[imagesource: Know Your Meme]

Goncharov might not be the best mafia movie that Martin Scorsese ever made but it certainly is the best non-existent Martin Scorsese mafia movie that the internet ever made.

If you thought the TikTok meme about the dabloon economy was nuts, it hardly compares to how much this entirely made-up film has ballooned on Tumblr and beyond.

This fantastical piece of Tumblr lore has seeped into the meme ecosystems of other sites like Twitter, TikTok, and Reddit, where the universe of Scorsese’s Goncharov is ever-growing, notes Mashable.

Since the revival of 2014 Tumblr aesthetics and users’ apparent exodus from Twitter back to Tumblr, this meme-verse was born from deep Tumblr lore, starting with what many suspects as a heavily-photoshopped sneaker:

Which then prompted someone to make this poster:

I made fanposter for the greatest mafia movie (n)ever made – Goncharov (1973) dir. Martin Scorsese pic.twitter.com/7SI51wslW7

— Beelz (@Beelzebubesque) November 18, 2022

Which then “ballooned well beyond memes into fan posts, mood boards, fake trailers, a title score, and even entire scenes of storyboarding and scripting. The so-called “Gonch-posting” continued, and there’s even an official Goncharov Lore Google Doc where you can watch the writing live.”

Watch the fake trailer:

The play-play plot is as follows:

In this tale, users tell the story of our main character Goncharov (that’s his last name, by the way. His first name is another layer of lore.), a former Russian mob guy who has given up the dark life to settle down with his wife Katya. While in Naples, he is forced back into organized crime and meets a new rival named Andrey aka “The Banker.” There’s also “sad boy” Mario, and later “Ice Pick Joe” (an American guy named Joe who kills people with an ice pick and wears an eye patch). Lastly, there’s Sofia, who forms a close (romantic) bond with Katya.

Robert De Niro plays Goncharov and a young Al Pacino either plays Mario or Andrey.

Labelled as the preeminent mafia movie, Goncharov has also been subject to critical film analysis:

The “resurgence” of Goncharov content also meant a deep analysis of its best scenes, characters, and hidden meanings — all created on the spot by Tumblr users and reframed as real analysis, even linking to fake film critics and academic journals.

The fake flick has since been picked up by the likes of Polygon, NBC, BuzzFeed, and The New York Times. Even Ryan Reynolds posted about his favourite Goncharov line on his Tumblr:

ryan reynolds goncharovposting for the first time and talking in the tags in a gonchlighting manner but also mindfully and properly tagging it as unreality will go down in my history books pic.twitter.com/VXd8epXfPe

— c (@toodamnbright) November 23, 2022

Scorsese, himself, relented to the hardcore meme posting, taking to TikTok through the account of his daughter Francesca Scorsese:

@francescascorsese #stitch with @nadow3ll #greenscreen #martinscorsese #goncharof ♬ original sound – Francesca

It is not so simply a shared internet joke, and it is far too clever for communal delusion, so it has to be the greatest experiment in community fiction writing ever known to man.

[source:mashable]