My review will be written in opposition to all critics, as a person who is personally acquainted with parents who felt too sorry for their children, and with others (one of them is my sister) who clenched their teeth and put the child on its feet.
Forgive me those who think that the father in this film is too cruel. The real cruelty in this film was shown by society - hypocrisy and demonstrative pity for the sake of self-satisfaction.
The reality in the USSR and in our time is that people feel sorry for those who are not like them, and do NOTHING to help people adapt. In our country, there are still no conditions even for the movement of such people. The truth is that until now such people are pointed and laughed at.
If blacks were the oppressed layer of the population in the USA, then in the USSR and in Russia there is still a huge problem with the attitude towards people with special needs.
I am grateful that there is a film that shows how father and son struggle to survive in this society. In reality, most parents abandon their children and leave them in orphanages. Or another option: parents become old and die, and a child not capable of self-sufficiency and self-survival ends up in a boarding school. Trust me, it's very scary.
Film critics unanimously destroyed this film. Mother hen women cannot accept that in life, in order to achieve something, you need to literally crawl with clenched teeth. It is easier for them to close their eyes to the truth and accuse their father of cruelty, and the film of implausibility.
And in my opinion, this film is the most believable. Here you will not see ostentatious respect for a cripple simply because he is such (as it was in the film "Wonder"(2017).
Here you will see a real struggle, as it happens in life. Offense, forgiveness.
The movie is predictable. Because when people really do something and strive, they predictably win.
The acting is excellent, Ivan Okhlobystin is at his best. This is much deeper than his roles in superficial films, which critics have noted "accordingly."