Flights in Dreams and in Reality

Sergei Makarov is turning forty. He works at a design office and does no work; he has a wife and is never home; he has a young mistress and cannot give her anything either. His birthday has come and he cannot find anyone to spend it with. All day he jokes, hurts people, runs off, comes back. At the end of forty years there is nothing in his hands, and he cannot say so to anybody. The film does not judge him; it just follows him for one day. Roman Balayan directs the Soviet film; ninety-two minutes, with Oleg Yankovsky as Makarov and Lyudmila Gurchenko, Oleg Tabakov and a young Oleg Menshikov in the cast. It was made in the last years of the Brezhnev period. It gives the stagnation of that time not as a political matter but as the daily condition of one man.