Good film! Shakurov-Brejnev resembles very much real Brejnev (though it is not difficult to make up everybody to look like Brejnev, taking into consideration his famous brows).
Speaking Pushkin's words 'My soul was charmed again by my lost youth, by a painful sweetness of sadness, and by the first love of my heart'. (I left Russia for ever when Lionya (Brejnev) had been at power).
At his last years Brejnev was a laughing-stock for the people in the USSR. Especially people laughed at his passion for awards. But when I was leaving Russia and went for Sheremetievo (International airport near Moscow) I saw an enormous portrait of Brejnev in the middle of road. He brandished his hand as if saying good-bye. And so he remained for me: the last memory of my native land.
Apropos: there is a goof in the movie. At the scene where Khrushchev was yelling at Brejnev (the year 1947)he shouted: 'Suchiy potroh (impossible to translate), you wanted to make your own VDNH!' (The Exgibition of economical achievements). But that abbreviation was coined only in 1958. So we have here an anachronism.
