English Transcript
SYNOPSIS
WE ARE THE CHEMBERLAINS
The life story of an honorary citizen of the city of Baltimore
drama
A guy comes from the Siberian taiga to the city. He is a peasant's son. A hunter. A fisherman. His another hobby is horses, natural races in the night. Without a saddle, with only a rope instead of a bridle. The stamping of horses' hooves. The wind. The stars. Another episode. Taming young, unbroken horses in the winter. Rampage of horse and snow.
A local team basketball coach brings him to CHEMBERLAIN r this young fellow, basketball is an unknown American game which he had never heard of. He lives in a boarding school. He lives alone, because he came there in summer when all the children are at summer brakes. His first training session started when he was 14 years old. By basketball standards he is too old to become a professional player. Behind the scenes, you can hear the knocks of a ball in an empty gym. But he does not know how to do anything - neither run, nor jump, nor throw a ball. He is shocked. Despite all these obstacles six years later, in Munich he became the youngest 1972 Olympic basketball champion. He is a star. A center player, his height being 6 feet 9 inches, incredibly powerful, a tall slender brunet with blue eyes. His friend, a colleague in the club and the national team, launches the ball into opponent's basket right the last second of the final match. Later on it turned out, and he'd learn it the hard way, that to defeat basketball players from the United States in Munich was half the battle. To stay alive back at home, in his homeland, in the tough and ruthless sporting struggle against CSKA, basketball players from the Defense Ministry club - that's what will be the main prize.
On the first night after his return, his house was robbed and all the money that he received for winning at the Olympics was stolen from him. The thief was caught and the money was recovered. However the colonel of militia (police) arrogantly speaks directly in the face, incinerating him with a hateful gaze: "Your money is confiscated! In favor of the state". His first thought is: "You all go to hell!” He is young and naive. Ahead of him is the US cities tour. An unprecedented boom. America!!! Tour of USA cities. "We are the Chamberlains!" He is screaming to himself. Four games won, four lost.
In Baltimore, he, like his fellow champion friends, is awarded the title of honorary citizen. After a solemn reception from the mayor of Baltimore, he and a group of his teammates secretly go away to continue the party in the restaurant. There he meets an American girl named Linda. His friend and teammate, also meets a girl at the party. From the restaurant the whole team with a bunch of girls returns on two buses to the hotel. Their buses are accompanied by a police escort car with signal lights on.
Before reaching the hotel our hero with his friend and the two girls got off the bus, supposedly because they needed to refresh themselves before going to bed. On the balcony of the hotel the teammates found themselves deep in trouble. Darker than thunder storm cloud, the head coach of the national team with his assistant are already impatiently waiting for them. "Hold on, ladies, not so fast!", says the coach to the girls irritably. The Olympic players reluctantly step out of the buses under the rain and the hail of criticism from their leadership. When the wrath of the leadership subsided and the coach went to his room to rest, our hero quietly goes to the hotel with his friend and the two girls. He has a delightful night with Linda.
In the morning the head coach threateningly asks him: "Where have you been?" He innocently, like a child, answers: "I slept." "Ah! That's right!” - says the coach with satisfaction in his voice. “It is important to comply with the strict regime! But your teammates decided to hang around the city! You are a role model for the rest of the team! Would somebody, please, translate an English article from yesterday's newspapers? Listen carefully to what they wrote about your wonderful game. Praise is always pleasant, isn't it?"
From the US the team travels to Peru. At the First Basketball Festival he punches in the face the offender from the Cuban team, on the playground, during the game. The game ends in a fight with the Cuban team. Russian team wins the Golden medal. One more victory!
At the airport, after returning back home to USSR, personal possessions and suitcases of players are searched very zealously, all the suitcases are turned upside down. For our hero, the search ends with a subpoena to the investigator for further interrogation.
Charged with: black marketing. Too many things imported into the country - for resale or, in the language of the laws of those years, for "unearned enrichment." They torment him alone, although every one of the players carried something, and one player (from the club of the Ministry of Defense) even had a pistol in his bag. Six months in a solitary cell, trying to break him. The court. His parents arrive. Father says: "You'd better stay in the village." The verdict: three years of detention in a penal colony settlement. Construction of a new pig-breeding farm in the village named Nurma. He is a shiftsman. Wearing huge sneakers which he bought in the USA and jeans. “The American!” That’s his nickname. He has to mix concrete. Once he asks for leave into in the city, to watch a basketball match. Russians against Americans. A player from the US notices him and runs up to him: "How are you? Why so sad? Why don’t you play?"A man in civilian clothes interrupts the conversation, leads the vacationer out of the sports hall. The tribunes chant: "Freedom! Freedom!"
Return to the colony. Another blow: a colleague died, the friend from the club and the national team, the hero of Munich. He also had been searched at customs, and the customers found icons (which some club player asked him to take; soon after it this very player deserted to the Ministry of Defense club) which led to deprivation of all his titles. The only requirement was to pass to the rivals, the club of the Ministry of Defense. He looked for return bottles in the streets, even in disposal dumps, he began to abuse alcohol, but did not go to the rivals club. By this time the national team was already headed by the coach of the other club. Finally, being one of the best basketball players in the world, the stubborn player was totally rehabilitated. He got an invitation to a training camp. But suddenly he died from the sarcoma of the heart. Or was he killed? The devil only knows. Our prisoner is allowed to leave his settlement and to go to the funeral. The sounds of the funeral melody. Another colleague at the funeral says: "What's the use of our titles?! Or sports honor! I picker-upper the Finns and resell clothes. Every day I earn so much…» Soon after he’ll drop out of the window not without the help of his business partners.
Linda, the girl from the USA, finds our hero in his settlement. They met in Baltimore, during an overseas tour. She has a grandmother in Russia. «I love you! I’ll wait for you to be free! We’ll go away from here together!"
Finally, the release. The man returns to his native village. A joyful reunion. A strange car is approaching his house. People in uniform, with machine guns, come out. "Get out!" They're taking him – but where to? To the capital, as it turns out. "You will play for the “Dynamo” team! Consider it as your draft call! You haven’t been to the military, have you? If you only try to refuse, you’ll go to jail for another 10 years as a persistent criminal."
The match. The player gasps for air like a horse ridden by cruel horsemen. Totally exhausted, he measures his length on the gym floor. Linda finds him in the hospital. "Let's go away together!"
And he goes away. Not with her, but to his native taiga village where he finds a work place. Now he is an assistant of the beekeeper with the salary of 48 rubles a month. The bees. They look like… small birds. Those pedigreed horses which he remembered from childhood are no longer in the village – probably they have been eaten. He sells honey at the railway station. A well-grown man exclaims: "Is that you?! Oh, really? I didn’t believe my eyes at first... You're a champion. Compared to you, I’m nobody." Once upon a time they started to learn playing basketball together. Now he is a railway chief. He helps our hero get a work place in the depot. In the city again. A neighbor living next-room in the hostel hangs himself because of one-way love. "Do not touch vodka," the chief admonishes him. – Never ever! Or you’ll come to no good." A renovated locomotive comes out from the depot. He opens the gate. He just finished renovating it. He stoops, his overalls looks greasy. But his eyes glare with delight. What a machine! What a power! Now the loco is ready to surge forward to some happy farness.
By this time he has a family. "What's the use of getting fancy? We came together and live together, that’s all. Love shall not be played with. My neighbor in the hostel hanged himself because of love." They have two children - a girl and a boy. They even get an apartment. It’s on the outskirts of the city, but it has three rooms and modern conveniences. All of a sudden, a crisis everywhere in the country. They stop paying wages. His wife gets fired from the factory. Empty huge factory shops, booming echoes in the depot. The reforms, god damn them! The senior tenant threatens the family: "We’ll get you out of here! Your housing services debt is a nightmare. We’ll take you to court! And - out!"
"You’d better fly to America!" – a colleague suggests.
He gets a visa because he is still an honorary citizen of Baltimore. The legend of basketball.
In the US, he works as a night cleaner at a store. You can see representatives of all former Soviet republics, from a general director of a defense plant to “professional” thieves and simple workers gathered here. All of them are now night cleaners. He drives a car. He can fire weapons of any kind. His 50th anniversary he celebrates in the circle of the night janitors of the store. He gets an NBA ball as a present. Every day in the US he earns as much as his wife at the defense plant earns for a month. She is also a cleaner. He often calls her from the USA. Is the factory she is nicknamed “the American”. He attends NBA matches looking everywhere for Doug Collins to give him his own Olympic gold medal – as a sign of reconciliation. For many years he worried about that scandal during the match, in the last three seconds. That’s the integrity of an honest rural soul. He even does not know English and can not say what he wants.
Another meeting with Linda. A candlelight dinner.
"Don’t go away, stay with me!" - "No. I have my wife and my children there. And the house-manager, the senior tenant, is a beast of a woman. I can’t. If I don’t come back, she’ll dishouse my children, they’ll have to live in the street. And then... I’m homesick. I’m already reduced by 44 pounds here. Although my refrigerator is stuffed with food, see it yourself! And the moon that you have here looks too small. You know, in my native village, the moon fills half the sky..."
Linda says to him goodbye at the airport.
Voyagers around them are dragging cramfull suitcases, bales, bags... He grins bitterly: he himself had been imprisoned only because of his foreign clothes. In times gone by!
He's flying home. His pockets are full of dollars. Hard-earned money. He brings back his gold Olympic medal, because he never found Doug Collins. An inscription flashes at the bottom of the screen (or a voiceover says): At home, not only his wife and children waited for him, but also a telegram from the Kremlin from the president who belatedly congratulated him on the anniversary. No one returned him the money confiscated “in favor of the state”, and his criminal record was cancelled because the statute of limitation had expired and not on rehabilitative grounds in connection with the absence of the event of a crime. He’ll die in a few years from an oncology disease. 280 thousand dollars for going to the US for treatment could save his life. He will reach out to Gazprom for help. They’ll say no to him: if they help him, then there’ll be no getting rid of the suffering. In loving memory.
The documentary novel "Block-shot" dedicated to the dramatic fate of the most unknown Olympic basketball champion Ivan Dvorny (Munich, 1972) is published in Siberia, in a limited edition. There exists a variant of the screenplay on the subject - "Block shot based upon one life".
LOGLINE
WE ARE THE CHEMBERLAINS
Drama
A young man is rising from the dense forests. He’s seen by a basketball coach and brought to the city. Literally a few years later the young man becomes the Olympic basketball champion in Munich in 1972. As it turns out, defeating basketball players from the United States at the Olympics in Munich was half the battle; staying alive at home, in his homeland, in a “sporting” fight with CSKA, basketball players from the Defense Ministry club - that'll be the main prize. There follows a tour of USA cities. And then - an arrest at the airport allegedly because of black marketing, six months in a solitary cell, a real sentence, building a pig-breeding farm in the village called Nurma for a year and a half. Black marketing! Everybody brought things with them, and he alone was arrested. Meanwhile, his friend, also the center player of the club and of the national team, suddenly dies from a mysterious illness. The club of these heroes is fighting with the club of the Ministry of Defense for the championship in the country. The missile hit one hole (or one club) twice. The arguments of the fight are dirty tricks, envy, intrigues. The young man struggles to the utmost for his right to stay honest, free, and strong.
Ïåðåâîä Þëèè Ìîèñååíêî.