Through Main Street with an Orchestra 1986

50-year-old teacher Vasily Muravin Oleg Borisov is experiencing a pronounced middle-age crisis. When the department head position is handed to a more pragmatic, but limited Valentin Romanovsky Aleksandr Lazarev, Muravin finds himself squeezed out from the role he once held. His wife, Lida Lidiya Fedoseyeva-Shukshina, earns more than him and habitually complains about his indecisiveness, adding another layer of strain to their relationship. Muravin struggles to reconcile with the way people treat him, but what hurts most is his wife’s dismissal of his lifelong hobby—guitar playing. Unable to bear the mockery any longer, he leaves his home.

He takes to the riverfront, performing for a drifting crowd at the River Station, and in a sudden turn of events, he decides not to return home or to his old job. During one of his speeches to the idle audience, Muravin spots his daughter, Ksyusha Marina Zudina, and a new, deeper line of communication opens between them. They begin to learn things about each other that they hadn’t noticed while living under the same roof, and Muravin becomes a guiding presence as his daughter navigates her own complicated world. The father helps Ksyusha to understand the circumstances surrounding her relationship with a married doctor, Igor Igor Kostolevskiy, with whom she is said to be expecting a child—a claim that later turns out to be a manipulation intended to make Igor stay with her.

Ksyusha also tries to teach practicality to her father after witnessing the arranger Konstantin Mikhailovich brazenly appropriate the melodies that his father played on the guitar. Through these moments, Muravin comes to value something more enduring than fame or formal recognition: the existence of melodies, and, above all, his own independence from the influence of the artistic council. The film traces a nuanced portrait of a man who redefines his life through music, family, and the quiet hope of staying true to himself even as circumstances pull him in new directions.