Only Let There Be No War: ‘Films of Nikita Mikhalkov: Volume 1’

Nikita Mikhalkov was a legend in Russia long before Burnt by the Sun won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1994.

Each of his films in the box set Films of Nikita Mikhalkov: Volume 1 has a great deal to offer, aesthetically and historically. They are rich with humor, horror, and the struggle for fulfillment (or, short of that, the struggle for peace).

The films feel dated, but that’s inevitable and not a negative. In addition to being decades old, they were created in a different Russia and, in many regards, an entirely different world than exists now. Three of the films are set earlier in the 20th (and one is a period piece from the 19th) century. The question is not how well they have aged but how convincing they are on their terms. They hold up well and remain compelling achievements, which we should expect from a director of Mikhalkov’s stature.

Viewers might be best advised to work backward in chronological order of each film’s release years. Newcomers should certainly get acquainted with Mikhalkov via Burnt by the Sun (Utomlennye solntsem, 1994), followed by Without Witness (Bez svideteley, 1983) and A Few Days from the Life of I.I. Oblomov (Neskolko dney iz zhizni I.I. Oblomova, 1980). The next two, Five Evenings (Pyat vecherov, 1979) and A Slave of Love (Raba lyubvi, 1976), are perhaps the most challenging and rewarding.

A Slave of Love has previously been unavailable on DVD, so cinephiles who remember Jack Nicholson praising it in the ‘70s (as the back cover boasts) and those who have heard about this minor classic finally have an opportunity to see for themselves if it warrants the hype. A Slave of Love‘s story is set in 1917 during the Bolshevik Revolution and concerns silent film siren Olga (Yelena Solovey), who is working with a not-particularly inspired crew on a new project. Despite the lethargy, exacerbated by the summer heat, there is a palpable sense of urgency. The police keep dropping by, and although they are on location in the country, a collective apprehension intensifies as rumors and rumblings from the city accumulate.

Eventually, Olga does her best acting away from the bright lights once she finds herself falling for the attractive and worldly cameraman Pototsky (Rodion Nakhapetov). The more she feigns indifference, the more obvious it is that she is smitten. At one point in the midst of a car ride that leaves the vehicle covered with country dirt (the presence of dust and grime sticks to every scene, working well to convey authenticity and serve as a metaphor for what is happening on and off the set), she laments the lack of meaning she finds in her work, despite her celebrity. She longs for a cause, to be something or, short of that, “useful—like a tree or the earth”. She gets her chance when it is revealed that her lover is a dissident and wants her to help the cause. This sets up an epiphany wherein she is able to transcend her solipsism, but only by paying a price she could not have imagined.

Five Evenings was shot in less than a month, during a seasonal lull while Mikhalkov was filming the expensive and elaborate production A Few Days from the Life of I.I. Oblomov. The plot seems straightforward, but the languid pace and lack of traditional conflict (much less action) are deceptive. Five Evenings is a quiet powerhouse, and the careful build of emotional intensity reaches a memorable and deeply affecting conclusion. The setting is Moscow near the end of the 1950s. It involves a fortuitous reunion between Tama (Lyudmila Gurchenko) and Alexander (Stanislav Lyubshin), who were once lovers before the war interrupted their lives 17 years earlier.

Shrewdly shot in black and white entirely inside Tama’s communal apartment, it is a dark film. The interiors of the building are ill-lit, and the empty spaces and shadows become characters, albeit in a way that never seems contrived. One feels the vibe of post-war Russian life while watching Five Evenings, with its slowly eroding faith in God, country, and self. As Tama and Alexander speak without complaint about their jobs and prospects, it is increasingly clear they hope to convince themselves as much as each other. It is also apparent that a great deal of attraction still lingers, while the sense of lost time and missed opportunity is obvious in their clipped exchanges and wary eyes. These people can barely allow themselves to dream, so the potential vulnerability risked by admitting they are lonely, scared, and quite possibly still in love is unthinkable.

Eventually, inevitably, the truth (truths) can no longer be avoided or denied, and Alexander—after explaining the price he paid for refusing to immerse himself in the corrupted cesspool of the Soviet “system”—articulates the simple truth regarding the soul he has salvaged. “A man should remain true to himself,” he says softly, the hard years hanging around his neck like a noose. “It is a very advantageous position.” Considering all that he has seen and experienced, the simple integrity of this sentiment is a revelation: astute American viewers will be reminded why so many people still give up a great deal to come to this country.

The final scene of Five Evenings does not offer a resolution so much as a celebration of human resolve. In the last moments, once the couple has laid their feelings—and, to a certain extent, their lives— on the line, the screen shifts from black-and-white to color (a tactic Francis Ford Copolla may have borrowed a few years later for Rumble Fish). It is an effulgent finalé and a brilliant symbolic stratagem for a scene suffused with such unadulterated emotion. Once the credits roll, it is difficult not to feel that this cast and crew have rendered what usually passes for drama in Hollywood seem facile and inauthentic.

The Haunting of an Entire Country

A Few Days from the Life of I.I. Oblomov is, aside from Burnt by the Sun, the film Mikhalkov is best known for outside his own country. Based on the novel by Ivan Goncharov, the eponymous protagonist is a classic sort of Russian anti-hero. Oblomov (played by an ideally cast Oleg Tabakov, whose pudding face and pork chop physique suits the character) is like Herman Melville’s Bartleby, only with means. Like Melville’s morose scrivener, Oblomov would prefer not to do much of anything. He suffers from the very Romantic literary affliction of ennui.

Once his legendary inertia is adequately established (augmented by narrated flashbacks of a pampered youth), we meet his lifelong friend Stoltz, the sophisticated and ambitious businessman who knows culture, eats carefully, and generally tends to his physical and mental well-being—the anti-Oblomov, if you will. At Stoltz’s urging, his friend reluctantly agrees to spend a summer in the country, where he meets the young and gorgeous Olga (Elena Solovey again). He slowly and predictably (but convincingly) falls in love with her, and the resolution of this infatuation will have permanent ramifications.

A Few Days from the Life of I.I. Oblomov is an old-fashioned epic: long, deliberate, full of careful tracking shots (indoor and especially outside), with a wonderful score and solid acting. The film conjures another time and place that, once viewed, will be difficult to forget.

Without Witness is probably the most straightforward, if least satisfying, of the films in Films of Nikita Mikhalkov: Volume 1. Even more claustrophobic than Five Evenings, the action occurs during one evening in a small Moscow apartment. The tone is disarmingly jovial when an ebullient and inebriated ex-husband (Mikhail Ulyanov)—who has since remarried—drops in on his still-single ex-wife (Irina Kupchenko).

They do not seem especially estranged, and she does not seem unduly upset—or surprised—by his impromptu appearance. One quickly suspects his roguish goodwill and her stoic grace are masks, and one is correct. As the evening winds down, they unburden themselves of secrets, resentments, and a nasty surprise. Nothing that unfolds is particularly surprising (or frankly memorable), but the acting is fine, and it works well enough as the obvious Bergman tribute it is attempting to be.

The film in this set that most western audiences have seen or at least heard of is Burnt by the Sun. This is perhaps the only film from the last 20 years where I agree with virtually every critique (of which there are many, aside from the contrarian cranks who feel obliged to find fault with any film fortunate enough to be lavished with awards), yet still consider it a near-masterpiece. Is Burnt by the Sun, at times, heavy-handed? Da. Can it fairly be accused of occasional preciousness? Da. Sentimental? Da. Still, and I measure my words carefully here, so was Tolstoy. Am I comparing Mikhalkov’s Burnt by the Sun to Tolstoy’s works? Sort of. It is undoubtedly the most accurate, or at least successful, depiction of what we might call “Tolstoyan”. (For my money, Christopher Nolan’s 2000 thriller Memento is the most “Dostoyevskian”).

This invocation is not offered lightly: the (very impressive) number of characters in Burnt by the Sun, the scope of its political, social, and romantic entanglements, the sense of history anticipating the future even as the future seems to mockingly distort memory and deed, the violence and tenderness—occasionally contained in the same gesture – all of these are indelible elements of great Russian literature. If nothing else, Mikhalkov should be celebrated for the audacity to throw his cap in the big arena and go for broke.

The acting is top-notch all around, including Mikhalkov, who stars as the war hero, and Stalin confidante Colonel Kotov. Special mention must be made of the performance Oleg Menshikov turns in as the enigmatic Mitia, the prodigal son who abruptly returns home with a secret that will shatter everyone he knows. Not many actors can transform convincingly from lovable to despicable to ultimately sympathetic (or, Tragic in the literary sense of the word), but Menshikov delivers one of the best if unheralded, performances in any film from recent memory.

Among Burnt by the Sun’s many triumphs is the way it confounds almost every expectation it spends the first part of the film carefully building: the Kotov family’s bliss seems over-the-top, and the viewer eventually realizes this is strictly intentional, not merely as a plot device to set up the house of cards before it crumbles, but to suggest how illusory most of that bliss actually was (as ignorance is). The story also explores the tension inherent in one person’s contentment (particularly if that person is powerful) and how it can often be at the expense of someone else’s (particularly if that person is powerless).

In a classic scene, Mitia relates his decade in the service of the state that he had no choice but to sacrifice and tells the story as a thinly-veiled fairy tale. We see as he speaks, and acknowledgment slowly registers on the listener’s faces, that Kotov’s contentment is not only quite complicated but more than a little revolting.

Like most masterful films, Burnt by the Sun can be appreciated for its succession of unforgettable scenes: Kotov explaining war and peace to his young daughter by admiring her soft and unscarred feet; Mitia correcting his servant’s pronunciation while carefully loading his pistol; the peasant driving in circles all day, looking for a town that never existed; Mitia playing the piano while wearing a gas mask—and the moment he locks eyes with Kotov across the room: a short and subtle exchange that shifts the entire momentum of the film; Mitia standing fully clothed in the creek, reciting (in broken English) from Hamlet…these are all astonishing gifts that can be savored again and again.

At the beginning of Burnt by the Sun, a song is performed in a public square while Kotov and his wife dance in the snow. In the end, the song is whistled by Mitia as he sinks into a warm bathtub. In a little over two hours, we see the story of these lives played out, encapsulating the joy, hope, dismay, and dread we know haunted an entire country.