i added goncharov to tmdb and it was up for 7 hours before being sadly deleted BUT the letterboxd page is still up so if any gonchheads wants to go review it to show our devotion to the greatest mafia film ever made you can now do so 🙏

Needless to say I want the Criterion Blu-ray, but this copy will do for now.

Okay, so. The thing about Goncharovposting is that it's legitimately a fairly large plot point in the 2008 novel City of Thieves, set in the Siege of Leningrad.

Like, one of the two main characters, Kolya, has this whole thing, where he constantly talks about this one novel. When he's in prison awaiting execution in the morning, all he talks about with his cellmate is raving about how much of a classic this book is, how deep and intricate its themes are. In the pitch dark, having just met him, he berates the protagonist for being such an illiterate fool as to have never read the book. He's this enigmatic combination, simultaneously a young, dumb, full-of-cum fuckboy, but also a well-read literary critic. Despite never taking anything seriously, he constantly quotes long passages from this classic work during times of hardship. He has a notebook he keeps full of excepts from it - he's even in prison because he deserted his Red Army unit to give his thesis defence on the book.

Towards the end, it's revealed that, actually, the book doesn't exist. He made it up. He was just completely bullshitting about this made-up classic novel, constantly, even while about to die. On a deeper level, it's an aspect of his inability to open up to people, and the way he defends himself using a persona - he presents his own writing ideas under the guise of a classic work, in order to shield himself from criticism. He's terrified of authentically baring that creative part of himself. But, much more importantly than any of that, the novel he made up to share these ideas is, like... 100% just a riff on Ivan Goncharov's famous work, Oblomov, to the point that the protagonist notes this multiple times. He was Goncharovposting the whole fucking time.

We're 15 years late to the party. There are users on this website who have lived under the original Goncharovpost their whole lives, until what amounts to a modern rediscovery of the artform. As for that interim? The author of City of Thieves, David Benioff, later went on to destroy the Game of Thrones TV adaptation, and the book itself got a weirdly large presence in The Last of Us Part II. Small world.

besties the reason goncharov (1973) is so alluring to people specifically women and gays is because the underlying theme is running. andrey is physically running for his life and always running away from who he is and his "sinful" desire for goncharov. goncharov is running from his enemies and also himself as he slowly is unable to recognize the man in the mirror. katya is running from what she and sofia could be. she is running from gender norms but is also running right towards them.

Not to break the 87th wall or whatever we're at at this point, but Goncharov would genuinely be a fantastic movie if it were real, someone here should crowdfund or something and try to make it on their ow—[i am assassinated in real time]

Katya, described by Goncharov as "not the coldest winter [he's] loved," eventually discovers within herself the fire that Goncharov claims will never thaw her. Her husband's words return to haunt Katya when she kills Ice Pick Joe, who, despite his name, is one of the film's warmest characters, a friendly American hopelessly out of place amongst mobsters. Up until their final meeting, Ice Pick Joe--and the viewer--hold out hope that Katya will escape the cyclical violence in which the Naples mafia has trapped her. But Joe walks in to find the Katya he seeks completely gone: in her place sits a half-formed Goncharov, his iconic suit loose on Katya's thin frame, his hat on her head, his cigar between her fingers as she forges the letter…

[When] Katya draws the gun and shoots Joe, we cannot see her eyes. They are covered by the brim of Goncharov's fedora, literally and figuratively casting her into his shadow, as the flames of Goncharov's hearth crackle in the background. The film implies that the fire Goncharov searches for in Katya is only present in this moment, in her imitation of masculinity and of Goncharov himself. This is Katya's central tragedy: as much as her husband insists that they are ill-matched, that Katya will be forever sealed off behind a wall of ice, she is more like him than he can imagine…

[Katya] paradoxically proves the men in her life both right and wrong: her quiet, cold exterior is a veneer, but rather than concealing the softness that Joe hopes to find, there is only a twisted reflection of Goncharov, who, hearing about Joe's death, can only chuckle. It is exactly what he would have done…

…Unlike many of the other works discussed, to commit this violent act, Katya becomes neither hyper-feminine (i.e., wicked temptress) nor is she “unsexed”; rather, she is heavily gendered, specifically masculine, not neuter. The hat over her eyes and the suit jacket draped over her shoulders imply that this is a further performance and not the core through which the aptly-named Ice Pick Joe hoped to break, but the flames say otherwise.

—Excerpts from Unsex Me Here: De-gendering, Guilt, and Lust in Scheming Women (Maria Stiller, 1994)

Garfield references the movie Goncharov (1973) in Garfield's Problem, published July 17th 2020

DID WE BREACH CONTAINMENT

I've made a goncharov quiz, please take it to find out which goncharov enjoyer you are. don't let this flop

Goncharov But Not Forgotten`

I'm genuinely surprised at how much the tumblr Goncharov fandom hasn't latched onto Mario Ambrosini. I mean if nothing else, he's the perfect foil.

Both he and Goncharov operate under assumed names/titles, with Goncharov being branded "Lo Straniero" by the locals upon his arrival in Naples, and the conversation during the dinner scene revealing that he adopted the surname "Ambrosini" (lit. Immortal) on account of how many times he cheated death early in his life. There's also a big deal made about how he "earned" his name, something that Goncharov subtly works into his own philosophy by going back to using his given, slavic name rather than Lo Straniero after cementing his own status as a crime lord.

And then we've got his own association with clocks. Remember, he was the one who brings up the subject of turning back time in the smoke break scene, not Goncharov. He's constantly pulling out that pocketwatch of his, and in fact the very last scene we get of him is him reaching for it to check the time while escaping on the boat to America, only to be reminded that he'd lost it in the shootout.

Plus, I mean. Al Pacino.

AL PACINO & JOHN CAZALE as MARIO AMBROSINI & JOSEPH MORELLI ━ Goncharov (1973) | dir. Martin Scorsese

Dont get me wrong the Goncharov walk is funny but like de Niro didn't just decide to walk like that. it's actually one of several hidden references to John Wayne, establishing Goncharov as the ultimate hypermasculine ideal the same way John Wayne was, deliberately putting it in dialectic with his barely subtextual homosexuality, acknowledging how paradoxically both homophobia and homoeroticism are the ultimate result of such a ferociously misogynist world as the mafia.

Also note for example how he is given the title of Duke during the ball at the embassy or how he registers at the hotel under the name Marion Robert Morrison.

my favourite part of goncharov is when oblomov came out and said 'i've got oblomovitis' and died

goncharov (1973) is so compelling but all my fucked up little brain thinks when I see andrey is just