User Reviews

Boris Barnet was the intellectual of comedy and drama for the people and a leading figure in the Soviet espionage genre. It is no coincidence that Tarkovsky admired him; "Borets i kloun" radiates spontaneity and sweetness for the artists of the circus tent, but it is also a ferocious ridicule of the authorities with their anachronistic dictatorial and despotic vision, and their high-ranking airs such as Governor Zelyoniy. The giant Ivan Poddubny should belong to the popular legends of universal literature; concocting a smile at his former colleagues, the Odesa dockers who reject him on his return to the port, and instead his staunch fury against the clown who sabotaged his friend Anatoly Durov's powders and makeup, almost causing his blindness. But the height of ideals comes in the fight for the championship against the Frenchman Raoul Buchet, who, using the trick and cunning of himself and the corruption of the judges, illegally smears himself with olive oil to cheat and slip. From Poddubny's arms in the middle of a fight. What will be the response of a champion to such a disappointment? Poddubny does not argue for justice or attempt the fight again to achieve a title that he knows full well he already possesses: he retires to his town and lives on the farm, as if within that colossus there was an ascetic who only cared for little animals and enjoying its people fills up every day, until the circus comes to town and in a matter of time Raoul and Ivan will fight their last competition. The next time Poddubny reached the port, the stevedores no longer turned their backs on him.