TONITE’S BEST BET: The Soviet быт, 1938-48: Life As Theft Пепел/Ashes (Drama. Russia, 2013)(Rossiya 1, 21:00; Pts. 1-3) --> Rossiya 1 calls tonight’s 3-part Pepel series opener the “biggest, most ambitious and most awaited” premiere of the season, and there are 3 reasons to suspect they’re right. The first is the all-star cast: led by E. Mironov and Vl. Mashkov – easily the best Russian male-lead acting pair of their generation (cf. ‘The Idiot,’ 2003), here in their 7th film collaboration – viewers also get an ensemble crew whose weight in award silverware would crash through most stage floors: S. Garmash, Ch. Khamatova, P. Mamonov, A. Smolyakov, Vl. Gostiukhin, E. Lyadova, I. Rozanova, S. Shonishvili and more. Second, this mega-troupe is put through its paces not by some meller-veteran dragooned by Rossiya 1/VaiT Media to protect their (considerable) investment, but Vadim Perelman, the “Canadian-American director of Jewish extraction from Kiev” (b. 1963), who did the stunning and widely praised ‘House of Sand and Fog’ (2003) and ‘The Life Before Her Eyes’ (2007), w/ U. Thurman – and doesn’t take on projects lightly. Which leads to 3: it’s a safe bet that VP went for this project because it’s “based on real events” – a phrase which can be abused, of course, but in this case suggests an intriguing story of Soviet life over 1938-1948 involving a personalized version of what the whole society was doing: stealing identity. A Red Army captain who realizes his sudden summons to Lgrad means he’s about to be shot for treason (like the rest of his division’s officer corps during the Great Terror) switches identities on a train with an *actual* criminal, thief/safecracker Senka Pepel – whose life is not exactly a garden party either in the age of the New Socialist Man. The theme of crime and identity in a period of official criminality and mass indoctrination is still much in need of elaboration here. And not simply because J. Stalin keeps wandering back over the edge into social acceptability among certain cohorts (as an “effective leader” or “anti-corruption force” or the like). Put it this way: before he became a writer, the famed French novelist/playwright Jean Genet was a professional thief, spending much of the 1930s plying his trade across Europe – except in one country, National Socialist Germany: there he found he “could not steal because there was no point: the whole nation had already become thieves, stealing an identity.” Think about this as you watch the criminal and the “criminal” here become what – interchangeable? socially compatible elements? – under High Stalinism, the war and then Late Stalinism. As this family chronicle-cum-societal narrative unfolds and expands, the question at its heart becomes all the more unavoidable...and still demands an answer that about half the people on your bus tomorrow dont want to hear: Who was stealing what?
Posted on: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 06:31:58 +0000
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