Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!

The cartoon at the beginning of this film was interesting. Clearly, the appartment buildings that marched all over the Soviet Union and were eventually shown dominating the world were symbolizing that one day the Soviet Union would envelope the entire world in communism. Soviet propaganda had evidently managed to infiltrate Russian movies during the 1970's - and most likely during the entirety of its existence - when Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath! was made. However, the Western perspective yielded a different interpretation of this cartoon than the Soviet creators had perhaps intended. The buildings were seen marching into peaceful, beautiful settings and noisily moving in and ruining the natural landscape. From the Western point of view, the thought process during this cartoon was, "How foolish and boring would the world look if this really had come to be. Everything would look the same!"
Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath used the similarity of buildings to generate the masterfully created plot. This film almost had the plot of an American romantic comedy. Zhenya was the goofy bachelor thrust into a hilarious situation by his school buddies and Nadya was a beautiful single woman dating a boring man that could not seem to love her in the right way. Ippolit was the stereotypical jealous boyfriend that lived life much too seriously. Many of the jokes were created through witty dialogue although there were some instances - such as Zhenya's drunken stupor- that relied on the use of physical comedy. The humor employed in Irony of Fate, or Forget Your Bath was largely universal and the plot was one that almost anybody could seemingly relate to.
The ending of the movie was almost too perfect. Zhenya went back to Moscow after Ippolit drunkenly sputtered that a relationship between Nadya and Zhenya would be impulsive and idealistic. Ippolit could not understand what would make a relationship with Zhenya different for Nadya from her relationship that she had previously been in with him. Fortunately for the audience, Nadya decided to take that chance and she showed up in Moscow with Zhenya's bag that he forgot at her house.
If this movie accurately represents the Russian notion of love then Russians and Americans have similar feelings on what love should be. Nearly all American romantic comedies end up with the woman leaving a stable relationship in order to take a chance. Most Americans in movies are not looking for stability in a relationship but rather for fun and excitement. They dream of finding true love under crazy circumstances much in the same way that Zhenya and Nadya did.
I enjoyed watching this movie. One of my favorite things about this movie was the music. I would not be suprised if the actor that played Zhenya was some sort of famous singer in Russia in the 1970's. The traditional Russian songs that Zhenya and Nadya sang were interesting to listen to and compare to tratitional American ones. I also liked the portion of the movie when Zhenya was drunk with his friends and then drunkenly confused in Lenningrad. Everybody has experienced the type of drunken behavior that Zhenya and his friends exhibit at some point in their lives.
Although I enjoyed the music, I had difficulty relating to the parts of the movie when they sang to each other as a means of entertainment. Most Americans will go out to listen to music, or listen to music, but they will not perform for each other. Also, some of the body language - such as they part when Zhenya gives Nadya a headrub before leaving - struck me as being culturally different. I don't anticipate a large majority of the movies that we watch to be like this but I was pleased that we began this class with a movie that did not have extreme cultural differences.