What was not shown?
The film is almost entirely based on the book “Courier” by Karen Shakhnazarov which was written in 1982 even before the perestroika started. However the global changes in people’s mindset don’t occur instantly. Soviet society, particularly the younger generation, has gradually accumulated all that characteristics that eventually made perestroika possible. The spirit of changes, which became so evident in the late 1980s in the USSR, actually had its origin even earlier, about the time when the book was written. This explains how the film “Courier” managed to address the historical context of perestroika so well even though the story was written in 1982.
The most of the original story from Shakhnazarov’s book “Courier” was preserved in the film, however some changes in the plot still had to be made in order to make it unravel the most current ideas and issues of that time.
Tone of speech to Agnessa Ivanovna