Legends of Turkmen cinema: GOOD GINNIE SARY KARRYEV
September 05, 2017 | 23:56 |2594
Unique appearance: nose like a banana, resembling burdock ears, like an elephant, a wide mouth, a gap between teeth, eyes like gimlets with pixyish look. And all this is on a head stretched out like a melon. The head was on a thin, small body, and the body - on short and crooked legs. His hands were surprisingly long, sinewy, with the wide hard palms of a peasant or a craftsman. It seemed that he was assembled from different and incompatible details, but which, having combined, created an extraordinary "construction" - Sary Karryev. …Sary Karryev became legendary during his lifetime - not only an actor whose appearance on the screen the audience perceived with unchanging joy, but also a man whose stories and anecdotes were passed from mouth to mouth. He joked as he breathed. He was Munchausen, Hodja Nasreddin, Aldar Kose, Captain Vrungel in one person. It is likely that irony initially served him as a defense against jests about his appearance. And his appearance, as we have already noted, was unique, and it made Sary the only one of his kind, a unique people's favorite. Sary Karryev was born in 1906 in the Koch village of Kizil-Arvat Etrap. He was left an orphan in the first minutes after birth - his mother died during childbirth. Sary Karryev knew how to make fun of others, but first of all knew how to laugh at himself. And later this even tragic situation was presented bitter, but ironic: "When I was born, midwives ran out of the house with horror, and my mother, seeing my big ears and huge nose, immediately died of fear." The boy was raised by his aunt. They lived poorly. Sary could not even finish the seven-year school, because he was skipping lessons, working on Kizil-Arvat railway repair plant. Nevertheless, he entered a factory college, and then got a job in car repair shops. But the seventeen-year-old boy was more attracted not by locksmithing, but by participation in factory artistic amateur performance. Despite the subtle appearance, his voice was remarkable for its density and deepness, and he perfectly read poetry. He had not equal in artistry. This natural gift of play-acting attracted him soon to Ashgabat, where they just opened the country's first theater studio. In the year 1929, under the auspices of thr studio, the first Turkmen Drama Theater named after Mollanepes was created. The theater became the concentration of talents, the talent pipeline of future honored and popular actors. It could be enough to say that comrades for Sary Karryev in the scene were very young and subsequently conspicuous actors - the stars of the national theater and cinema.Vladimir ZAREMBO
Already at that time the glory of the inventor, the master of the practical jokes, the man, who was sharp as a tack, was fixed for Sary. He was able to notice any amusing detail in the behavior of one of his colleagues and immediately made a parody. People were not angry with him, realizing that the actor lives not only on the stage, life generally a play for him. But, it happened that they also joked about Sary Karryev.
... There was a "Keimir Kyor" performance. With Aman Kulmamedov in the lead role. In the final scene, he uttered a pathetic monologue, and the soldiers who died in battle were lying around him on the scene. Sary Karryev was among them. The monologue was long, the actors were bored and they wanted to have fun, they slightly pricked the lying on his side Sary with peaks just below the back.
- Guys, stop it! - Sary asked quietly.
In response, they pricked even worse than before. Without thinking twice, Sary got up, approached Aman Kulmamedov and complained:
- These idlers do not die themselves and do not let a decent man do so, too.
Kulmamedov, without interrupting his monologue, (he was a great actor!) supplemented the text in his own words that at the moment he was not Aman, but Keimir Kyor and asked that Sary to not interfere with him and to go away. Sary, after listening, bowed and went to the backstage with dignity.
None of the member of audience suspected anything, believing that it was necessary according to the scenario. And the contented Sary from behind the scenes made perky faces and gestured to his offenders: "Well, darlings, it ended up in a bad way for you! You are still there and I am already here."
In the theater, Sary Karryev worked for more than ten years and was engaged in almost all performances. Colleagues first looked at him with surprise, they said that actors could not be such as he was, and then admitted with admiration that it was possible for such unimpressive Sary with not an artistic appearance to play roles in all the theatrical performances - comedy, tragedy, drama, melodrama, farce.
His life-long role as a comedian did not become a visiting card for Sary. He played workers, peasants, poor people in stage plays by local authors; ancient Italians, Spaniards, Frenchmen in the plays of Goldoni's, Lope de Vega, Schiller, Moliere. Sary was so organic and convincing in the role of a Spanish grandee or French nobleman that any viewer who had not even heard of Stanislavsky and had no idea about his system, could rightly say: "I believe!"
Sary did not know how to juggle, play half-heartedly, but he gave his characters all of himself, his temperament, that was why they turned out to be alive and bright. And suddenly ... Sary throws the theater and goes to the cinema.
What happened?
There are different reasons, including such curious as his disagreement with some decision of the theater's chief director, to whom Sary, in protest, carefully poured a bottle of ink onto a dazzling white suit.
Whether it was really so, or it's just an actor's tale, it's hard to say. Sary Karryev remained an unsolved mystery until the end of his life. The truth and fiction are so closely intertwined in the fate of this dreamer that, in the end, it was difficult to separate one from the other.
Most likely, he was called by the arising cinema in Turkmenistan. Before the war, Sary Karryev had already had a taste of a sweet fruit called "cinema", starring in the films "Dursun", "Prosecutor", "Magic Crystal". Many of his comrades in the scene also acted in the movies that time.
The Great Patriotic War began. In the year 1941 Sary Karryev volunteered for the front, despite the draft deferment, relying to him as an actor. In the battle for Stalingrad, he received a severe wound in the leg, and in January 1943 returned to Ashgabat. Of course, Sary remembered the war, but he did not describe the difficulties of the front life, but spoke about it in his usual manner:
"I'm sitting in the trench. Winter, cold, boring, I want to talk to somebody. In the trench opposite to mine sits my fellow countryman Mered. I shout to him: "Hey, Mered!". And the frost is such that the sound hardly reaches the middle, it freezes and falls to the ground. I scream again, and again my voice could not reach him. Then I strain and yell with all my strength: "Hey, Mered!" Now the voice is hard, but it's coming. The countryman shouts in reply "Hey, Sary!", but the same thing happens to his voice. So we shouted to each other, talked, warmed up."
Sary Karryev was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st class.
One of the first post-war films "The Far Bride", became an important milestone in the history of national cinema. Sary Karryev played one of the main roles in it - the motorcyclist Sary. A film about the brotherhood of nations, about love and friendship was awarded the Stalin Prize. State prize was given to Alty Karliev, who played the main role. This gave Sary Karryev a reason for such a story:
"Actually, this award should have been mine. The film was watched by Stalin himself. When he saw me, handsome, wearing a motorcycle helmet, wearing spectacles, with a smart black mustache, he turned to Bolshakov, the chairman of the USSR State Cinema Committee, who was sitting behind him and, pointing at the screen, said: "This artist must be given the State Prize." Bolshakov, who was looking at Stalin, glanced at the screen, and at that moment Alty Karliev appeared in the frame. So it turned out that the prize was given to Alty instead of me."
He attracted people to himself, like a magnet. If laughter was heard in the intervals between the shooting near the film set, then Sary-aga was sitting and telling his tales there, surrounded by actors. He spoke masterfully. These gatherings turned into a one-man show. It was not possible to remembered all his fairytales, he composed stories on foot and no one, unfortunately, bothered to write them down. They remained only in the memory of the old cinematographers. During the shooting of the film "Aina", Sary told the film team the following story:
- In 1934, Lenin called me and Maxim Gorky to check the state of art in the country...
"Wait, Sary-aga," one of the actors tells him. "By that time, Lenin had already died ten years ago."
"How can you say such a thing!" - the narrator was indignant. "Lenin is always alive! So, we went first to the Bolshoi Theater, there was a ballet. The performance ended, the curtain closed, and when it opened, the actor, who died during the play, got up and bowed before the audience. Lenin said: "Gorky and Sary, let’s go from here. This is not art, the dead do not rise again." We went to the Moscow Art Theater. There, too, after the performance the dead came to life, and made a bow. Then Lenin took us to the circus. When clowns performed, he laughed so much and banged his shoes on the floor that we were nearly kicked out. Finally, we got to the cinema. Lenin liked the film - that's where if an actot died, he died for good. And then he said: "Sary and Gorky, you know, the most important art for us are the cinema and the circus!
However, then for some reason our names were removed from the text, and instead of the "circus" they drew three dots. Well, okay, so be it," - Sary Karryev completed his regular story.
He had one weakness: he hardly remembered the text of the role, and the directors had to give him replicas. Sometimes, he was angry that he was called "give a kick", and then, instead of memorized words, he gave such improvisation that the entire film crew simply fell about laughing. But oftentimes those improvisations became a part of the film.
Sary Karryev gave more than forty years to the national cinema. His roles were different - big, medium, small, but whoever he played, Sary invested in the character traits of himself - complex, simple, fun, sad, funny. There’s a reason that in many films heroes have his own name - Sary. The roles were written for him. For example, the script of the film "The trick of the old Ashir" was written with a view to Sary Karryev.
... In Andrei Platonov's notebooks there is a remarkable phrase "Turkmenistan is a country of irony." The author of "Jana" and "Takyra", having spent a short time in Turkmenistan, managed to accurately grasp one of the characteristic features of Turkmens - the ability not to get discouraged, even when life squeezes out tears from you, and laugh at the circumstances, to make fun of each other and yourself. He was not acquainted with the actor Sary Karryev, but we can assume that the observation of the great writer could appear after communicating with such people as this unsurpassed joker.
His heroes are the from the depths of the country, like the actor himself. Many characters of Sary Karryev are kind and almost all have good nature, as well as the actor himself. True popular simplicity, nobility, insecurity and openness of the soul, inability to lie and play a double game were peculiar not only to the heroes of Sary, but to himself. That is why the viewers believed him, loved him and presented their hearts to Sary.
Perhaps, the best and most memorable in the list of characters he created was the image of Kandym-aga from the film "Decisive Step". Sary played the role of the rural joker, the whole aul laughed over his well-aimed and bitter jokes, it was the utterly destitute in an inconceivably old clothes, a lonely man, seemingly philosophically calm about everything that happens around him. But he showed such genuine suffering in the scene of the death of his fellow villager, so sorrowfully lamented over him that the people in the auditorium did not restrain their tears.
The person cannot play such pain unless it has been experienced by himself. Probably, in such a way Sary mourned his comrades during that distant war, which maimed him.
The conspicuous appearance made Sary Karryev a real movie star. And not only on the national screen. Seeing Sary in one of the films, the director of "Mosfilm" Boris Rytsarev without samples approved him for the role of the ginnie in the movie-tale "The Magic Lamp of Aladdin". A small role brought the Turkmen actor the national glory.
Several decades passed after the picture was released. Boys and girls, who watched the adventures of Aladdin and Princess Budur with heart aflutter, become already fathers and mothers. But they still remember the face of a terrible but good inside ginnie that showed so much soulfulness, humanity, nobility, who became friends with the main heroes. Who of us does not remember the famous phrase: "I am a slave to the lamp!".
Sary Karryev had a good life. He had been married happily for many years. Although the spouses did not have common children, Sary adored all four offsprings of his wife Sheker from the first marriage, and took the most active part in their upbringing.
In recent years, Sary Karryev was no longer acting - he saw badly, moved with difficulty - the front wound affected, but almost every day he came to the courtyard of the “Turkmenfilm” studios. He sat on a bench, and he was immediately surrounded by young actors who knew Sary-aga from films, directors, in whose films he acted and they all asked him to tell one of his endless stories.
And he did so step by step, not hurrying to give out another story with an unpretentious but ridiculous plot, creating it almost out of thin air. Once, in the spring of 1986, the bench was empty...
People's Artist of Turkmenistan Sary Karryev has left it forever.
But in people's memory there he always remains a wonderful actor, a folk narrator, a man next to whom sadness was forgotten, bad mood disappeared and tuned in to a cheerful wave, that carried you through the stormy sea ofthe inexhaustible fantasy of this kind, witty, crafty, wise man and ... an unforgettable good ginnie.
