Flights in Dreams and in Reality

Sergey is an attractive man approaching forty who is acutely aware that nothing he has achieved during the better part of his life has brought him any satisfaction. His frantic sprints between his work, his lover and his family, and the constant lies he uses to explain his absence, only tighten the noose around his neck. The three days that separate him from the Big 40 might present an opportunity to change everything, or he might just lose it all instead.... The Soviet update of the literary concept of the 'superfluous man,' filmed at the end of the Brezhnev Stagnation, was Balayan's most successful title. It was here that he first engaged Oleg Yankovsky, an actor who subsequently appeared in the majority of the director's films; without guile or pathos, he captures the existential dimension and contradictions of the morally questionable hero. The film surprisingly eluded the narrow gaze of the remorseless censors and was thus able to present audiences with a faithful portrayal of the social paralysis that befell the pre-perestroika era. Balayan's plans for a sequel set in the rip-roaring world of 1990s capitalism were abandoned.