<p>Film &ldquo;Pechorin&rdquo;, which was made after Lermontov&rsquo;s short novel &ldquo;A Hero of Our Time&rdquo; that had already been cinematized several times before, violates the rule that states: classical literature is sacred. From a single reply of the hero to Maksim Maksimych enquiry &ndash; I am off to Persia and hope to drop dead somewhere on the road &ndash; there springs up a whole new plot-line. The words come true, and we have Pechorin dying on the road, alone and face to face with his remembrances in the eternal and mysterious expanses of the desert. Here everything that had happened to him manifests itself as permeated with the mood of premature weariness and boredom he was blighted with, in the discourses on his unrealized great destiny he never guessed and the meaning of his life he never discovered, with his habitual indifference to his surroundings, with seeking eagerly for entertainments and news to fill up the days and the minutes of his life, with his relationships with women that alone gave him chances to awaken his heart and soul. It is precisely on this very edge of earthly existence that he experiences at last this sort of a repentance, that defines the composition and style of this film version, thus allowing certain freedom in treatment of the source: the episodes of the novel are sometimes considerably reduced, like it is done with the Bela plot-line, compressed into a single scene, or serve as the leading motif of the hero&rsquo;s conversations about meaning of life with doctor Werner, his alter-ego, in his hand-to-hand combat with the star female character of &ldquo;Taman&rdquo; part of the novel, in the events and dramatic development of his relationships with Mary, in excruciating encounters with Maksim Maksimych, in his spiritual but never realized union with Vera. To judge oneself with the severest of judgments, to suffer pain and despair, to laugh broken-heartedly at one&rsquo;s own past pretensions, sometimes almost childish, sometimes quite consciously cracked wicked jokes and fooling around, to be stricken by horror with the killing at a duel of young and showing off Grushnitsky, now seen as irrevocable mistakes committed by an intelligent and an outstanding man &ndash; such is the final summary of Pechorin&rsquo;s life. The author of the film sees his task in compressing together different epochs, demonstrating to the contemporary audience the essence of dramatic problems that repeat themselves over and over again throughout the history, in inviting people to look into their own souls and think about their own lives. That is why the final glance from the past &ndash; the extreme close-up of Pechorin&rsquo;s eyes looking at us, seems to demand from every and each of us to answer for one&rsquo;s one and only life, that one either has had or is having.</p>