a saxophone, becoming a Sexy Sax Man under the guidance of an apparition of Charlie Parker. He and Polly deepen their relationship, and they have sex. But not everything goes well. Mel's old friends abandon him, and his neighbors tease him for being a stilyaga. Katya, who secretly likes Mel, feels conflicted. Mel goes to Katya's house and teaches her to express herself through dance and fashion. But when Katya kisses Mel, he confesses he is in love with Polly, and Katya throws him out of her house. Persuaded by his father Brusnitsyn, who is a powerful diplomat, Fred goes to America for an internship so that he himself can become a diplomat. As a final gesture, though, Brusnitsyn hosts a party in his house for the stilyagi, and reveals that he himself was a rebel in his youth.

Polly tells Mel she wants to break up with him as she is pregnant, but the baby is not his. Mel persuades her to stay as he and his father can help her raise the baby. Mel is a big hit with the stilyagi, playing the saxophone and singing, but Katya and the Komsomol find their hideout again. The next day, at a Komsomol meeting, Katya throws Mel out of the league, saying his Meaningful Rename (see below for details) signifies he is a traitor, and making all the other Komsomol members join her in a chant as Mel hands in his membership card.

Polly gives birth to a son, John, but he is black. Mel is not sure how to react, but his father takes the baby, shows it to the other people in the apartment, and says "She is ours!" Later on, Polly reveals that John's real father was a visiting black man from America who was lost. She welcomed him into her home and, since he was like a creature from another planet, they could not really talk, and instead had sex. Mel and Polly stay together, though, and their stilyagi friends come to visit them. Bob becomes an authority on the purchase of American records, Drin serves on a submarine, and Betsy has a nervous breakdown and is expelled from Moscow.

At the end, Fred returns from America with three things. The first is a saxophone for Mel. The second is a marriage to the homely daughter of an American academician. The third is terrible news--there are no stilyagi in America!

---

Songs heard in the film

• Буги-вуги (в оригинале — «Жёлтые ботинки», инструментал, Евгений Хавтан и группа «Браво»)
• Человек и кошка (Фёдор Чистяков и группа «Ноль», оставлен оригинальный текст), исполняет Сергей Гармаш
• Я то, что надо (Дай мне эту ночь) (Валерий Сюткин и группа «Браво»), исполняет Андрей Бирин
• Я люблю буги-вуги (Майк Науменко и группа «Зоопарк»), оригинал — Марк Болан и группа T. Rex, исполняет Игорь Войнаровский
• Playboy (Моя маленькая бейба) (Гарик Сукачёв и «Бригада С»), исполняет Константин Пона
• Песня старого джазмена (в оригинале — «Старый корабль», Андрей Макаревич и группа «Машина времени»), исполняет Алексей Горбунов
• Summertime (инструментал, George Gershwin), исполняет Charlie Parker (запись), Игорь Чернов
• 17 лет (Пусть всё будет так, как ты захочешь) (Владимир Шахрин и группа «Чайф»), исполняет Константин Пона
• Восьмиклассница (Viktor Tsoi), performed by Andrei Birin and Oksana Akinshina
• Ему не нужна американская жена (группа «Колибри»), исполняют Наталья Гура, Алёна Романовская, Татьяна Решетняк, Эльвира Соловей, на ремикс был снят клип группы «ВИА Гра»
• Скованные одной цепью (Вячеслав Бутусов и группа Nautilus Pompilius, оригинальный текст — Илья Кормильцев), исполняет Евгения Брик
• Шаляй-валяй (Владимир Шахрин и группа «Чайф», сохранён оригинальный текст и дописан куплет), исполняет Андрей Бирин
• До свидания, мама (группа «Моральный кодекс», в фильм не вошла) — исполняет Ани Лорак
• Московские огни (Будь со мной) (Жанна Агузарова и группа «Браво», сохранён оригинальный текст, в фильм не вошла; мелодия в ритме вальса звучит на танцах в парке, в самом начале фильма)

---

Tropes in the film

• Adorkable: Mel.
• Appropriated Appellation: The term "stilyagi."
• Betty and Veronica: Katya is Betty, and Polly is Veronica.
• Bow Ties Are Cool: Drin.
• Chocolate Baby: John.
• Coming of Age Story
• Cool Car: Fred's convertible.
• Cool Old Guy: Mel's and Fred's fathers.
• Crowd Song: Several.
• Culture Police: The Komsomol.
• Dad the Veteran: Mel's father, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War.
• Dawson Casting
• Deliberately Monochrome: The Komsomol.
• Elvis Presley: Fred looks and acts just like him.
• Era Establishing Scene: The beginning, which tells us "Moscow, the year 1955."
• The Fifties
• Hair of Gold: Polly, a free spirit as contrasted with the more earthbound Katya.
• Heroes Want Redheads: Fred marries a red-haired American girl.
• Hitler Cam: Used on Katya when she expels Mel from the Komsomol.
• Ho Yay: Drin almost kisses Mel a couple of times.
• Important Haircut: When Katya cuts Polly's hair, she makes her face the hard reality of the consequences of being a stilyaga.
• Impossibly Tacky Clothes: The stilyagi think this is how they dress in America.
• Jewish and Nerdy: Bob.
• Meaningful Rename: Mels is named for Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. His change of name to Mel signifies his break with Soviet society, and presages the de-Stalinization of the country. The other stilyagi similarly take on English names to distance themselves from conventional culture.
• Moral Guardians: Katya and the Komsomol.
• The Musical
• Musicalis Interruptus
• Nerd Glasses: Bob.
• Nothing but Hits
• Nipple-and-Dimed: Averted.
• Put on a Bus: Fred (though The Bus Came Back) and Betsy.
• Real Is Brown: Moscow and the Soviet authorities are depicted in a dull palette of grey, brown, black, and blue.
• Real Person Cameo: Charlie Parker.
• Rock and Roll
• Rooting for the Empire: it is perfectly possible for Russians to think the Komsomol was actually right and the stilyagi were wrong, since the flood of Western pop culture was one of the factors that contributed to the fall of the Union.
• Seemingly-Wholesome Fifties Girl: Mel believes Katya too can become a stilyaga.
• Sex as Rite-Of-Passage.
• Sexy Sax Man: Mel.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Katya.
• Shout-Out: The Komsomol meeting is composed like the film of the Pink Floyd Rock Opera The Wall.
• Turn in Your Badge: Katya expels Mel from the Komsomol.
• Villain Song: "Скованные одной цепью" ("Chained Together") by Nautilus Pompilius is the Komsomol song.