you.
What did you want to talk about?
How are you?
Fine. So what was it about?
Have you ever thought of me?
Is that important?
It is.
So what's the talk about?
You haven't answered me.
No, I haven't thought about you.
- Do you recognize me now?
- No.
I'm looking at you and see a stranger.
Really?
Does it worry you?
It hurts a bit.
You'll survive.
Certainly I'll try to.
And you?
Look me in the eyes.
Are you going to cry?
Let go!
Are you drinking?
How can you without me?
- How is your Tsitelman?
- It was a flop. Can you imagine?
I tried to console him.
- Where're you going?
- To wash up.
Did you tell him?
What was I supposed to tell him?
What? That we've decided
to get married, so to speak.
When?
I don't remember it.
Stop it. It won't work,
I'm used to your... whims.
You should know better.
Scheming again?
- So you leaving?
- Yes, leaving.
For your reactors?
No reactors,
just an electric discharge.
Really?
Mitya, I have
a business proposition for you.
Come to work with me.
We're getting 12 apartments...
What do I need an apartment for?
For living in it.
I need to finish what I've begun.
- Why 'need'?
- I don't understand.
Who needs it?
Mankind.
Will it do?
Why does mankind need it?
Mankind got enough of everything.
Man has reached such level of
excellence
that he can destroy
everything on earth in 20 minutes.
Don't be an idiot. What I'm working on
has nothing to do with war.
My dear, it would be impossible
to keep it within one country.
- The whole world will know about it.
- So what?
Science has created
the most sophisticated chemistry
and the Germans have produced poison
gas.
As soon as we got the internal-
combustion engine,
the British built tanks.
With the discovery of chain reaction
the Americans dropped
a bomb on Hiroshima.
Doesrt it lead you
to some conclusions?
All right, let's assume there'll
be no war. What then?
People need energy. Do you
realize that energy is everything?
It's light, heating, transport,
prosperity, communism, if you want.
And so, my dear Ilya,
I want very much
to try and find that energy.
I'm afraid mankind won't have time
to take advantage of your good deed.
Nonsense!
- Are you counting on common sense?
- Precisely!
Do you really believe
that man has got any smarter
in the last 30,000 years?
No. Our brain has got no larger,
it hasn't got more convolutions.
He who invented the wheel
was a genius, like Einstein.
The first man to strike fire
was more talented
than the discoverer of quantum
mechanics.
Oh God, how clever those two are.
Itjust makes me sick.
I wonder where it will lead them.
Remember the portrait of Pharaoh
Akhenaton who lived 4,000 years ago?
Or Queen Nefertiti.
What delicate, intelligent,
inspired faces!
And now look around you.
The Neanderthals.
Look, look.
Look over there.
Those, I think, are the Danes.
These are ours.
The Americans.
Just look at this Australopithecus.
- Would you like something?
- No, nothing.
Yes, a pharaoh could exterminate
5, 10 thousand people.
From today's point of view,
it's just a trifle, nothing.
He loves me.
He still loves me.
I can see it now.
Mitya, look at me.
He won't.
And Ilya will.
Besides, no Genghis Khan
could ever have thought of
concentration camps and gas cameras.
He just couldn't have got the idea of
fertilizing soil with human ashes,
of stuffing mattresses with wormers
hair
and making lampshades
from human skin.
I look at you, Ilya, and I envy you.
One has to be a very
happy man
to be able to afford the luxury of
taking such a gloomy view of the world.
I see you're doing pretty well.
Why this exchange of glances?
There was a custom in our village: If
you dated a girl 3 times - marry her.
Watch out - she can make
quick work of you.
Those jokes of yours, they're always...
awkward.
- Let's get out of here.
- No, I'm going to eat.
This is, too, my friend,
mankind walking.
Yeah...
- Come