“Goodbye, My Friend, Goodbye” is a short film made as part of Anatoly Bely’s Cinematic Poetry project.
The film is based on Sergei Esenin’s poem of the same name.
It stars popular theatre and film actor Anton Shagin.
The verses of the work which lays at the heart of this filmic narrative are filled with the premonitions of the author’s impending death, the end of his path through life and the sense of futility regarding his future.
The train moving through the darkness is an alarming metaphor for a person’s transition from life into the unknown. We can’t imagine where that train is going—a “relay,” a “train yard” or a “station”—but sooner or later, each of us must step onto the platform to greet it.
As he reaches his seat, our hero discovers a small boy: his “inner child,” an image of purity, childhood and sincerity that we lose in our mad rush through life and cease to sense within ourselves.
The film premiered at Moscow City Day, and was also presented at the ceremony celebrating the poet’s 122nd jubilee at the Moscow State Museum of Sergei Esenin
