Other ideas:
In the film An ordinary miracle, the princess
calls herself an orphan though her father is still alive, but her mother
died when she was 7 minutes old.
There is never a doubt that the bear is a bear by the characters or the audience. He is called a bear and so he is a bear. This is not unlike the Otherness and vampires in Night Watch. It is what they are called and not otherwise. There is the complete loss of disbelief.
the film ends with a miracle. They happen in our lives, simply good wins out and he is not turned back into a bear. It is all a part of what is possible.
The magician is an author and can do what he wishes, but sometimes the characters win out and get what they want as they are in control of their own lives.
Will the curse or will the legend of the chosen become true? Who makes it true and how does it come about. does it do so on its own or does it need to go through all the trials and tribulations of success and failure for it to come true. Does the Night Watch lose to the dark side since they have lost the boy or do they simply gain someone on the inside. It is as it is written and for now it is sad, but that is how it is written and nothing is to be done about it until it is made right on its own. Like with the bear. If Anton loves Yegor and wants him as a son or wants to be a man again, then he must continue on no matter how hard it might be or suffer as much as he must, but that is all a part of the plan.
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
http://darussophile.com/2012/01/23/sergey-lukyanenko-vote-for-putin/
6/4/2013 9:11pm
Posted onTranslation: Sergey Lukyanenko – I Will Vote For Putin
Courtesy of Evgeny‘s comment at Mark Adomanis’ blog, I found a very interesting piece by Sergey Lukyanenko – the bestselling Russian sci-fi writer best known for his Night Watch series, which was later converted into Russia’s first blockbuster film in 2004 – on the recent turmoil in Russian politics. It is a bit dated, from January 3, and originating as a blog post the language is highly colloquial and informal. But I think it worthy of translation for two main reasons.First, there is the distinct (but wrong) impression that the mass of the literary “intelligentsia” is behind the anti-Putin protests, because of the visibility of high-profile writers like Boris Akunin, who recently wrote a rather rambling op-ed for the NYT. Lukyanenko demonstrates that this is not the case.
Second, I personally agree with almost all of it, save for a few parts like citing Switzerland or the UK as a good democracies. But on the whole I can vouch for practically every word. And as a science fiction writer in whose worlds the lines between good and evil are frequently blurred – if they exist at all – he brings a much needed “middle ground” position to the rigidly pro-Kremlin/anti-Kremlin binary that dominates this discourse.
I Will Vote For Putin
I didn’t want to, but in the end I had to make a comment. For every so often agitated young people would run into my LJ blog, asking me the following types of question: “Where were you during the Meetings [for Free Elections]? At home? That means you voted for the swindlers and thieves! Are you not ashamed of yourself? Your friends Kaganov, Eksler, Bykov were out there, making rhetorical history and laughing and waving placards… How could you look them in the eyes now? If everything in your life is fine, you’d be for Putin, right? You consider this regime to be ideal? What, you mean to say, that we don’t have anyone else qualified to be President?”So an explanation is warranted.
I voted for the Communists. I did it with a pinched nose, for today’s Communist Party has no relation to communists, to the people, and unfortunately, even to politics in general. In the past I voted for the Union of Right Forces, but with equal amounts of horror and aversion. But the defining weirdness of my thoroughly anti-democratic and anti-liberal conscience consists of my belief in everyone’s right to think differently. And I want the Parliament to have representatives of the right, and the left, and centrists, and swindlers and thieves too, as they too make up a considerable share of our society – why bother denying this? As our most ardent supporters of democracy insist on denying others the right to their own opinion, I will sing my own song and do everything I can to make “a thousand flowers bloom.” I am mostly satisfied with the result – yes, of course there were violations (yeah, as if they didn’t exist earlier… You remember how Yeltsin won? Nothing bothered you back then?), but the Duma did become more diverse. (And I, by the way, don’t call for my political opponents to be hanged in the squares, stripped of their rights and exiled to Magadan. Unlike you, my dear liberals…)
And the fact that Leo, Alex, and Dima went to the Meetings does not in the slightest interfere with my appreciation of their books. More power to them. And I consider them sane people too.
I am always touched by the argument: “Well, life is good for you – so that’s why you support the current regime?” This is usually said in an outraged and pressured tone. I mean, how could this be – why are those people, who aren’t bothered by the government, why are they of all things not protesting against it? The binomial theory! The great mystery of the universe! The great Russian pastime – cutting off the nose to spite the face! Yes, I will actually vote for the current government, as long as I believe that it is right for me. And you will vote against it, as long as you believe that it is bad for you. And this is all right and proper. Is this not the very democracy that you want?
So moving on, does this mean I consider the current regime ideal?
What a profoundly intellectual conclusion! I do not consider the sausage that I buy in a supermarket to be ideal. I don’t consider my books to be ideal. I consider our entire world to be far from ideal. So what should I do then – refrain from eating, from writing books, and from living in general? If you are not the Dark Lord, you will always find mistakes in the universe. We have no shortage of fools both in power and under their power. We have many swindlers, thieves, idlers, and rascals. But here is one crucial elaboration – these people are everywhere, in all spheres of life. And their percentage shares among construction workers, medics, and politicians are all broadly similar. The world isn’t perfect, you know? People too. Have you forgotten how thirty years ago, the entire country voted in unison for the Block of Communists and Non-Party Members. I remember. Have you forgotten, how twenty years ago schoolboys dreamed of becoming hitmen, and schoolgirls – whores? Better by far that they dream of becoming bureaucrats! Satellites are falling, the Bulava can’t take off? And did you know how many satellites burned up on their way to orbit under the USSR, and how many unsuccessful missile launches there were before things got righted? So the country is dying out? Look at the charts – at how life expectancy has changed in the past few years. Few births? Look at the figures for Europe. Problems with immigrants? Take a walk in London or Paris (which, by the way, is now possible, as was not the case under the USSR).
Do you want the level of democracy they have in Switzerland or the UK? Learn a bit of history, people. How many years did they spend building their modern democracies and modern relations of people to the state? How many people perished in the process? Yes, it would be wonderful to wave a magic wand and… but I don’t have one. I’m afraid Putin doesn’t have one either. There, in Tajikistan yesterday they killed… Father Frost! As a socially and religiously alien element. Do you assume we aren’t Tajikistan? In some respects, we completely are. At least with respect to our attitudes towards differing viewpoints. The entire LJ blogosphere continually demonstrates this.
Not long ago, I was still wondering who to vote for in the Presidential elections. And, you know what, you guys helped me make my choice – with your meetings, provocative placards and loud slogans. I will vote for Putin.
Because we really do NOT have another politician, capable of leading the country.
Because the slogans of everyone else are either naked populism, or facsimiles of Putin’s slogans, or unorganized set of contradictory promises.
Because the “opposition leaders” plaster each other with obscenities, and would tear each other apart if the current government were to fall apart. Do you expect Krylov to get along with Yavlinsky? That liberals will make friends with Communists and nationalists? My friends, this isn’t even funny… All the current protesting opposition marches under the banner of destruction and mutual hatred… Yes, and you they also hold cheap…
Because Zyuganov would flee to Switzerland in panic if you were to vote him in.
Because Mironov, though a good man, is not a national leader.
Because Nemtsov – well, that’s not even funny.
Because Zhirinovsky – ‘twould be fun, if the country had a “Save Game” button.
Because Prokhorov is a businessman, and a country can’t be managed like a mining company.
Because Navalny is a person, who works for another country. Not for ours.
Because there is no other. Hasn’t appeared yet.
So is Putin responsible for all that? That he hasn’t raised a successor?
But you didn’t like Medvedev either. “Too liberal”; “too scheming”; “iPhone President”; “innovation”, this and that…
Putin, by the way, was put forwards by Yeltsin. You don’t like the result? So what do you want, that Putin himself could put forward someone, whom you consider worthy? Well then it would be but a continuation of Putin’s policies.
The opposition, in your opinion, should be raised by the acting regime? Don’t take the mickey… Politics aren’t the Olympic Games. Politicians grow notwithstanding the current government. And let them grow, and good luck to them. Let Navalny and Chirikova organize a party, write a program and come to power.
What, they wouldn’t be allowed in? LOL. United Russia had its share of the vote inflated, but probably by not more than 5 percent. United Russia is the party off the majority, that is a fact. So what if they got a few percentage points less – they’d have joined a coalition with Fair Russia. And as if that’d have made a great difference to the political picture in Russia…
Here are transparent ballot boxes, web cams at the elections, parties of 500 people… the mass media are controlled? Again, LOL. There are opposition media everywhere. Do you want to have the first word on TV? Then work for it, fight for it. If you get the majority – you’ll have this all. And if not – well, my apologies…
You have the right to vote. And to monitor the vote. And it’s entirely possible, that on that day – I too will go have a look. So that you, my passionate and fiery friends, don’t flood the streets will your bulletins. Because whenever one side says, that it’s all pure and white, that side I don’t trust in advance.
… And about what is happening now in the world, how one country after another is ruined in the name of democracy and maintaining the status quo, I won’t even talk about that. Either you see it and understand it, or you are naive beyond all measure. And over the next several years, while the world is undergoing this HUGE crisis, I want to see a leader in power who is capable of bold moves. And ready to defend our country.
So I will go and vote for Putin. For the next six years he has my trust on credit. And you go and vote for your candidates. This is what is called democracy.
But magic wands and a free lunch don’t exist in this world.
October 9, 2004 Saturday
SECTION: Financial Times WEEKEND MAGAZINE - Feature; Pg. 16
HEADLINE: Broadcast views Russian television's skewed reporting of the Beslan tragedy has shone a light on the rapid erosion of independence within the nation's fledgling free media. It seems the public has become the ultimate loser in a game played out by oligarchs, the Kremlin and journalists
BYLINE: By ARKADY OSTROVSKY
BODY:
Beslan, North Ossetia, early in the afternoon of September 3. Chechen terrorists have taken hundreds of children and parents hostage in a school and the world's media are monitoring developments closely.
At 1.05pm, two explosions are heard from the school, terrorists start shooting the children, mayhem breaks out and fighting begins. Foreign networks such as CNN and the BBC broadcast events live. In Russia, on the two state-controlled TV channels, normal programming continues. An hour after the start of the battle, the Russian channels switch to what is by now turning into a massacre, but their coverage is confusing and brief. Channel One, the main national network, spends 10 minutes on Beslan before returning to a Brazilian soap opera called Women in Love. The Russia Channel - mouthpiece of the Kremlin - stays on air longer, for about an hour. Moscow Echo, the city's liberal radio station, keeps its viewers up to date by watching events unfold on CNN.
Throughout the day, both state channels feature news bulletins on the top of the hour, repeatedly reporting the official line: the authorities did not plan to storm the school; the terrorists started the shooting; the siege is the work of an international terrorist organisation whose numbers include ethnic Arabs and even an African (he later turns out to be Chechen).
The Russian networks also report the official estimate of the number of hostages - 354 - which is almost certainly a deliberate falsehood. They repeat the figure continuously, even as eyewitness accounts and common sense suggest there are well over 1,000 hostages. A surviving hostage later says the false figure angered the terrorists so much they started to deny the children tap water, forcing them to drink their own urine.
Several hours into the clash, the Russia Channel gives the impression that the fighting is over and that most of the hostages are now safe. Viewers see children being carried by their parents and hear a relieved voice behind the camera saying: "They are alive, it is OK, they are alive, alive." As some are reunited with parents, a correspondent comments: "There are tears here again, but this time these are the tears of joy." A presenter gives figures of those taken to hospital, but carefully avoids giving estimates of the number of people killed. "According to the latest information," he says, "the fighting in the school is over. There are no dead or wounded there... we can't give more exact figures of the injured... er... the precise figure of how many hostages were freed." Channel One reports that more than 100 people are dead. But even this figure is soon revealed to be well below the actual death toll. Neither channel questions the official figures.
Then, at about 9pm, after more than 300 children and parents have died, and as the firefight between the hostage-takers and special forces is still going on, viewers are treated to an extraordinary show. The Russia Channel shows footage of brave Russian soldiers fighting bearded Chechen bandits who are hiding in caves and shouting "Allahu Akhbar": these are scenes from the military drama On My Honour! Channel One shows Die Hard, a film in which Bruce Willis saves the hostages in a New York high-rise. Actors on the screen seem to take fictional revenge on behalf of those who in Beslan are still dying.
The TV coverage of Beslan provoked outrage from Russia's independent print media. The Organisation for Security and Co- operation in Europe (OSCE) criticised the government for not telling the truth about the handling of the crisis and accused broadcasters of failing to provide "accurate and up-to-date information". An independent national opinion poll taken two days after the incident found that only 13 per cent of Russians believed they received a genuine account of the crisis. "A triple credibility gap arose between the government and the media, between the media and the citizens and between the government and the people," the OSCE concluded. The biggest indictment, however, came from the people of Beslan, who physically attacked television crews for reporting official lies about the number of hostages. A less obvious casualty was the trust the Russian people may have had in the veracity and independence of television news reports.
It is tempting to blame Vladimir Putin, Russia's unyielding president, for the feeble state of Russia's television news: it was he who had squeezed out private owners and established state control over almost all nationwide channels, and under the veil of "managed democracy" in effect introduced censorship. But the truth is more complicated.
Elena Savina started working as a producer in Soviet television in the 1980s. When the regime crumbled, she moved to NTV, a private TV channel founded by Vladimir Gusinsky, the media entrepreneur who was later briefly imprisoned in the early days of Putin's rule, before going into luxury exile in Spain. Sitting in a coffee shop on the ground floor of the Ostankino television centre, Savina gives her assessment of the state of TV reporting in Russia today: "We have turned our self-censorship mechanisms on. Ten years ago we killed ourselves getting the information. Now we don't even try to do certain things, because we know it won't be allowed. Before, I could be told about Gusinsky's wishes after the programme. Now I am told about the Kremlin's wishes before the programme." When NTV was created in 1993 it was, says Savina, "like a huge explosion. We were paid Dollars 500 a month - enormous money in those days - and were told to do whatever we wanted. We created the best television network in Russia. We don't feel free any more."
This is a common theme among Russian journalists, and it is echoed by their counterparts in the west, where there is a widely held view that a relentless reduction of Russian freedom has been accelerated by Putin's post-Beslan moves to further concentrate power in the Kremlin. But to blame it all on Putin is to miss a crucial point: Russian television has been complicit in the shrinking of its own independence.
Irina Petrovskaya, a television reviewer for the daily newspaper Izvestiya and one of Russia's most thoughtful critics, says: "One of the most disturbing lessons of Beslan is the readiness of the television once again to become the re-translator of official lies. Ten years of democracy in Russia turned out to be not enough to create freedom of speech. And to a large degree the responsibility for this rests with the media and the journalists."
Russian journalists were not, and even now are not wholly, helpless pawns manoeuvred by the Kremlin grand masters of cynicism and power. They made and continue to make choices: and when the choices were easier, many chose in a way that makes free journalism more vulnerable now. Putin put it crudely during his meeting with foreign journalists after the Beslan tragedy when he compared the relationship between the state and the media with that between a man and a woman. "A real man always tries. A real woman always resists." To extend the metaphor, Russia's television journalists did not sufficiently resist the embraces of the new powers. "Ten years ago Russian journalists thought they were the fourth power, but have now been told by the president they are members of the world's oldest profession," Petrovskaya commented at the time. The fear of losing highly paid jobs, celebrity status and influence often turned out to be stronger than the desire for free expression.
Much of Russian television in 2004 looks like its western equivalents: talk shows, cooking programmes, reality TV, soap operas and cop serials dominate; commercials feature long-legged women advertising anything from razors to mobile phones. It is light-years away from the Soviet television that I grew up with, where middle-aged presenters in thick-framed glasses read out official Tass bulletins about the successes of the Soviet harvest, and every other news programme began with a picture of the general secretary of the Communist Party being greeted by his grey-clothed comrades. The Party controlled all the channels, there was no live broadcasting, and there were no commercials. Panasonic and Nescafe were sweet foreign words, and the only slim legs shown were those in Swan Lake. Programming stopped at about 11pm, which was often a relief.
Post-Soviet television - all of the channels, though Gusinsky's NTV was the market leader - swept away these absurdities, it seemed, in part by turning loose youthful journalists and producers on technology and the world TV market. But like any television which has not been obliged to make heroes of its political leaders, it made heroes of its own personalities.
The generation of journalists who shaped Russian television over the past 15 years was the brightest and most ambitious, the elite of the late Soviet era, who most despised the restrictions of that period. They learned to make western-style programmes and they adopted western habits of celebrity and financial comfort, drawing some of the highest salaries in the country. But they failed to create a public service journalism that was capable of keeping a check on government. This has made it easier to bring them back to heel.
Petrovskaya's verdict is that the collapse of the Soviet Union "released enormous journalistic energy. But it was a destructive energy aimed at crushing old ideological taboos. This energy (was) transformed into large pay packages, into personal comforts, into the idea of serving a master, into information wars between the oligarchs. But it did not transform into an energy of creation."
One of the symbols of post-Soviet television, and one of its brightest personalities, is Yevgeny Kiselyov. More than almost any other Russian journalist, he developed something of a BBC tradition of reporting in Russia. But his - and most liberals' - interpretation of the political exigencies of the 1990s led him to put aside the effort to develop objective reporting, when he dropped the role of observer and became a participant in the political process. In July, Kiselyov, 48, agreed to have lunch with me to discuss why the promise of an independent media that had once seemed so bright had dimmed in the intervening decade.
He arrived at Cafe Green, one of Moscow's most expensive restaurants, in a chauffeur-driven black Audi with tinted windows, wearing an elegant white suit. As he walked up the restaurant stairs, waiters recognised him - not only as once Russia's most famous TV news anchorman - but also as one of their regular customers.
Kiselyov is a gourmet and a connoisseur of good wine. He has the look and taste of a prosperous businessman, not of a fighter for press freedom who has fallen victim to Putin's authoritarian regime. But such is the paradox of Russian life that Kiselyov is actually both: and, at least for now, Russian politics permits him to be both. At the peak of his power in the late 1990s, he was both the current affairs presenter and general director of Gusinsky's NTV - his dethronement was one of the early signs that the Kremlin wanted to regain control over the electronic media. But Kiselyov did very well financially out of NTV: and, like any liberal western anchor, he may have been fighting as much for his own status as he was for freedom of speech.
Like many journalists who shaped post-Soviet TV, Kiselyov came to television via Radio Moscow, the Soviet foreign language service that broadcast communist propaganda around the world. It was in effect a branch of the KGB. Many who worked there were highly educated and fluent in several languages. They knew more about - and lusted more for - the openness of the west than those who worked in Soviet television. These were people who read all the bourgeois western newspapers, listened to the BBC and had access to the writings of Soviet dissidents.
Of that generation, Kiselyov, handsome, fleshy and grave of manner, was the one who best developed the air of authority and solidity. On screen, dressed in a conservative double-breasted suit, often pausing for thought and groping for the right word, he spoke in deep, deliberate tones, with the appearance of intelligent common sense. Perhaps more than any other Russian journalist, Kiselyov was the man the Russian intelligentsia most trusted and identified with.
As we start to eat, the owner of the restaurant comes to greet the TV star - he ties an apron around Kiselyov's neck to protect his white suit from the juices of his grilled prawns. "After the failed communist coup d'etat of 1991 we journalists had set ourselves very simple tasks, the most important of which was not to lie," Kiselyov tells me. At the time, he was working for state TV, where he presented and hosted the analytical news programme Itogi (Results) - the weekly equivalent of the BBC's Newsnight. But the dictates of state television, even in the new era of chaotic freedom, were too restrictive for Kiselyov. In 1993 he approached Gusinsky, who already had media interests and was considering setting up NTV. Kiselyov took Itogi to NTV - it became the station's flagship current affairs programme. "When we started making NTV," he says, "we did not think about high matters. We were thinking of very simple things: good cameras, new lighting, mobility, modern computer graphics. We wanted to make the picture sing."
NTV quickly proved it was capable of objective and powerful reporting. A year after its launch in 1993, Russian troops went into Chechnya. This was the first full-scale war for newly independent Russia and NTV's coverage was unprecedented: its reporting was vigorous, unrelenting and - up to a point - objective. It became the main source of information about the war, exposing the understatements and lies of the government. The BBC and CNN bought its footage. State channels were left far behind. NTV's coverage earned the trust and respect of the Russian audience and doubled the number of viewers. But at the same time, the popularity of President Boris Yeltsin began to dwindle. As Kiselyov soon discovered, covering the war was an easier and safer task than treading the line between a Russian oligarch and an ailing president. If the Chechen war was NTV's finest hour, the presidential elections of 1996 were its most testing.
With his rating close to zero, a war raging in Chechnya and rebellious factions within the Kremlin, Yeltsin needed all the help he could get to be re-elected. Russia's oligarchs offered to help and bankroll the elections in return for shares in the country's most valuable companies. The deal would later become known as "shares for loans" privatisation.
One of the oligarchs was Gusinsky. He seconded NTV's then president, Igor Malashenko, to lead Yeltsin's election campaign. Kiselyov suspended his principle of independent and objective reporting and began to promote Yeltsin. Each programme began with a summary of Yeltsin's heroic political career, followed by extensive coverage of his campaign. Yeltsin was shown visiting the ancient city of Yaroslavl, promising to give its cash-strapped citizens "everything and take back nothing". He was shown in the newly restored cathedral of Christ the Saviour near the Kremlin, "ruined under the communists and restored under Yeltsin". Gennady Zyuganov, Yeltsin's main communist rival, was depicted hobnobbing with the oligarchs in Davos or in international airport VIP lounges. It was an outrageous inversion of reality, but the biased reporting was not solely the result of commands to journalists from their proprietors.
All Russian liberals feared what could happen if Yeltsin lost and the communists returned to power. Over his giant prawns, Kiselyov demurs. "Nobody had to tell us how to cover the election campaign. Yes, we were biased, but we genuinely believed - and still believe - that Yeltsin's victory would save the country and that Zyuganov would throw it back and put an end to free speech. We were defending ourselves. You can't judge us from the point of view of western democracy. Russia was at a critical crossroads. When a house is in flames you don't think that by throwing water or using an extinguisher you would damage the books and spoil the carpets. You use whatever means possible."
Petrovskaya saw far enough into the future to pose the key question of that fraught time: "If they manage (to get Yeltsin elected), will television be able to return to those democratic principles? Will the new (old) power allow it? Or will it turn a temporary love affair with the media into a compulsory admiration?"
After the victory, the reckoning. The oligarchs got their property. Gusinsky was granted a permanent frequency and loans from Gazprom, the state-backed gas monopoly. Kiselyov was among the winners, and having crossed the line that separates journalists and politicians, he found it hard to step back. "The real mistakes were made after the 1996 elections, when we started to be so friendly with Yeltsin's family," he says. "Malashenko, who returned to NTV as president, could walk into any Kremlin office. Every other weekend there was a gathering at Yeltsin's dacha with Yeltsin's daughter and son-in-law and other friends such as (the oligarch) Roman Abramovich. So when we and other media tried to distance ourselves from the Kremlin, it was seen as a betrayal."
The changes were evident to viewers. A year after the election, Petrovskaya wrote: "Kiselyov in his Itogi programme is preaching, rather than broadcasting. He is speaking, not even on behalf of the presidential team, but as one of its fully accepted members." Membership of this club created the kind of comforts journalists and their bosses found hard to surrender.
There was another problem. Having tested the power of their media assets, the oligarchs started to use their media outlets as tools to attain business interests and fight with each other, rather than to serve the interests of the public. Boris Berezovsky, who controlled the main national channel ORT (now Channel One), deployed his top journalist, Sergei Dorenko, to attack Yury Luzhkov, a powerful Moscow mayor with presidential ambitions. NTV's Gusinsky backed Luzhkov and used his network to return fire at Berezovsky. Then in March 2000, Putin, a former KGB operative, was elected president, immediately taking a firmer line on both the war in Chechnya and the Russian media. He began to crush Gusinsky, imprisoning him for a few days. The state-controlled Gazprom managed a hostile takeover of NTV using its previous loans as leverage. Then Putin turned on Berezovsky, who had assisted in bringing him to power.
By the end of 2001 both oligarchs were in exile - Gusinsky in his villa in Spain, Berezovsky in a mansion on the Cote d'Azur. Kiselyov, who by then had been appointed general director of NTV, tried to mobilise public support for the network. But he had spent too much of his capital of trust. In early April 2001 a handful of liberals demonstrated against the Kremlin's action against NTV. But to most people observing the fight between Putin and Gusinsky it seemed to be merely a tussle between an oligarch and a new president trying to consolidate his power.
At 4am on April 14 2001, Kiselyov and his journalists were forced out of their studios by new managers appointed by Gazprom. Berezovsky offered Kiselyov an escape to a minor channel - Channel 6 - which he controlled. But that soon folded. Kiselyov ended up at the Moscow News, a liberal newspaper owned by another oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is now in prison awaiting trial on multiple charges, forced to watch the Kremlin strip his Yukos oil empire.
As Kiselyov leaves lunch, he says: "We failed in one thing above all: to create the conditions so that private and state channels could co-exist. And the responsibility for this failure must be shared between the state and the private channels themselves."
A week before Kiselyov was ousted from NTV, one of the channel's brightest and highest-paid stars, Leonid Parfenov, 44, published an open letter in the Kommersant newspaper to his boss, offering his resignation. Parfenov wrote that he did not want to climb the barricades with Kiselyov, and could not watch the general director sacrificing young NTV journalists to the altar of Vladimir Gusinsky's struggle with Putin. "I can no longer hear your preaching in the newsroom - these 10-minute-long outbursts of hatred - and I can't just ignore them as long as I work here," he wrote.
Whether Parfenov was right or wrong in principle, the timing and the style of an open letter turned him in the eyes of many NTV journalists into a hate figure. "You are a traitor!" NTV's flamboyant night talk show presenter, Dmitry Dibrov, shouted at him on air: "You have betrayed our battle for the freedom of speech! You have betrayed people who are working here!"
Ever ironic, Parfenov kept his cool, asking his fuming colleague: "Do you really think that the words 'traitor', 'freedom' and 'battle' should be pronounced with three exclamation marks?" Beneath his calm exterior, Parfenov was no less concerned about freedom of speech than Kiselyov. His disagreements were stylistic. "I am a professional journalist - not a professional revolutionary," he told me. "My job is to report, not to climb the barricades. Kiselyov crossed the line. What he was doing was politics, not journalism."
After Gazprom's takeover of NTV, Parfenov returned to the channel, replacing Kiselyov as its main political anchorman. But in June "professional journalist" Parfenov was sacked by the post-Kiselyov, post-Gusinsky NTV. His political programme - Namedni (Recently), which had replaced Itogi - has been taken off air. The official explanation is that he had breached the corporate ethic by leaking to Kommersant newspaper an internal memo banning him from broadcasting an interview with the widow of a Chechen leader who had been assassinated by the Russian secret services. But to most Russian liberals it signalled another infringement of freedom of speech by the government.
Even then, Parfenov remained cool. There would be no presentation of himself as the victim of a bloody regime. "I am convinced," he told me, "that this is a zig-zag, not a return to the Soviet era, that Russia today is still more liberal than it was last year and the year before. But this liberalism is not in politics. It is on the internet, in fashion shops, in this cafe."
It is several weeks after his sacking, and we are sitting in Cafe Bosco - one of Moscow's most stylish cafes - on the ground floor of GUM, an elegant shopping arcade once synonymous with empty shelves and long queues. The cafe, squeezed between Italian and French boutiques, faces the Kremlin wall and Lenin's mausoleum. A few of its white tablecloth-covered tables under canvas umbrellas almost spill out on to Red Square.
"This cafe is Russian liberalism. Having tables on Red Square was impossible under the Tsars, let alone the Bolsheviks," he says. "There is no one Russia. It is a myth. There is the Russia of young, energetic people who have the imagination to build such a cafe and the Russia of people who still live their past." A waiter dressed in the black and white garb of a Parisian brasserie brings me my Dollars 20 asparagus dish; a battalion of Russian soldiers marches past the mausoleum.
Parfenov was also a product of Russian liberalism. He was never a political fighter or a dissident. Unlike Kiselyov, he did not have a privileged background, he did not speak foreign languages and he had little interest in politics. The son of a school teacher and an engineer from a provincial town, he gravitated towards a peculiarly Russian version of what might be known in the west as "lifestyle journalism". His first programmes were overtly non-political. Namedni, for which he is best-known, was initially "non-political news of the week, which talked about fashion, music - anything but politics". Style was paramount: "how" was more important than "what". Irony, postmodernist detachment and sarcasm were key ingredients.
In his frameless glasses and sleek suits he was a fashion icon for a generation of well-travelled, urbane, westernised Russians and aspiring journalists such as Andrei Loshak - one of Parfenov's talented proteges. "We were not interested in democracy or Perestroika - that was the stuff of our parents' generation. We cringed at Kiselyov's pathos. We were apolitical and ironic. We all wanted to be like Parfenov - to speak like him, to behave like him."
Parfenov's style would have been a fine complement to mainstream journalism. The trouble was that in the absence of serious journalism, it became the mainstream of Russian news reporting. After Kiselyov's departure, Parfenov turned Namedni into the main political programme of the week. It was faster and glossier, but less serious than Kiselyov's Itogi. Where Kiselyov had preached, Parfenov informed and entertained. Where Kiselyov had used meaningful pauses to underscore the gravity of his subject, Parfenov used half-squinting irony and sarcasm. And unlike Kiselyov, Parfenov was free of oligarchic ties and selected news on its merit, not someone's political agenda. But he did have his own agenda: "We tried to encourage people with initiative by showing that they are not alone. We portrayed Russia as more liberal than it really was."
Parfenov provided extensive coverage of Chechen terrorist attacks and he interrupted the coverage of President Putin's re-election to show a fire in the centre of Moscow, but he also showed "the heroes of capitalist labour" and sent crews around the country searching for the unusual and the entrepreneurial. Whatever he did, his signature was a style that often made use of montages, animation and computer graphics.
Namedni's coverage of Putin's inauguration mixed images of the actual ceremony with scenes from The Barber of Siberia, a kitsch fiction film about Tsar Alexander III. Putin's arrival at the Kremlin in a black limousine was mixed with the arrival of Alexander III on a white horse: when Putin addressed the Kremlin guards he got a reply from Alexander III's soldiers. Playfully, Namedni was putting across a serious message: Putin's ceremony was a blessing of a new monarch, rather than the inauguration of a president. Yet he was also saying: it's all just images. It's not serious.
Parfenov neither praised nor campaigned against Putin, but his playfulness became increasingly out of place in Putin's Russia. When Namedni was taken off air and Parfenov was sacked, many Russian observers recalled a famous line used by Soviet literary critic and dissident Andrei Sinyavsky during his trial in 1966: "My contradictions with the Soviet Union were purely of a stylistic nature." Such were Parfenov's contradictions in relation to the Kremlin.
The night after leaving the channel, Parfenov invited his team to a Chinese restaurant to thank them for their services. "Hopefully we'll get a chance to work together one day," he told them. There were no slogans, no calls to arms. To anyone walking in off the street that night, it would have seemed like an office party where people were simply having a good time. Nobody was planning to climb the barricades - they knew Parfenov would not have approved. And they knew that if they did, they would be lonely.
One member of the generation of journalists who began their careers in the late 1980s has stayed the course and arrived at the top. Konstantin Ernst, general director of Channel One - one of the networks most criticised for its coverage of the Beslan massacre - is among the most powerful and driven figures in the nation's media. At 43, he not only rules the TV station that reaches most viewers across Russia's 11 time zones, he also produces films and publishes books, most recently a Russian translation of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.
With his long, flowing hair, Ernst is a member of the generation created by both the Soviet Union and the reaction against it. He is a blueblood of the Soviet intellectual establishment; his father, Lev Ernst, is a famous professor of biology and Ernst himself has a PhD in biochemistry. Drawn to the media in his late twenties, he became a talented TV producer and presented Channel One's slick cultural programme Matador, which took viewers into the world of Hollywood studios, film stars and the Cannes film festival. In one memorable episode Ernst told the story of the creation of Apocalypse Now. Dressed in a US Air Force uniform for effect, Ernst seemed intoxicated by the energy of the scene where US helicopters bomb the Viet Cong to the soundtrack of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries". Francis Ford Coppola seemed a natural role model for the young Ernst. In 1995, Boris Berezovsky singled him out for his determination and ambition, appointing him programme director of the channel. Four years later, he was elevated to general director.
I meet Ernst in his spacious office on the 10th floor of the Ostankino television centre. He has just flown back from Los Angeles, where he has sold worldwide distribution rights for the Channel One-produced film, Night Watch, to 20th Century Fox. The film is the first real blockbuster in post-Soviet history: it collected more than Dollars 16m in four weeks following its release on June 8, breaking box office records and putting it ahead of even The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
It is a special effects-filled horror thriller, set in a contemporary Moscow where ordinary people have parallel otherworldly existences as vampires and witches. They are agents of the forces of light and darkness, who have been fighting with each other since life began.
"It is a story about the balance between good and evil," says Ernst. "In western tradition, the good always wins. In eastern tradition there is more dualism: the good and the evil co-exist side by side. Russia, being halfway between the east and the west, offers a balance between the two."
Ernst says the film offers a convenient construction that helps to explain the inexplicable in Russian life. Among the film's product placements, Night Watch features a scene from Channel One's nine o'clock news programme Vremya (Time), in which a smooth-looking presenter informs his audience about a plane crash. The reference to Vremya is significant. More than any other news programme, Vremya has created a sense of stability in Russia; a balance between good and evil, as the plot of Night Watch would have it. And the guarantor of this stability, at least as portrayed by Vremya, is Vladimir Putin.
Vremya - which has inherited its name, time slot and theme tune from Soviet days - typically starts with Putin travelling around the country or meeting ministers in his office. The picture is almost always the same: the thoughtful president sits back in his leather chair and listens to a government official reporting on his brief. Every now and then Putin interrupts with a probing question or a comment, the essence of which is, "Your results are not bad, but they should be even better." The programme ends with the weather, accompanied by a soothing tune which conjures up memories of Soviet times in anyone who watched television at that time - which is the large majority of Russians. Unlike any other programme on the channel, Vremya goes out uninterrupted by commercials - another tribute to the Soviet days.
Vremya does not allow itself any scorn or ridicule. The tone of the presenter is always stern and serious. It seems to aim to assure viewers that they can sleep peacefully in the knowledge that the country is governed by a wise and caring president who will make the right decisions; that criminals and terrorists will be punished and the champions of labour rewarded. "Any stabilisation makes news calmer. If news works like a constant nerve irritant - as it did in Russia in the 1990s - it is a sign of instability rather than of the freedom of speech," Ernst says. He believes his job is to support Putin's government in all its positive initiatives.
"Nobody calls me and orders me to do anything. But the government has the right to explain its action to the people and it does so through the channel where it is a shareholder."
Ernst is defiant about his channel's coverage of Beslan. "We have nothing to blame ourselves for. I don't feel any shame for our coverage. The only criticism is that we did not give the real figure of hostages in the school. But we did not have any other source of information apart from the official one. Yes, it is unfortunate that the figure we were given was 354 hostages and not 1,200. But this was not a crucial point because no action was taken on the basis of this information."
The main purpose during the siege of Beslan was not to harm the hostages. "Our task number two is to inform the country about what is going on. Today the main task of the television is to mobilise the country, to explain that we are in a situation of war with terror. Russia needs consolidation. Today, Putin is the person who can do it. When we started, our energy was directed at fighting the communist system. None of us wanted to live in a communist country, but none of us wanted the Soviet Union to disintegrate either."
Like Putin, he considers himself a state-ist. "I feel my energy should be directed at making Russia a strong country with a strong economy equal to other developed countries, a country people can be proud of."
As for freedom of speech, he says it can't be measured in absolutes. "There is no such thing as an absolute freedom of speech... the freedom of speech is the ability to report information, the withdrawal of which would harm people. Everything depends on your purpose." The question is, what is the purpose and who decides what is good for it? "A doctor does not ask the patient under the knife what is good for him. He simply tries to save him."
Arkady Ostrovsky is an FT correspondent in Moscow
SECTION: Financial Times WEEKEND MAGAZINE - Feature; Pg. 16
HEADLINE: Broadcast views Russian television's skewed reporting of the Beslan tragedy has shone a light on the rapid erosion of independence within the nation's fledgling free media. It seems the public has become the ultimate loser in a game played out by oligarchs, the Kremlin and journalists
BYLINE: By ARKADY OSTROVSKY
BODY:
Beslan, North Ossetia, early in the afternoon of September 3. Chechen terrorists have taken hundreds of children and parents hostage in a school and the world's media are monitoring developments closely.
At 1.05pm, two explosions are heard from the school, terrorists start shooting the children, mayhem breaks out and fighting begins. Foreign networks such as CNN and the BBC broadcast events live. In Russia, on the two state-controlled TV channels, normal programming continues. An hour after the start of the battle, the Russian channels switch to what is by now turning into a massacre, but their coverage is confusing and brief. Channel One, the main national network, spends 10 minutes on Beslan before returning to a Brazilian soap opera called Women in Love. The Russia Channel - mouthpiece of the Kremlin - stays on air longer, for about an hour. Moscow Echo, the city's liberal radio station, keeps its viewers up to date by watching events unfold on CNN.
Throughout the day, both state channels feature news bulletins on the top of the hour, repeatedly reporting the official line: the authorities did not plan to storm the school; the terrorists started the shooting; the siege is the work of an international terrorist organisation whose numbers include ethnic Arabs and even an African (he later turns out to be Chechen).
The Russian networks also report the official estimate of the number of hostages - 354 - which is almost certainly a deliberate falsehood. They repeat the figure continuously, even as eyewitness accounts and common sense suggest there are well over 1,000 hostages. A surviving hostage later says the false figure angered the terrorists so much they started to deny the children tap water, forcing them to drink their own urine.
Several hours into the clash, the Russia Channel gives the impression that the fighting is over and that most of the hostages are now safe. Viewers see children being carried by their parents and hear a relieved voice behind the camera saying: "They are alive, it is OK, they are alive, alive." As some are reunited with parents, a correspondent comments: "There are tears here again, but this time these are the tears of joy." A presenter gives figures of those taken to hospital, but carefully avoids giving estimates of the number of people killed. "According to the latest information," he says, "the fighting in the school is over. There are no dead or wounded there... we can't give more exact figures of the injured... er... the precise figure of how many hostages were freed." Channel One reports that more than 100 people are dead. But even this figure is soon revealed to be well below the actual death toll. Neither channel questions the official figures.
Then, at about 9pm, after more than 300 children and parents have died, and as the firefight between the hostage-takers and special forces is still going on, viewers are treated to an extraordinary show. The Russia Channel shows footage of brave Russian soldiers fighting bearded Chechen bandits who are hiding in caves and shouting "Allahu Akhbar": these are scenes from the military drama On My Honour! Channel One shows Die Hard, a film in which Bruce Willis saves the hostages in a New York high-rise. Actors on the screen seem to take fictional revenge on behalf of those who in Beslan are still dying.
The TV coverage of Beslan provoked outrage from Russia's independent print media. The Organisation for Security and Co- operation in Europe (OSCE) criticised the government for not telling the truth about the handling of the crisis and accused broadcasters of failing to provide "accurate and up-to-date information". An independent national opinion poll taken two days after the incident found that only 13 per cent of Russians believed they received a genuine account of the crisis. "A triple credibility gap arose between the government and the media, between the media and the citizens and between the government and the people," the OSCE concluded. The biggest indictment, however, came from the people of Beslan, who physically attacked television crews for reporting official lies about the number of hostages. A less obvious casualty was the trust the Russian people may have had in the veracity and independence of television news reports.
It is tempting to blame Vladimir Putin, Russia's unyielding president, for the feeble state of Russia's television news: it was he who had squeezed out private owners and established state control over almost all nationwide channels, and under the veil of "managed democracy" in effect introduced censorship. But the truth is more complicated.
Elena Savina started working as a producer in Soviet television in the 1980s. When the regime crumbled, she moved to NTV, a private TV channel founded by Vladimir Gusinsky, the media entrepreneur who was later briefly imprisoned in the early days of Putin's rule, before going into luxury exile in Spain. Sitting in a coffee shop on the ground floor of the Ostankino television centre, Savina gives her assessment of the state of TV reporting in Russia today: "We have turned our self-censorship mechanisms on. Ten years ago we killed ourselves getting the information. Now we don't even try to do certain things, because we know it won't be allowed. Before, I could be told about Gusinsky's wishes after the programme. Now I am told about the Kremlin's wishes before the programme." When NTV was created in 1993 it was, says Savina, "like a huge explosion. We were paid Dollars 500 a month - enormous money in those days - and were told to do whatever we wanted. We created the best television network in Russia. We don't feel free any more."
This is a common theme among Russian journalists, and it is echoed by their counterparts in the west, where there is a widely held view that a relentless reduction of Russian freedom has been accelerated by Putin's post-Beslan moves to further concentrate power in the Kremlin. But to blame it all on Putin is to miss a crucial point: Russian television has been complicit in the shrinking of its own independence.
Irina Petrovskaya, a television reviewer for the daily newspaper Izvestiya and one of Russia's most thoughtful critics, says: "One of the most disturbing lessons of Beslan is the readiness of the television once again to become the re-translator of official lies. Ten years of democracy in Russia turned out to be not enough to create freedom of speech. And to a large degree the responsibility for this rests with the media and the journalists."
Russian journalists were not, and even now are not wholly, helpless pawns manoeuvred by the Kremlin grand masters of cynicism and power. They made and continue to make choices: and when the choices were easier, many chose in a way that makes free journalism more vulnerable now. Putin put it crudely during his meeting with foreign journalists after the Beslan tragedy when he compared the relationship between the state and the media with that between a man and a woman. "A real man always tries. A real woman always resists." To extend the metaphor, Russia's television journalists did not sufficiently resist the embraces of the new powers. "Ten years ago Russian journalists thought they were the fourth power, but have now been told by the president they are members of the world's oldest profession," Petrovskaya commented at the time. The fear of losing highly paid jobs, celebrity status and influence often turned out to be stronger than the desire for free expression.
Much of Russian television in 2004 looks like its western equivalents: talk shows, cooking programmes, reality TV, soap operas and cop serials dominate; commercials feature long-legged women advertising anything from razors to mobile phones. It is light-years away from the Soviet television that I grew up with, where middle-aged presenters in thick-framed glasses read out official Tass bulletins about the successes of the Soviet harvest, and every other news programme began with a picture of the general secretary of the Communist Party being greeted by his grey-clothed comrades. The Party controlled all the channels, there was no live broadcasting, and there were no commercials. Panasonic and Nescafe were sweet foreign words, and the only slim legs shown were those in Swan Lake. Programming stopped at about 11pm, which was often a relief.
Post-Soviet television - all of the channels, though Gusinsky's NTV was the market leader - swept away these absurdities, it seemed, in part by turning loose youthful journalists and producers on technology and the world TV market. But like any television which has not been obliged to make heroes of its political leaders, it made heroes of its own personalities.
The generation of journalists who shaped Russian television over the past 15 years was the brightest and most ambitious, the elite of the late Soviet era, who most despised the restrictions of that period. They learned to make western-style programmes and they adopted western habits of celebrity and financial comfort, drawing some of the highest salaries in the country. But they failed to create a public service journalism that was capable of keeping a check on government. This has made it easier to bring them back to heel.
Petrovskaya's verdict is that the collapse of the Soviet Union "released enormous journalistic energy. But it was a destructive energy aimed at crushing old ideological taboos. This energy (was) transformed into large pay packages, into personal comforts, into the idea of serving a master, into information wars between the oligarchs. But it did not transform into an energy of creation."
One of the symbols of post-Soviet television, and one of its brightest personalities, is Yevgeny Kiselyov. More than almost any other Russian journalist, he developed something of a BBC tradition of reporting in Russia. But his - and most liberals' - interpretation of the political exigencies of the 1990s led him to put aside the effort to develop objective reporting, when he dropped the role of observer and became a participant in the political process. In July, Kiselyov, 48, agreed to have lunch with me to discuss why the promise of an independent media that had once seemed so bright had dimmed in the intervening decade.
He arrived at Cafe Green, one of Moscow's most expensive restaurants, in a chauffeur-driven black Audi with tinted windows, wearing an elegant white suit. As he walked up the restaurant stairs, waiters recognised him - not only as once Russia's most famous TV news anchorman - but also as one of their regular customers.
Kiselyov is a gourmet and a connoisseur of good wine. He has the look and taste of a prosperous businessman, not of a fighter for press freedom who has fallen victim to Putin's authoritarian regime. But such is the paradox of Russian life that Kiselyov is actually both: and, at least for now, Russian politics permits him to be both. At the peak of his power in the late 1990s, he was both the current affairs presenter and general director of Gusinsky's NTV - his dethronement was one of the early signs that the Kremlin wanted to regain control over the electronic media. But Kiselyov did very well financially out of NTV: and, like any liberal western anchor, he may have been fighting as much for his own status as he was for freedom of speech.
Like many journalists who shaped post-Soviet TV, Kiselyov came to television via Radio Moscow, the Soviet foreign language service that broadcast communist propaganda around the world. It was in effect a branch of the KGB. Many who worked there were highly educated and fluent in several languages. They knew more about - and lusted more for - the openness of the west than those who worked in Soviet television. These were people who read all the bourgeois western newspapers, listened to the BBC and had access to the writings of Soviet dissidents.
Of that generation, Kiselyov, handsome, fleshy and grave of manner, was the one who best developed the air of authority and solidity. On screen, dressed in a conservative double-breasted suit, often pausing for thought and groping for the right word, he spoke in deep, deliberate tones, with the appearance of intelligent common sense. Perhaps more than any other Russian journalist, Kiselyov was the man the Russian intelligentsia most trusted and identified with.
As we start to eat, the owner of the restaurant comes to greet the TV star - he ties an apron around Kiselyov's neck to protect his white suit from the juices of his grilled prawns. "After the failed communist coup d'etat of 1991 we journalists had set ourselves very simple tasks, the most important of which was not to lie," Kiselyov tells me. At the time, he was working for state TV, where he presented and hosted the analytical news programme Itogi (Results) - the weekly equivalent of the BBC's Newsnight. But the dictates of state television, even in the new era of chaotic freedom, were too restrictive for Kiselyov. In 1993 he approached Gusinsky, who already had media interests and was considering setting up NTV. Kiselyov took Itogi to NTV - it became the station's flagship current affairs programme. "When we started making NTV," he says, "we did not think about high matters. We were thinking of very simple things: good cameras, new lighting, mobility, modern computer graphics. We wanted to make the picture sing."
NTV quickly proved it was capable of objective and powerful reporting. A year after its launch in 1993, Russian troops went into Chechnya. This was the first full-scale war for newly independent Russia and NTV's coverage was unprecedented: its reporting was vigorous, unrelenting and - up to a point - objective. It became the main source of information about the war, exposing the understatements and lies of the government. The BBC and CNN bought its footage. State channels were left far behind. NTV's coverage earned the trust and respect of the Russian audience and doubled the number of viewers. But at the same time, the popularity of President Boris Yeltsin began to dwindle. As Kiselyov soon discovered, covering the war was an easier and safer task than treading the line between a Russian oligarch and an ailing president. If the Chechen war was NTV's finest hour, the presidential elections of 1996 were its most testing.
With his rating close to zero, a war raging in Chechnya and rebellious factions within the Kremlin, Yeltsin needed all the help he could get to be re-elected. Russia's oligarchs offered to help and bankroll the elections in return for shares in the country's most valuable companies. The deal would later become known as "shares for loans" privatisation.
One of the oligarchs was Gusinsky. He seconded NTV's then president, Igor Malashenko, to lead Yeltsin's election campaign. Kiselyov suspended his principle of independent and objective reporting and began to promote Yeltsin. Each programme began with a summary of Yeltsin's heroic political career, followed by extensive coverage of his campaign. Yeltsin was shown visiting the ancient city of Yaroslavl, promising to give its cash-strapped citizens "everything and take back nothing". He was shown in the newly restored cathedral of Christ the Saviour near the Kremlin, "ruined under the communists and restored under Yeltsin". Gennady Zyuganov, Yeltsin's main communist rival, was depicted hobnobbing with the oligarchs in Davos or in international airport VIP lounges. It was an outrageous inversion of reality, but the biased reporting was not solely the result of commands to journalists from their proprietors.
All Russian liberals feared what could happen if Yeltsin lost and the communists returned to power. Over his giant prawns, Kiselyov demurs. "Nobody had to tell us how to cover the election campaign. Yes, we were biased, but we genuinely believed - and still believe - that Yeltsin's victory would save the country and that Zyuganov would throw it back and put an end to free speech. We were defending ourselves. You can't judge us from the point of view of western democracy. Russia was at a critical crossroads. When a house is in flames you don't think that by throwing water or using an extinguisher you would damage the books and spoil the carpets. You use whatever means possible."
Petrovskaya saw far enough into the future to pose the key question of that fraught time: "If they manage (to get Yeltsin elected), will television be able to return to those democratic principles? Will the new (old) power allow it? Or will it turn a temporary love affair with the media into a compulsory admiration?"
After the victory, the reckoning. The oligarchs got their property. Gusinsky was granted a permanent frequency and loans from Gazprom, the state-backed gas monopoly. Kiselyov was among the winners, and having crossed the line that separates journalists and politicians, he found it hard to step back. "The real mistakes were made after the 1996 elections, when we started to be so friendly with Yeltsin's family," he says. "Malashenko, who returned to NTV as president, could walk into any Kremlin office. Every other weekend there was a gathering at Yeltsin's dacha with Yeltsin's daughter and son-in-law and other friends such as (the oligarch) Roman Abramovich. So when we and other media tried to distance ourselves from the Kremlin, it was seen as a betrayal."
The changes were evident to viewers. A year after the election, Petrovskaya wrote: "Kiselyov in his Itogi programme is preaching, rather than broadcasting. He is speaking, not even on behalf of the presidential team, but as one of its fully accepted members." Membership of this club created the kind of comforts journalists and their bosses found hard to surrender.
There was another problem. Having tested the power of their media assets, the oligarchs started to use their media outlets as tools to attain business interests and fight with each other, rather than to serve the interests of the public. Boris Berezovsky, who controlled the main national channel ORT (now Channel One), deployed his top journalist, Sergei Dorenko, to attack Yury Luzhkov, a powerful Moscow mayor with presidential ambitions. NTV's Gusinsky backed Luzhkov and used his network to return fire at Berezovsky. Then in March 2000, Putin, a former KGB operative, was elected president, immediately taking a firmer line on both the war in Chechnya and the Russian media. He began to crush Gusinsky, imprisoning him for a few days. The state-controlled Gazprom managed a hostile takeover of NTV using its previous loans as leverage. Then Putin turned on Berezovsky, who had assisted in bringing him to power.
By the end of 2001 both oligarchs were in exile - Gusinsky in his villa in Spain, Berezovsky in a mansion on the Cote d'Azur. Kiselyov, who by then had been appointed general director of NTV, tried to mobilise public support for the network. But he had spent too much of his capital of trust. In early April 2001 a handful of liberals demonstrated against the Kremlin's action against NTV. But to most people observing the fight between Putin and Gusinsky it seemed to be merely a tussle between an oligarch and a new president trying to consolidate his power.
At 4am on April 14 2001, Kiselyov and his journalists were forced out of their studios by new managers appointed by Gazprom. Berezovsky offered Kiselyov an escape to a minor channel - Channel 6 - which he controlled. But that soon folded. Kiselyov ended up at the Moscow News, a liberal newspaper owned by another oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is now in prison awaiting trial on multiple charges, forced to watch the Kremlin strip his Yukos oil empire.
As Kiselyov leaves lunch, he says: "We failed in one thing above all: to create the conditions so that private and state channels could co-exist. And the responsibility for this failure must be shared between the state and the private channels themselves."
A week before Kiselyov was ousted from NTV, one of the channel's brightest and highest-paid stars, Leonid Parfenov, 44, published an open letter in the Kommersant newspaper to his boss, offering his resignation. Parfenov wrote that he did not want to climb the barricades with Kiselyov, and could not watch the general director sacrificing young NTV journalists to the altar of Vladimir Gusinsky's struggle with Putin. "I can no longer hear your preaching in the newsroom - these 10-minute-long outbursts of hatred - and I can't just ignore them as long as I work here," he wrote.
Whether Parfenov was right or wrong in principle, the timing and the style of an open letter turned him in the eyes of many NTV journalists into a hate figure. "You are a traitor!" NTV's flamboyant night talk show presenter, Dmitry Dibrov, shouted at him on air: "You have betrayed our battle for the freedom of speech! You have betrayed people who are working here!"
Ever ironic, Parfenov kept his cool, asking his fuming colleague: "Do you really think that the words 'traitor', 'freedom' and 'battle' should be pronounced with three exclamation marks?" Beneath his calm exterior, Parfenov was no less concerned about freedom of speech than Kiselyov. His disagreements were stylistic. "I am a professional journalist - not a professional revolutionary," he told me. "My job is to report, not to climb the barricades. Kiselyov crossed the line. What he was doing was politics, not journalism."
After Gazprom's takeover of NTV, Parfenov returned to the channel, replacing Kiselyov as its main political anchorman. But in June "professional journalist" Parfenov was sacked by the post-Kiselyov, post-Gusinsky NTV. His political programme - Namedni (Recently), which had replaced Itogi - has been taken off air. The official explanation is that he had breached the corporate ethic by leaking to Kommersant newspaper an internal memo banning him from broadcasting an interview with the widow of a Chechen leader who had been assassinated by the Russian secret services. But to most Russian liberals it signalled another infringement of freedom of speech by the government.
Even then, Parfenov remained cool. There would be no presentation of himself as the victim of a bloody regime. "I am convinced," he told me, "that this is a zig-zag, not a return to the Soviet era, that Russia today is still more liberal than it was last year and the year before. But this liberalism is not in politics. It is on the internet, in fashion shops, in this cafe."
It is several weeks after his sacking, and we are sitting in Cafe Bosco - one of Moscow's most stylish cafes - on the ground floor of GUM, an elegant shopping arcade once synonymous with empty shelves and long queues. The cafe, squeezed between Italian and French boutiques, faces the Kremlin wall and Lenin's mausoleum. A few of its white tablecloth-covered tables under canvas umbrellas almost spill out on to Red Square.
"This cafe is Russian liberalism. Having tables on Red Square was impossible under the Tsars, let alone the Bolsheviks," he says. "There is no one Russia. It is a myth. There is the Russia of young, energetic people who have the imagination to build such a cafe and the Russia of people who still live their past." A waiter dressed in the black and white garb of a Parisian brasserie brings me my Dollars 20 asparagus dish; a battalion of Russian soldiers marches past the mausoleum.
Parfenov was also a product of Russian liberalism. He was never a political fighter or a dissident. Unlike Kiselyov, he did not have a privileged background, he did not speak foreign languages and he had little interest in politics. The son of a school teacher and an engineer from a provincial town, he gravitated towards a peculiarly Russian version of what might be known in the west as "lifestyle journalism". His first programmes were overtly non-political. Namedni, for which he is best-known, was initially "non-political news of the week, which talked about fashion, music - anything but politics". Style was paramount: "how" was more important than "what". Irony, postmodernist detachment and sarcasm were key ingredients.
In his frameless glasses and sleek suits he was a fashion icon for a generation of well-travelled, urbane, westernised Russians and aspiring journalists such as Andrei Loshak - one of Parfenov's talented proteges. "We were not interested in democracy or Perestroika - that was the stuff of our parents' generation. We cringed at Kiselyov's pathos. We were apolitical and ironic. We all wanted to be like Parfenov - to speak like him, to behave like him."
Parfenov's style would have been a fine complement to mainstream journalism. The trouble was that in the absence of serious journalism, it became the mainstream of Russian news reporting. After Kiselyov's departure, Parfenov turned Namedni into the main political programme of the week. It was faster and glossier, but less serious than Kiselyov's Itogi. Where Kiselyov had preached, Parfenov informed and entertained. Where Kiselyov had used meaningful pauses to underscore the gravity of his subject, Parfenov used half-squinting irony and sarcasm. And unlike Kiselyov, Parfenov was free of oligarchic ties and selected news on its merit, not someone's political agenda. But he did have his own agenda: "We tried to encourage people with initiative by showing that they are not alone. We portrayed Russia as more liberal than it really was."
Parfenov provided extensive coverage of Chechen terrorist attacks and he interrupted the coverage of President Putin's re-election to show a fire in the centre of Moscow, but he also showed "the heroes of capitalist labour" and sent crews around the country searching for the unusual and the entrepreneurial. Whatever he did, his signature was a style that often made use of montages, animation and computer graphics.
Namedni's coverage of Putin's inauguration mixed images of the actual ceremony with scenes from The Barber of Siberia, a kitsch fiction film about Tsar Alexander III. Putin's arrival at the Kremlin in a black limousine was mixed with the arrival of Alexander III on a white horse: when Putin addressed the Kremlin guards he got a reply from Alexander III's soldiers. Playfully, Namedni was putting across a serious message: Putin's ceremony was a blessing of a new monarch, rather than the inauguration of a president. Yet he was also saying: it's all just images. It's not serious.
Parfenov neither praised nor campaigned against Putin, but his playfulness became increasingly out of place in Putin's Russia. When Namedni was taken off air and Parfenov was sacked, many Russian observers recalled a famous line used by Soviet literary critic and dissident Andrei Sinyavsky during his trial in 1966: "My contradictions with the Soviet Union were purely of a stylistic nature." Such were Parfenov's contradictions in relation to the Kremlin.
The night after leaving the channel, Parfenov invited his team to a Chinese restaurant to thank them for their services. "Hopefully we'll get a chance to work together one day," he told them. There were no slogans, no calls to arms. To anyone walking in off the street that night, it would have seemed like an office party where people were simply having a good time. Nobody was planning to climb the barricades - they knew Parfenov would not have approved. And they knew that if they did, they would be lonely.
One member of the generation of journalists who began their careers in the late 1980s has stayed the course and arrived at the top. Konstantin Ernst, general director of Channel One - one of the networks most criticised for its coverage of the Beslan massacre - is among the most powerful and driven figures in the nation's media. At 43, he not only rules the TV station that reaches most viewers across Russia's 11 time zones, he also produces films and publishes books, most recently a Russian translation of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.
With his long, flowing hair, Ernst is a member of the generation created by both the Soviet Union and the reaction against it. He is a blueblood of the Soviet intellectual establishment; his father, Lev Ernst, is a famous professor of biology and Ernst himself has a PhD in biochemistry. Drawn to the media in his late twenties, he became a talented TV producer and presented Channel One's slick cultural programme Matador, which took viewers into the world of Hollywood studios, film stars and the Cannes film festival. In one memorable episode Ernst told the story of the creation of Apocalypse Now. Dressed in a US Air Force uniform for effect, Ernst seemed intoxicated by the energy of the scene where US helicopters bomb the Viet Cong to the soundtrack of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries". Francis Ford Coppola seemed a natural role model for the young Ernst. In 1995, Boris Berezovsky singled him out for his determination and ambition, appointing him programme director of the channel. Four years later, he was elevated to general director.
I meet Ernst in his spacious office on the 10th floor of the Ostankino television centre. He has just flown back from Los Angeles, where he has sold worldwide distribution rights for the Channel One-produced film, Night Watch, to 20th Century Fox. The film is the first real blockbuster in post-Soviet history: it collected more than Dollars 16m in four weeks following its release on June 8, breaking box office records and putting it ahead of even The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
It is a special effects-filled horror thriller, set in a contemporary Moscow where ordinary people have parallel otherworldly existences as vampires and witches. They are agents of the forces of light and darkness, who have been fighting with each other since life began.
"It is a story about the balance between good and evil," says Ernst. "In western tradition, the good always wins. In eastern tradition there is more dualism: the good and the evil co-exist side by side. Russia, being halfway between the east and the west, offers a balance between the two."
Ernst says the film offers a convenient construction that helps to explain the inexplicable in Russian life. Among the film's product placements, Night Watch features a scene from Channel One's nine o'clock news programme Vremya (Time), in which a smooth-looking presenter informs his audience about a plane crash. The reference to Vremya is significant. More than any other news programme, Vremya has created a sense of stability in Russia; a balance between good and evil, as the plot of Night Watch would have it. And the guarantor of this stability, at least as portrayed by Vremya, is Vladimir Putin.
Vremya - which has inherited its name, time slot and theme tune from Soviet days - typically starts with Putin travelling around the country or meeting ministers in his office. The picture is almost always the same: the thoughtful president sits back in his leather chair and listens to a government official reporting on his brief. Every now and then Putin interrupts with a probing question or a comment, the essence of which is, "Your results are not bad, but they should be even better." The programme ends with the weather, accompanied by a soothing tune which conjures up memories of Soviet times in anyone who watched television at that time - which is the large majority of Russians. Unlike any other programme on the channel, Vremya goes out uninterrupted by commercials - another tribute to the Soviet days.
Vremya does not allow itself any scorn or ridicule. The tone of the presenter is always stern and serious. It seems to aim to assure viewers that they can sleep peacefully in the knowledge that the country is governed by a wise and caring president who will make the right decisions; that criminals and terrorists will be punished and the champions of labour rewarded. "Any stabilisation makes news calmer. If news works like a constant nerve irritant - as it did in Russia in the 1990s - it is a sign of instability rather than of the freedom of speech," Ernst says. He believes his job is to support Putin's government in all its positive initiatives.
"Nobody calls me and orders me to do anything. But the government has the right to explain its action to the people and it does so through the channel where it is a shareholder."
Ernst is defiant about his channel's coverage of Beslan. "We have nothing to blame ourselves for. I don't feel any shame for our coverage. The only criticism is that we did not give the real figure of hostages in the school. But we did not have any other source of information apart from the official one. Yes, it is unfortunate that the figure we were given was 354 hostages and not 1,200. But this was not a crucial point because no action was taken on the basis of this information."
The main purpose during the siege of Beslan was not to harm the hostages. "Our task number two is to inform the country about what is going on. Today the main task of the television is to mobilise the country, to explain that we are in a situation of war with terror. Russia needs consolidation. Today, Putin is the person who can do it. When we started, our energy was directed at fighting the communist system. None of us wanted to live in a communist country, but none of us wanted the Soviet Union to disintegrate either."
Like Putin, he considers himself a state-ist. "I feel my energy should be directed at making Russia a strong country with a strong economy equal to other developed countries, a country people can be proud of."
As for freedom of speech, he says it can't be measured in absolutes. "There is no such thing as an absolute freedom of speech... the freedom of speech is the ability to report information, the withdrawal of which would harm people. Everything depends on your purpose." The question is, what is the purpose and who decides what is good for it? "A doctor does not ask the patient under the knife what is good for him. He simply tries to save him."
Arkady Ostrovsky is an FT correspondent in Moscow
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2005/apr/15/1
6/4/2013 8:56pm
Return of the cold war
Russian cinema is going through a revolution - and wants to take on Hollywood.
Nick Paton Walsh reports
Friday April 15, 2005
The Guardian
Once upon a time, not so long ago, there were two sides: the warriors of light, and the warriors of dark. They battled endlessly, until one day deciding upon a truce lest they wipe each other out. The forces of good were regulated during the day by the forces of evil's day watch, and the forces of evil kept in check by their competitor's night watch. But, despite this deal, good must still fight the forces of evil at night, who roam our cities sucking the blood from innocent citizens.
The anecdote may sound like a Soviet relic's take on capitalism triumphing over communism, but it is in fact the premise for Nochnoi Dozor, or Night Watch, one of a new wave of homegrown blockbusters sweeping Russian cinemas. Dozor took £2.8m at Russian box offices in its first week, and grossed £9m in 2004 - the highest ever for a post-Soviet Russian film.
Its success is being touted as proof that Russian film can make money domestically and perhaps abroad. Persistent rumours tip Brad Pitt to star in a Hollywood prequel or sequel to Nochnoi Dozor, and the film's author, former psychologist Sergei Lukyanenko, has reportedly been asked to write a script by Fox Searchlight, who have acquired the film for autumn release in the US.
The film's runaway success has also fuelled a coup for Russian cinema. As talk of a new cold war-esque relationship between an interventionist Washington and non-democratic Moscow grows, Russian films have begun to dent the market share of its traditional Hollywood foe. In 2001, for example, Russian cinemas took £34.4m, according to Alexander Semionov, editor of Russian Cinema Business Today, only 3% of which was from Russian films. In 2004, however, the box office take had rocketed to £74.5m, of which Russian films - mostly Nochnoi Dozor - accounted for 12%. The industry is experiencing a commercial revolution that may outstrip even its greatest moments as the prime medium for Soviet propaganda. In just the first three months of this year, Russian films have taken £20.5m at the box office.
Yuri Gladilshikov, film critic for the Vedomosti newspaper, says: "Five years ago Russian TV serials ousted the American ones from prime time. Now, little by little, this has been repeated in the cinema. It is too early to speak about a 'victory' over the Americans, but this reflects a serious change in the consciousness and demands of the audience. It's a phenomenon among the young, the main cinema audience. Clearly they want to see Russian films."
Yet as with all Russian revolutions, there is a political architect. In September 2002, the ministry of culture, since then reformed by the Putin administration into an agency, declared it wanted to invest in the Russian market. Russian directors were struggling at the time to release 57 films a year, and needed state subsidies to put them on the screen. Minister Mikhail Shvidkoi said he wanted Russia to produce at least 100 films a year, and offered to finance a third of these, with directors having to propose a script the ministry would then sanction. Most importantly these films had to be "patriotic", "historic" or for children, perhaps a sign that Putin shares Lenin's edict that "among all the arts, for us cinema is the most important".
Patriotism is a key thread that unites Nochnoi Dozor, Turetski Gambit (a highly popular tsarist-era war drama) and another blockbuster, Lichni Nomer (aka Countdown), along with state sponsorship, and partnership with state-owned First Channel TV. The opening credits of Lichni Nomer (which boasted a budget of £3.7m but never quite reached the astronomic profitability it was aimed at) is surely a prime example of how the Kremlin would like things run - state TV and the government working with socially responsible business to feed the population "useful" ideas. They read: "Presented to you by First Channel, the Federal Agency of Culture and Cinema, and Sibneft" - one of many oil companies keen to remain friendly with the Kremlin since the arrest of Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Lichni Nomer itself is a clumsy action thriller that follows the conspiracy theory blueprint regularly touted by officials to explain hostage atrocities like Beslan and the Nord Ost theatre siege. A Russian security service officer is forced to confess to trying to blow up apartment buildings in Moscow (a popular theory surrounding the apartment blasts that sparked the second Chechen war in 1999, which in turn put ex-KGB officer Putin in power). A rogue Russian billionaire (a loose reference to Boris Berezovsky, accused of masterminding such schemes by the same theorists), finances the terrorist seizure of a circus in Moscow. The security officer single-handedly breaks into the circus to save the hostages, one of whom is, of course, his daughter.
If this doesn't already sound familiar enough, the film ends happily with the officer vindicated and all the bad guys very dead. The evil terrorists, trained at a camp in the Middle East where their Arab masters appear strangely Slavic beneath their make-up, mimic the Bin Ladenites in Trey Parker's Team America: World Police, roaming the world in chequered scarves intoning "Allahu Akhbar".
The film's makers were on the defensive from day one. Alex Eksler, film critic for the pro-Kremlin Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, wrote a glowing review, saying its "professionalism" and "class" overcame the suspicion he felt after hearing it was "ordered by the state" and the "Russian answer to Hollywood". The state news agency RIA Novosti praised the film and said: "The film-makers, imitating Hollywood, strive for political correctness and depict the Chechens as victims more than villains even though they are involved in the seizure of a circus. In the film, Americans are the Russians' allies. The leader of the Americans is a noble black general. Both secret services cooperate to save the comical, but nice Europeans."
Few doubt that the film's toadiness helped raise its huge budget. Anton Dolin, film critic for the Gazeta newspaper, said: "We are living in a society which slowly but surely is moving towards authoritarianism, so I think a film [about the suffering of Chechens] is impossible. Today no private producer would risk giving money to make [such] a film."
Adopting the tone of a Soviet commandant extolling his battalion's vanquishing of the Nazis on the battlefield, Minister Shvidkoi last month announced he expected Russian films to account for a share greater than 25% of the cinema market in the near future: "The fact is that the national product has pushed out foreign ones in a process of normal competition," he said of Russian cinema's ability to win the cinema war in the same way it had won the TV serial war.
In the coming months, a host of new blockbusters promise to let Russia's "forces of good" in the cinema hold the ground they have taken. A £5.2m budget fantasy, Volkodav (Wolfhound), is promised, as is a sequel to another popular gangster flick, Bumer (aka Bummer) - imaginatively known as Bumer 2 - and, of course, Nochnoi Dozor 2. Proof, if needed, that the cold war passion for beating the enemy at their own game lives on.
· Nochnoi Dozor (Night Watch) will be released in the UK in October.
6/4/2013 8:56pm
Return of the cold war
Russian cinema is going through a revolution - and wants to take on Hollywood.
Nick Paton Walsh reports
Friday April 15, 2005
The Guardian
Once upon a time, not so long ago, there were two sides: the warriors of light, and the warriors of dark. They battled endlessly, until one day deciding upon a truce lest they wipe each other out. The forces of good were regulated during the day by the forces of evil's day watch, and the forces of evil kept in check by their competitor's night watch. But, despite this deal, good must still fight the forces of evil at night, who roam our cities sucking the blood from innocent citizens.
The anecdote may sound like a Soviet relic's take on capitalism triumphing over communism, but it is in fact the premise for Nochnoi Dozor, or Night Watch, one of a new wave of homegrown blockbusters sweeping Russian cinemas. Dozor took £2.8m at Russian box offices in its first week, and grossed £9m in 2004 - the highest ever for a post-Soviet Russian film.
Its success is being touted as proof that Russian film can make money domestically and perhaps abroad. Persistent rumours tip Brad Pitt to star in a Hollywood prequel or sequel to Nochnoi Dozor, and the film's author, former psychologist Sergei Lukyanenko, has reportedly been asked to write a script by Fox Searchlight, who have acquired the film for autumn release in the US.
The film's runaway success has also fuelled a coup for Russian cinema. As talk of a new cold war-esque relationship between an interventionist Washington and non-democratic Moscow grows, Russian films have begun to dent the market share of its traditional Hollywood foe. In 2001, for example, Russian cinemas took £34.4m, according to Alexander Semionov, editor of Russian Cinema Business Today, only 3% of which was from Russian films. In 2004, however, the box office take had rocketed to £74.5m, of which Russian films - mostly Nochnoi Dozor - accounted for 12%. The industry is experiencing a commercial revolution that may outstrip even its greatest moments as the prime medium for Soviet propaganda. In just the first three months of this year, Russian films have taken £20.5m at the box office.
Yuri Gladilshikov, film critic for the Vedomosti newspaper, says: "Five years ago Russian TV serials ousted the American ones from prime time. Now, little by little, this has been repeated in the cinema. It is too early to speak about a 'victory' over the Americans, but this reflects a serious change in the consciousness and demands of the audience. It's a phenomenon among the young, the main cinema audience. Clearly they want to see Russian films."
Yet as with all Russian revolutions, there is a political architect. In September 2002, the ministry of culture, since then reformed by the Putin administration into an agency, declared it wanted to invest in the Russian market. Russian directors were struggling at the time to release 57 films a year, and needed state subsidies to put them on the screen. Minister Mikhail Shvidkoi said he wanted Russia to produce at least 100 films a year, and offered to finance a third of these, with directors having to propose a script the ministry would then sanction. Most importantly these films had to be "patriotic", "historic" or for children, perhaps a sign that Putin shares Lenin's edict that "among all the arts, for us cinema is the most important".
Patriotism is a key thread that unites Nochnoi Dozor, Turetski Gambit (a highly popular tsarist-era war drama) and another blockbuster, Lichni Nomer (aka Countdown), along with state sponsorship, and partnership with state-owned First Channel TV. The opening credits of Lichni Nomer (which boasted a budget of £3.7m but never quite reached the astronomic profitability it was aimed at) is surely a prime example of how the Kremlin would like things run - state TV and the government working with socially responsible business to feed the population "useful" ideas. They read: "Presented to you by First Channel, the Federal Agency of Culture and Cinema, and Sibneft" - one of many oil companies keen to remain friendly with the Kremlin since the arrest of Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Lichni Nomer itself is a clumsy action thriller that follows the conspiracy theory blueprint regularly touted by officials to explain hostage atrocities like Beslan and the Nord Ost theatre siege. A Russian security service officer is forced to confess to trying to blow up apartment buildings in Moscow (a popular theory surrounding the apartment blasts that sparked the second Chechen war in 1999, which in turn put ex-KGB officer Putin in power). A rogue Russian billionaire (a loose reference to Boris Berezovsky, accused of masterminding such schemes by the same theorists), finances the terrorist seizure of a circus in Moscow. The security officer single-handedly breaks into the circus to save the hostages, one of whom is, of course, his daughter.
If this doesn't already sound familiar enough, the film ends happily with the officer vindicated and all the bad guys very dead. The evil terrorists, trained at a camp in the Middle East where their Arab masters appear strangely Slavic beneath their make-up, mimic the Bin Ladenites in Trey Parker's Team America: World Police, roaming the world in chequered scarves intoning "Allahu Akhbar".
The film's makers were on the defensive from day one. Alex Eksler, film critic for the pro-Kremlin Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, wrote a glowing review, saying its "professionalism" and "class" overcame the suspicion he felt after hearing it was "ordered by the state" and the "Russian answer to Hollywood". The state news agency RIA Novosti praised the film and said: "The film-makers, imitating Hollywood, strive for political correctness and depict the Chechens as victims more than villains even though they are involved in the seizure of a circus. In the film, Americans are the Russians' allies. The leader of the Americans is a noble black general. Both secret services cooperate to save the comical, but nice Europeans."
Few doubt that the film's toadiness helped raise its huge budget. Anton Dolin, film critic for the Gazeta newspaper, said: "We are living in a society which slowly but surely is moving towards authoritarianism, so I think a film [about the suffering of Chechens] is impossible. Today no private producer would risk giving money to make [such] a film."
Adopting the tone of a Soviet commandant extolling his battalion's vanquishing of the Nazis on the battlefield, Minister Shvidkoi last month announced he expected Russian films to account for a share greater than 25% of the cinema market in the near future: "The fact is that the national product has pushed out foreign ones in a process of normal competition," he said of Russian cinema's ability to win the cinema war in the same way it had won the TV serial war.
In the coming months, a host of new blockbusters promise to let Russia's "forces of good" in the cinema hold the ground they have taken. A £5.2m budget fantasy, Volkodav (Wolfhound), is promised, as is a sequel to another popular gangster flick, Bumer (aka Bummer) - imaginatively known as Bumer 2 - and, of course, Nochnoi Dozor 2. Proof, if needed, that the cold war passion for beating the enemy at their own game lives on.
· Nochnoi Dozor (Night Watch) will be released in the UK in October.
Move over, Frodo: Night Watch is here
Move over, Frodo: Night Watch is here
Studios take interest in Russian trilogy
Night Watch a rare, post-Soviet hit
MICHAEL MAINVILLE
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
Aug. 21, 2004. 01:00 AM
MOSCOW—Vampires have invaded Moscow. And they've been a huge hit.
Night Watch — a supernatural thriller pitting the forces of good against an army of evil bloodsuckers — has broken all box office records in Russia since opening July 8.
Nochnoi Dozor, as it's called in Russian, has earned the equivalent of million at the box office, becoming the country's first homegrown blockbuster since the collapse of the heavily subsidized Soviet moviemaking machine.
It has earned five times more than the previous record-holder, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, and did it with a budget of only .2 million.
With at least two more related films on the way — the next one, Day Watch, is due for release early next year — the production is drawing comparisons to Hollywood's blockbuster trilogies.
Night Watch has been such a success that Hollywood now wants in on the action. Variety reported Thursday that Fox Searchlight has picked up the rights to release the first two films in the United States. The studio has also obtained the rights to shoot an English version of the third installment of the series, Twilight Watch.
Film critics say the makers of Night Watch have revolutionized Russian movies by turning away from the country's tradition of stolid, art-house fare and embracing the Hollywood formula of effects-driven entertainment.
"This has been very important psychologically," says Anton Dolin, a film critic at Moscow newspaper Gazeta.
"Previously, the Russian public were reluctant to go and see Russian films. Whether this is a good film or not, it's proven that a Russian film can beat American blockbusters."
Night Watch director Timur Bekmambetov says that Russians were hungry for Hollywood-style movies featuring familiar characters, locations and themes.
"We had Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, the Harry Potters, and though these films were good, people felt that they were not about them, that they couldn't see themselves in these films.
"I knew that if there was a film about them, they would go and watch it... And now that people have tasted it, they want more."
The movie is set in modern-day Moscow and centres on a 1,000-year-old battle between armies of supernatural beings.
As the film opens, the balance between the forces of good (Day Watch) and the forces of evil (Night Watch) is about to be upset by the arrival of The Great Other, who, of course, "will plunge the world into darkness."
With dazzling special effects, a hip soundtrack and a cast of recognizable modern and Soviet-era stars, Night Watch comes closer to looking and feeling like a Hollywood production than any Russian film before it.
Critics have generally supported the movie, saying it lacks depth but is satisfying entertainment.
Night Watch is also the first Russian film to benefit from a Western-style promotional campaign, complete with hundreds of billboards and posters all over Russia, as well as frequent trailers on state-owned Channel One television, which produced the film.
Asked what accounted for the film's success, Dolin replies, "In a word — marketing."
In the run-up to the film's release, Channel One not only gave over prime-time advertising spots to the film's trailers but also aired countless interviews with the cast and crew and "making of" documentaries.
"We knew that the first weekend was the most important, that we needed to get people into the theatres right away so word of mouth would spread," says Bekmambetov.
The production was also the first Russian film to use product placements to offset costs, and as a promotional tool.
In exchange for a few glimpses of its logo in the film, Russia's largest cellular operator, MTS, sent text messages to all its subscribers suggesting they see the movie.
Television ads, marketing schemes, product placement — it's all a far cry from the heyday of Soviet film, when enormous state-run studios produced the works of Sergei Eisenstein and Andrei Tarkovsky.
But like all other arts in the former Soviet Union, film was crippled by the sudden withdrawal of funding that followed the USSR's collapse in 1991.
By the late 1990s, fewer that a dozen domestic films were being released every year in Russia.
Most of those had tiny budgets and, while many did well on the international festival circuit, they also tended to attract tiny audiences.
With the country's economy booming and the growth of a middle class, more and more Russians are now able to afford to spend the average 200 rubles () it costs to see a movie.
Ticket sales have been growing at a phenomenal rate, from less than 0 million in 2001 to 3 million so far this year.
Enthusiasm was so high at the recent Moscow Film Festival, where Night Watch was first shown, that festival director Nikita Mikhalkov declared in his closing speech that "Russian cinema has been reborn."
Michael Mainville is a Canadian journalist based in Moscow.
Studios take interest in Russian trilogy
Night Watch a rare, post-Soviet hit
MICHAEL MAINVILLE
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
Aug. 21, 2004. 01:00 AM
MOSCOW—Vampires have invaded Moscow. And they've been a huge hit.
Night Watch — a supernatural thriller pitting the forces of good against an army of evil bloodsuckers — has broken all box office records in Russia since opening July 8.
Nochnoi Dozor, as it's called in Russian, has earned the equivalent of million at the box office, becoming the country's first homegrown blockbuster since the collapse of the heavily subsidized Soviet moviemaking machine.
It has earned five times more than the previous record-holder, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, and did it with a budget of only .2 million.
With at least two more related films on the way — the next one, Day Watch, is due for release early next year — the production is drawing comparisons to Hollywood's blockbuster trilogies.
Night Watch has been such a success that Hollywood now wants in on the action. Variety reported Thursday that Fox Searchlight has picked up the rights to release the first two films in the United States. The studio has also obtained the rights to shoot an English version of the third installment of the series, Twilight Watch.
Film critics say the makers of Night Watch have revolutionized Russian movies by turning away from the country's tradition of stolid, art-house fare and embracing the Hollywood formula of effects-driven entertainment.
"This has been very important psychologically," says Anton Dolin, a film critic at Moscow newspaper Gazeta.
"Previously, the Russian public were reluctant to go and see Russian films. Whether this is a good film or not, it's proven that a Russian film can beat American blockbusters."
Night Watch director Timur Bekmambetov says that Russians were hungry for Hollywood-style movies featuring familiar characters, locations and themes.
"We had Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, the Harry Potters, and though these films were good, people felt that they were not about them, that they couldn't see themselves in these films.
"I knew that if there was a film about them, they would go and watch it... And now that people have tasted it, they want more."
The movie is set in modern-day Moscow and centres on a 1,000-year-old battle between armies of supernatural beings.
As the film opens, the balance between the forces of good (Day Watch) and the forces of evil (Night Watch) is about to be upset by the arrival of The Great Other, who, of course, "will plunge the world into darkness."
With dazzling special effects, a hip soundtrack and a cast of recognizable modern and Soviet-era stars, Night Watch comes closer to looking and feeling like a Hollywood production than any Russian film before it.
Critics have generally supported the movie, saying it lacks depth but is satisfying entertainment.
Night Watch is also the first Russian film to benefit from a Western-style promotional campaign, complete with hundreds of billboards and posters all over Russia, as well as frequent trailers on state-owned Channel One television, which produced the film.
Asked what accounted for the film's success, Dolin replies, "In a word — marketing."
In the run-up to the film's release, Channel One not only gave over prime-time advertising spots to the film's trailers but also aired countless interviews with the cast and crew and "making of" documentaries.
"We knew that the first weekend was the most important, that we needed to get people into the theatres right away so word of mouth would spread," says Bekmambetov.
The production was also the first Russian film to use product placements to offset costs, and as a promotional tool.
In exchange for a few glimpses of its logo in the film, Russia's largest cellular operator, MTS, sent text messages to all its subscribers suggesting they see the movie.
Television ads, marketing schemes, product placement — it's all a far cry from the heyday of Soviet film, when enormous state-run studios produced the works of Sergei Eisenstein and Andrei Tarkovsky.
But like all other arts in the former Soviet Union, film was crippled by the sudden withdrawal of funding that followed the USSR's collapse in 1991.
By the late 1990s, fewer that a dozen domestic films were being released every year in Russia.
Most of those had tiny budgets and, while many did well on the international festival circuit, they also tended to attract tiny audiences.
With the country's economy booming and the growth of a middle class, more and more Russians are now able to afford to spend the average 200 rubles () it costs to see a movie.
Ticket sales have been growing at a phenomenal rate, from less than 0 million in 2001 to 3 million so far this year.
Enthusiasm was so high at the recent Moscow Film Festival, where Night Watch was first shown, that festival director Nikita Mikhalkov declared in his closing speech that "Russian cinema has been reborn."
Michael Mainville is a Canadian journalist based in Moscow.
Back in the USSR?
Last Updated: Saturday, 9 October, 2004, 11:16 GMT 12:16 UK
Back in the USSR?
 |
|
By Bridget Kendall
BBC diplomatic correspondent in Moscow |
Welcome back to the Soviet Union!"
That was the response of one Russian journalist in Moscow recently when I asked what he thought of President Vladimir Putin's plan to abolish popular elections so he could appoint Russia's governors.
It was a typically gloomy reaction. And one that seemed to fit the mood in Russia after the Beslan tragedy.
Liberal journalists are dismayed at what they see as the latest attempt to clamp down on an open society.
But government officials are quick to defend the Kremlin.
"Too much democracy can be bad for you," said one Russian parliamentarian to me in London this week.
He is in charge of the Russian parliament's commission into Beslan and was disarmingly frank about the appalling corruption and incompetence in Russia's security organs which he has already uncovered as the result of his inquiry.
But he was dismissive of Western transparency as a way to combat it.
"It's like honey," he said of democracy. "One spoonful is sweet, but swallow too much and it can poison you."
He had already reminded me that he was a Communist Party functionary working for the central committee when I was a correspondent in Moscow 15 years ago.
I silently noted that perhaps it was not surprising he was nostalgic for state intervention.
Forgetting Lenin
Actually I do not think many people really think the clock could be turned back to the extent of recreating the Soviet Union.
Too much has happened since then. The collapse of the communist regime was too final.
Private enterprise has taken root and a new generation has grown up with no memory of Soviet practices.
I find myself constantly bemused by this new Russia.
The Moscow of my student years was empty of traffic, but crowded with sombre-faced citizens who pushed their way onto buses and into queues.
|
This is a key moment. It is like 1991 all over again. This is creeping authoritarianism
Russian commentator
|
But the negative side is that young Russians have little idea of what their country was like 20 or 30 years ago. Some barely know who Lenin was.
Others recall the Stalin era with pride, forgetting the millions who languished in the camps, the absence of proper food or medicines, and the nagging fear of being watched by the KGB's vast network of informers.
'Dangerous' measures
"Let me say this to you privately, before we start recording," said one Russian commentator I was preparing to interview.
Putin believes tightening his grip on the regions is the answer
|
"The Kremlin is being run by 'siloviki', mostly former KGB contacts of Putin's. Putin is obsessed with the idea of Russia disintegrating.
"So they are trying to tighten control from the centre because it is the only way they know of reacting to this terrorist threat. But it will just make the situation even more dangerous."
And the danger is that Mr Putin and his strongmen advisers will indeed call for more restriction of movement, more surveillance of suspicious outsiders, reopening the gap between Russia and the West, while doing little to give Russians more real security from terrorism.
Already some foreign investors are being put off. Russian businessmen are once again taking their money abroad.
Meanwhile, the abandoned security gates at metro entrances gather dust, a futile anti-terrorist gesture.
Russia's curse
"I can't speak out publicly," said my interviewee. "Or I'd get into trouble with the Kremlin.
"As it is, I can only get access to some people, the reformers who still manage the economy. But they too fear they are being sidelined."
The Beslan disaster has left Russia feeling anxious and edgy
|
And all the while, everyone waits with a sinking feeling in the pit of their stomach.
Ask anyone and they will tell you of their fear of another terrorism spectacular.
There is a blockbuster film on in Russia at the moment that seems to capture the public mood perfectly.
Night Watch is set in Moscow, the backdrop for a fight between shadowy forces of good and evil.
While most people go about their daily life in ignorance, an evil cloud hangs over the city.
Unless the curse is lifted there will be a terrible catastrophe, power lost to the entire metropolis, an airliner crashing with untold casualties.
The curse is removed, but the film still ends negatively, brooding on destructive powers that cannot be resisted.
It seemed a fitting metaphor for what most Russians feel about their country at the moment.
From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 9 October 2004 at 1130 BST on BBC Radio 4.
Steve Sailer iSteve
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2006/03/my-review-of-night-watch-in-upcoming.html
6/3/2013 8:43 pm
6/3/2013 8:43 pm
From Russia with Blood
Night Watch
reviewed by Steve
Sailer
The
American Conservative, March 27, 2006
|
||
| Russia's triumphant rise from cultural
backwater to dazzling center of creativity and profundity during the
century before the Bolshevik Revolution was mirrored by its sad decline
under Communism. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 might have
been expected to unshackle Russian artistry, but over the last decade
and a half, little has emerged that has caught the attention of the
West. Still, hope for a Russian aesthetic revival endures, so when the film "Night Watch," the first of a planned trilogy that has set box office records in Russia, finally reached America, the Saturday evening crowd at an art house cinema in West Los Angeles solemnly took it in as if it were the second coming of Crime and Punishment. In reality, "Night Watch" is a clever and entertaining (if confusing and not at all scary) commercial fantasy film about supernatural undercover cops who arrest vampires. While reminiscent of the great Mikhail Bulgakov's long-banned 1930s novel about the Devil's visit to Stalin's Moscow, The Master and Margarita, it's actually closer to the TV show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and last year's Keanu Reeves theological thriller "Constantine." "Night Watch" is built on the current Hollywood economic model. It's a special effects-encrusted and lavishly advertised blockbuster that has spawned a franchise. Of course, the financial scale is tiny by comparison: "Night Watch" cost all of $4 million to make and reaped $16 million at the Russian box office. Fortunately, a dollar goes a lot farther in Russia, and "Night Watch" looks terrific. The computer-generated imagery is professional, and Moscow's grubbiness has never been depicted so slickly. While "Night Watch" is a pastiche of American hits, there's a distinct Russian flavor and a crucial anti-abortion plot twist that Hollywood wouldn't touch. As veteran investigative reporter Edward Jay Epstein documented in The Big Picture, television's seduction of the old habitual moviegoer has meant that the studios must conjure up an audience from scratch for each new film, at an average of almost $30 million in American advertising costs. Not surprisingly, movie executives therefore try to lessen risk by greenlighting familiar-sounding titles, such as sequels. Unfortunately, this can result in "Matrix" Syndrome, where the filmmakers, who expended every idea they ever had in their breakthrough movie, are exposed as creatively bankrupt when given huge budgets to concoct follow-ups. An alternative is to plan on shooting a trilogy from the beginning, as in "Lord of the Rings." The downsides, however, of plotting on a three-film scale, from which "Night Watch" suffers, are that the first installment spends an inordinate amount of time introducing plot and characters and never reaches a satisfying resolution. Loosely based on the first novel in a bestselling trilogy by science fiction author Sergey Lukyanenko and directed by Timur Bekmambetov, both born in Kazakhstan, the film expounds a vaguely Zoroastrian dualistic cosmology. The battle between the well-balanced forces of Light and Darkness, fought by mystical Others who dwell amongst us, once became so destructive that in 1342 their leaders negotiated a complex truce. But now this Cold War threatens to turn apocalyptically hot again. The heroes of "Night Watch" are a grungy squad of Light Other police officers who work at night, apprehending bloodsucking Dark Others who violate the rules. Yet, the main characters seem to be willing to break a lot of eggs to make an omelet, dangling innocent humans as "live bait" to entrap the vampires. How do we know the protagonists actually are the good guys they repeatedly insist they are? The vampires, who, on a personal level are often friendly or glamorous, argue that they're just doing what comes naturally when "the hunger" is upon them, and seem sincerely aggrieved by the cops' procedural corner-cutting. Indeed, these vampires aren't all that bloodthirsty by the standards set by such prominent historical Muscovites as Ivan the Terrible, Trotsky, and Beria. It's possible "Night Watch" is an ambivalent allegory of recent Russian history, in which the morose heroes -- who espouse high ideals for which the ends justify the means -- represent the old Soviet KGB secret police, while the sleazy villains -- gangsters, pop stars, and black marketeers -- embody the new Russian mafioso capitalism. Or, then again, "Night Watch" might be just a cops and vampires flick. We'll have to wait for "Day Watch" and "Dusk Watch" to find out. Rated R for strong violence, disturbing images and language. |
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Random NW thoughts
NW in armor as through back to last time it was great? Not really, but a mythical time of rurik or of Aleksander Nevsky or some sort of greatness that was almost destroyed? Why armor - why not WWII?
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Stein "The art of racing in the rain"
"Who is Achilles without his tendon? Who is Sampson without Delilah? Who is Oedipus without his clubfoot?...The true hero is flawed. The true test of a champion is not whether he can triumph, but whether he can overcome obstacles - preferably of his own making - in order to triumph. A hero without a flaw is of no interest to an audience or to the universe, which, after all, is based on conflict and opposition, the irresistible force meeting the unmovable object." 135
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment"
Depictions of Madness and solitude after murder - akin to MacBeth
Marmelodov goes down on his knees as an act of forgiveness to Katerina Ivanovna at the beginning of the novel. She pulls him into the room. 21
Raskolnikov goes to the police station to deal with the summons immediately after the murder. He tells himself that "I shall go in, fall on my knees, and tell the whole story,' he thought as he came to the fourth floor." 80
Raskolnikov talks to himself about his situation after the murder and the feeling of torture he feels: "I have been tormenting and torturing myself and I hardly know what I am doing...when I am well...I shall not torture myself like this...but what if I never get quite well again" 93
After Raskolnikov throws the 20 kopek piece into the river he feels particularly alone. "He felt that he had in that moment cut himself from everybody and everything, as if with a knife" 97
Anton on his bed laying watching TV is like Raskolnikov lying on his bed waiting for the suffering and thinking all the time. Nothing to eat and drink. A dark coffin of an apartment. He is contacted by phone and brought out of his revery like Raskolnikov is by Natasha who brings him food and harasses him. **
Zametov and Razumikhin are talking and Raskolnikov sends them away from his apartment. Zametov tells Raz "...You know, he has something on his mind!...Something immovable, weighing him down...That is decidedly what I am very much afraid of" 130
Raskolnikov to Zametov and Raz "Perhaps I'm ungrateful, perhaps I am mean and base only leave me alone, all of you, for God's sake leave me alone!" 143
**For all the troubles that Anton had after having become an Other and after having met with the witch and his internal doubt from the failed abortion - he could not just end it like Svidrigailov - why could he not just commit suicide like in C&P? He could too easily been fixed by the Others or he could have gone into the gloom and just stayed there, but that keeps your soul to a certain extent and that is not a good ending - anyway there is not the availability of just killing himself. Also, he could not have just gone to the police and told on himself as he was to a certain extent the police. He could have gone to the Dark Others, but this would have meant changing his entire belief system and he was not able to do that. Interesting that the same way out was not available to Anton that it was to Raskolnikov - so Anton had to just work his way out of the funk. There was nothing left for him, but to try to be the best person he could and do the work that he believed in in order to make the world a better place. **
Raskolnikov finishes with helping Marmelodov on his death bed and speaking with Polechka. He had been able to help a man's family monitarily and emotionally. He had also connected himself with God and fo Dostoevsky, this is perhaps the most important part. It is a glimmer of hope that he is showing and that from good deeds may come more good deeds and life can be made of helping others. It is full of pride for Raskolnikov, but at least he is thinking of something else. He says to himself: "Enough!' he said decidedly and solemnly. 'Away with illusions, away with imaginary terrors, away with spectres!... Life is! Was I not living just now? My life did not die with the old woman! May she rest in peace and - enough, old woman, your time has come! Now comes the reign of reason and light and ... freedom and power... now we shall see! now we shall measure our strength!" 161
"Strength, strength is what I need; nothing can be done without strength; and strength must be gained by strength - that is something they do not know..... ....His pride and self-confidence grew with every minute; in each succeeding minute he was a different man from what he had been in the preceding one. But what had happened that was so special? What had so transformed him? He himself did not know; it had come to him suddenly, as to a man clutching at a straw, that even for him it was 'possible to live, that life was still there, that his life had not died with that old woman'. Perhaps he had been in too much haste to reach this conclusion, but of this he did not think." 161
**For Anton, he is able to grow a bit more interested in life as far as it seems after he saved Yegor and realized that there may be something more than the life of a NW agent especially as it is through them that he put Yegor in danger in the first place. He realizes what he must do and this is to save Yegor from the vampire and from the DW. He still does not know that the child is his or that the child is destined to become a great Other, but he realizes that he can and wants to save the child and that gives him a sense of purpose and life. **
According to Zosimov the doctor, "According to his observations, the illness had some psychological causes in addition to the bad material conditions the patient had been living in for the past few months; 'it is , so to say, a product of many complex moral and material influences, anxieties, apprehensions, worries, certain ideas...and other things.'" 175
"He had observed in his patient a certain fixed idea, some indication of monomania..."175
Razumikhin describes Raskolnikov to his mother and sister "...sometimes he is dreadfully taciturn: he has no time for anything-people are always interfering with him- but he spends all his time lying there doing nothing. He never jests, bot because he lacks the sharpness of wit for it, but because he has no time for such trifles. He doesn't hear people out. He is never interested in the same things as other people at any given moment. He sets a terribly high value on himself, not, I think, without some justification." 182
Raskolnikov is talking to his mother, sister, Zosimov, Raz, about getting well "...you come to a certain limit and if you do not overstep it, you will be unhappy, but if you do overstep it, perhaps you will be even more unhappy..." 192
**The idea of prestuplenie in the novel C&P as it relates to NW is interesting. As Anton has stepped over a moral and maybe a civil boundary he has caused himself to be ill. However, now that he has come in contact with Yegor he has the opportunity to make things right. However, to what end must he go to do so. He almost kills himself in the barber shop and ends up killing the barber vampire Andrei. He almost dies in the gloom with Yegor trying to save him and has to make a blood sacrifice to get out of it. He nearly causes the curse to explode by working on Sveta at the same time as Yegor, though this tactic worked to get the story out. He takes on Zavulon with a sword - the leader of the DW and the Dark Others. He nearly kills Yegor to save him from Zavulon, yet Zavulon saves Yegor. Anton had to go to extremes and not follow the protacal of the NW in trying to do so. He had to step over the bounds in order to get himself right after the events that took place 12 years earlier despite the fact that they may end the world or make the entire situation worse. He can only do what his conscience allows and can do no more or no less. **
Room like a coffin. 196
Svidrigailov is discussing ghosts and illness with Raskolnikov on their first meeting. Svid says : Apparitions are, so to speak, shreds and fragments of other worlds, the first beginnings of them. There is, of course, no reason why a healthy man should see them, because a healthy man is mainly a being of this earth, and therefore for completeness and order he must live only this earthly life. But as soon as he falls ill, as soon as the normal earthly state of the organism is disturbed, the possibility of another world begins to appear, and as the illness increases, so do the contacts with the other world, so that at the moment of a man's death he enters fully into that world." 244
Sonya and Raskolnikov in her rooms talking about Katerina Ivanovna: "And aren't you sorry, aren't you sorry for her?' exclaimed Sonya again. 'Yet I know you gave her your last penny, when you had seen nothing. If you had seen everything, good heavens! And how often I have drivern her to tears, how often! Even this last week! Yes, I! Not more than a week before he died. I was cruel. And how many times I have behaved so, how many!... Oh, how painful it has been all day to remember it now!' Sonya rung her hands as she spoke, with the pain of remembering.
'You cruel?'
'Yes, I, I! ... ... I had gone there chiefly to show Katerina Ivanovna some collars; Lizaveta, the dealer, had let me have some collars and cuffs cheap, and they were quite new and very pretty, figured ones. Katerina Ivanovna liked them very much; she put them on and looked at herself in the glass and she liked then very, very much: "Please give them to me, Sonya," she said. She said please, and she so wanted them. But when could she wear them? It was just that they reminded her of the old, happy days. She looked at herself in the glass and admired herself, and she had had no dresses, none at all, no pretty things, for so many years! and she would never ask anybody for anything; she is proud; she would rather give away her own last possessions, but now here she was asking for them - she like them so much! But I didn't want to give them away: "What use are they to you, Katerina Ivanovna? " I said. Yes, that is how I spoke to her. I should not have said that to her! she just looked at me , and she was so terribly sad that I had refused her, that it made me sorry to see her...And she wasn't sad about the collars, but because I had refused her, I could see that. And now I wish I could change it all, do it all over again, take back all those words...Oh, I ...But why am I saying all this? It makes no difference to you.' ... ...
"Katerina Ivanovna has consumption, in a very advanced stage; she will soon die,' said Raskolnikov after a silence..."
"Oh, no, no, no!' With an unconscious gesture sonya seized both his hands hin hers, as though imploring him not to let it happen." 270
"At last he went up to her; his eyes were glittering. He took her by the shoulders with both hands and looked into her weeping face. His piercing eyes were dry and inflamed, his lips twitched violently...With a sudden swift movement he stooped, fell to the ground, and kissed her foot. sonya started back in fear, as though he were mad. Indeed, he looked quite mad.
'Why, why do you do that? To me!' she murmured, turning white, and her heart contracted painfully.
He rose at once.
'I prostrated myself not before you, but before all human suffering,' he said wildly, and waskled away to the window. 272
"I said it not because of your dishonour and your sin, but because of your great suffering. That you are a great sinner is true,' he added, almost exultantly, 'but your greatest sin is that you have abandoned and destroyed yourself in vain." 272
**Sveta is sort of in the same position as Sonya. She has done a great sin in this world and is punishing herself for it, but it is all for naught. She knows her mother will die and can do nothing to save her. She even went through the motions of trying to help her mother, though her heart was not in it. She knew that her mother would refuse, which made it all the easier for her to offer her own kidney. Sveta cannot do anything about it and only suffers and curses herself because she knows she did not do it with the right heart. Sveta also has only a few ways open to her: to kill herself - which is basically happening with the vortex, to go mad - which she doesn't have time for because of the vortex, and to succumb to the debauchery that will turn her heart to stone - also not possible because she doesn't have enough time. The lack of time is not the important thing here - it is the universality of the sin "Sonya's position in society was fortuitous, was an accident, although unfortunately not exceptional or isolated" 273. The point is that Sveta curses herself as perhaps anyone could for their inability to sacrifice themselves to save another. It happens everyday. Mothers die and daughters are not always either able or willing to make the sacrifice. Sveta has the ability, just not the heart, though she went through the motions. **
Marmelodov goes down on his knees as an act of forgiveness to Katerina Ivanovna at the beginning of the novel. She pulls him into the room. 21
Raskolnikov goes to the police station to deal with the summons immediately after the murder. He tells himself that "I shall go in, fall on my knees, and tell the whole story,' he thought as he came to the fourth floor." 80
Raskolnikov talks to himself about his situation after the murder and the feeling of torture he feels: "I have been tormenting and torturing myself and I hardly know what I am doing...when I am well...I shall not torture myself like this...but what if I never get quite well again" 93
After Raskolnikov throws the 20 kopek piece into the river he feels particularly alone. "He felt that he had in that moment cut himself from everybody and everything, as if with a knife" 97
Anton on his bed laying watching TV is like Raskolnikov lying on his bed waiting for the suffering and thinking all the time. Nothing to eat and drink. A dark coffin of an apartment. He is contacted by phone and brought out of his revery like Raskolnikov is by Natasha who brings him food and harasses him. **
Zametov and Razumikhin are talking and Raskolnikov sends them away from his apartment. Zametov tells Raz "...You know, he has something on his mind!...Something immovable, weighing him down...That is decidedly what I am very much afraid of" 130
Raskolnikov to Zametov and Raz "Perhaps I'm ungrateful, perhaps I am mean and base only leave me alone, all of you, for God's sake leave me alone!" 143
**For all the troubles that Anton had after having become an Other and after having met with the witch and his internal doubt from the failed abortion - he could not just end it like Svidrigailov - why could he not just commit suicide like in C&P? He could too easily been fixed by the Others or he could have gone into the gloom and just stayed there, but that keeps your soul to a certain extent and that is not a good ending - anyway there is not the availability of just killing himself. Also, he could not have just gone to the police and told on himself as he was to a certain extent the police. He could have gone to the Dark Others, but this would have meant changing his entire belief system and he was not able to do that. Interesting that the same way out was not available to Anton that it was to Raskolnikov - so Anton had to just work his way out of the funk. There was nothing left for him, but to try to be the best person he could and do the work that he believed in in order to make the world a better place. **
Raskolnikov finishes with helping Marmelodov on his death bed and speaking with Polechka. He had been able to help a man's family monitarily and emotionally. He had also connected himself with God and fo Dostoevsky, this is perhaps the most important part. It is a glimmer of hope that he is showing and that from good deeds may come more good deeds and life can be made of helping others. It is full of pride for Raskolnikov, but at least he is thinking of something else. He says to himself: "Enough!' he said decidedly and solemnly. 'Away with illusions, away with imaginary terrors, away with spectres!... Life is! Was I not living just now? My life did not die with the old woman! May she rest in peace and - enough, old woman, your time has come! Now comes the reign of reason and light and ... freedom and power... now we shall see! now we shall measure our strength!" 161
"Strength, strength is what I need; nothing can be done without strength; and strength must be gained by strength - that is something they do not know..... ....His pride and self-confidence grew with every minute; in each succeeding minute he was a different man from what he had been in the preceding one. But what had happened that was so special? What had so transformed him? He himself did not know; it had come to him suddenly, as to a man clutching at a straw, that even for him it was 'possible to live, that life was still there, that his life had not died with that old woman'. Perhaps he had been in too much haste to reach this conclusion, but of this he did not think." 161
**For Anton, he is able to grow a bit more interested in life as far as it seems after he saved Yegor and realized that there may be something more than the life of a NW agent especially as it is through them that he put Yegor in danger in the first place. He realizes what he must do and this is to save Yegor from the vampire and from the DW. He still does not know that the child is his or that the child is destined to become a great Other, but he realizes that he can and wants to save the child and that gives him a sense of purpose and life. **
According to Zosimov the doctor, "According to his observations, the illness had some psychological causes in addition to the bad material conditions the patient had been living in for the past few months; 'it is , so to say, a product of many complex moral and material influences, anxieties, apprehensions, worries, certain ideas...and other things.'" 175
"He had observed in his patient a certain fixed idea, some indication of monomania..."175
Razumikhin describes Raskolnikov to his mother and sister "...sometimes he is dreadfully taciturn: he has no time for anything-people are always interfering with him- but he spends all his time lying there doing nothing. He never jests, bot because he lacks the sharpness of wit for it, but because he has no time for such trifles. He doesn't hear people out. He is never interested in the same things as other people at any given moment. He sets a terribly high value on himself, not, I think, without some justification." 182
Raskolnikov is talking to his mother, sister, Zosimov, Raz, about getting well "...you come to a certain limit and if you do not overstep it, you will be unhappy, but if you do overstep it, perhaps you will be even more unhappy..." 192
**The idea of prestuplenie in the novel C&P as it relates to NW is interesting. As Anton has stepped over a moral and maybe a civil boundary he has caused himself to be ill. However, now that he has come in contact with Yegor he has the opportunity to make things right. However, to what end must he go to do so. He almost kills himself in the barber shop and ends up killing the barber vampire Andrei. He almost dies in the gloom with Yegor trying to save him and has to make a blood sacrifice to get out of it. He nearly causes the curse to explode by working on Sveta at the same time as Yegor, though this tactic worked to get the story out. He takes on Zavulon with a sword - the leader of the DW and the Dark Others. He nearly kills Yegor to save him from Zavulon, yet Zavulon saves Yegor. Anton had to go to extremes and not follow the protacal of the NW in trying to do so. He had to step over the bounds in order to get himself right after the events that took place 12 years earlier despite the fact that they may end the world or make the entire situation worse. He can only do what his conscience allows and can do no more or no less. **
Room like a coffin. 196
Svidrigailov is discussing ghosts and illness with Raskolnikov on their first meeting. Svid says : Apparitions are, so to speak, shreds and fragments of other worlds, the first beginnings of them. There is, of course, no reason why a healthy man should see them, because a healthy man is mainly a being of this earth, and therefore for completeness and order he must live only this earthly life. But as soon as he falls ill, as soon as the normal earthly state of the organism is disturbed, the possibility of another world begins to appear, and as the illness increases, so do the contacts with the other world, so that at the moment of a man's death he enters fully into that world." 244
Sonya and Raskolnikov in her rooms talking about Katerina Ivanovna: "And aren't you sorry, aren't you sorry for her?' exclaimed Sonya again. 'Yet I know you gave her your last penny, when you had seen nothing. If you had seen everything, good heavens! And how often I have drivern her to tears, how often! Even this last week! Yes, I! Not more than a week before he died. I was cruel. And how many times I have behaved so, how many!... Oh, how painful it has been all day to remember it now!' Sonya rung her hands as she spoke, with the pain of remembering.
'You cruel?'
'Yes, I, I! ... ... I had gone there chiefly to show Katerina Ivanovna some collars; Lizaveta, the dealer, had let me have some collars and cuffs cheap, and they were quite new and very pretty, figured ones. Katerina Ivanovna liked them very much; she put them on and looked at herself in the glass and she liked then very, very much: "Please give them to me, Sonya," she said. She said please, and she so wanted them. But when could she wear them? It was just that they reminded her of the old, happy days. She looked at herself in the glass and admired herself, and she had had no dresses, none at all, no pretty things, for so many years! and she would never ask anybody for anything; she is proud; she would rather give away her own last possessions, but now here she was asking for them - she like them so much! But I didn't want to give them away: "What use are they to you, Katerina Ivanovna? " I said. Yes, that is how I spoke to her. I should not have said that to her! she just looked at me , and she was so terribly sad that I had refused her, that it made me sorry to see her...And she wasn't sad about the collars, but because I had refused her, I could see that. And now I wish I could change it all, do it all over again, take back all those words...Oh, I ...But why am I saying all this? It makes no difference to you.' ... ...
"Katerina Ivanovna has consumption, in a very advanced stage; she will soon die,' said Raskolnikov after a silence..."
"Oh, no, no, no!' With an unconscious gesture sonya seized both his hands hin hers, as though imploring him not to let it happen." 270
"At last he went up to her; his eyes were glittering. He took her by the shoulders with both hands and looked into her weeping face. His piercing eyes were dry and inflamed, his lips twitched violently...With a sudden swift movement he stooped, fell to the ground, and kissed her foot. sonya started back in fear, as though he were mad. Indeed, he looked quite mad.
'Why, why do you do that? To me!' she murmured, turning white, and her heart contracted painfully.
He rose at once.
'I prostrated myself not before you, but before all human suffering,' he said wildly, and waskled away to the window. 272
"I said it not because of your dishonour and your sin, but because of your great suffering. That you are a great sinner is true,' he added, almost exultantly, 'but your greatest sin is that you have abandoned and destroyed yourself in vain." 272
**Sveta is sort of in the same position as Sonya. She has done a great sin in this world and is punishing herself for it, but it is all for naught. She knows her mother will die and can do nothing to save her. She even went through the motions of trying to help her mother, though her heart was not in it. She knew that her mother would refuse, which made it all the easier for her to offer her own kidney. Sveta cannot do anything about it and only suffers and curses herself because she knows she did not do it with the right heart. Sveta also has only a few ways open to her: to kill herself - which is basically happening with the vortex, to go mad - which she doesn't have time for because of the vortex, and to succumb to the debauchery that will turn her heart to stone - also not possible because she doesn't have enough time. The lack of time is not the important thing here - it is the universality of the sin "Sonya's position in society was fortuitous, was an accident, although unfortunately not exceptional or isolated" 273. The point is that Sveta curses herself as perhaps anyone could for their inability to sacrifice themselves to save another. It happens everyday. Mothers die and daughters are not always either able or willing to make the sacrifice. Sveta has the ability, just not the heart, though she went through the motions. **
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Sophocles - Oedipus the King
There is in Oedipus the idea of an unwritten law - the idea that there may be something bigger than just that code that lies within the official law of the land. This is what separates the difference between an 'obscenity' and a crime. In NW this may be something to consider as it pertains to Anton and his aborted son. He has cursed himself so to speak by trying to get rid of his son. If it the fate of Laius is the same as the fate of Anton, then Anton will be killed by Yegor.
Does Anton ignore the truth the same way that Oedipus does. Oedipus hears of the child of Laius having his ankles bound, but ignores the fact that his own ankles are swollen, according to his name. Anton reads that he is known to be an alcoholic and a killer, but does not believe it of himself.
Anton and free will. In NW there are prophesies. The foretelling of the witch does not really factor into this as she simply lies to Anton. However, the prophesies of the coming of the great one that will signal the end of the truce and the definition of whether light or dark seems nigh. This is especially true as the coming of the virgin - Sveta - seems true too,
*however, she is not a virgin?* She sleeps with the don Juan character in the Russian film and maybe in the novel also. *
Are the prophesies in charge of Anton's life or is he in charge of is own. Did Oedipus have any choice in fulfilling the prophesy? It seems that he was not entirely in charge of his fate, though he is brash and quick to action instead of contemplation and this causes him some damage. He tries to flee his fate and leave Corinth, then flee Thebes after having left so much damage. Does he have a "Tragic Flaw" - it is hard to tell. Anton does not flee his fate. He tries to wrestle with it and fix it. He made a single bad choice and fate does seem to come back to him, but he does not let it go without a battle. He tries to fix the issue of Sveta and wants to do so without killing her and living out his supposed ability to kill. He tries and succeeds to do more with little. Unlike Oedipus, he does not shy away from situation in which he is called upon to show action, but also some forethought. He doesn't always choose right. In fact he could have done more in the gloom to arrest the barber - this is sort of his moment at the crossroads where Oedipus kills Laius - Anton kills Andre - and the killing of the this person also haunts him and is part of the doom that seems to follow Anton.
The crossroads in Oedipus is a place where there is choice - a place where consequences matter, but still a choice exists. It also shows the power of fate and the lack of true choice. Does this exist in NW? Anton is at a crossroads in several parts of the film. He makes the decision in the witch's apartment, but there is little crossroads here, just a choice to be made. He does so in the metro. He has a choice to stay focused on Yegor or to also show his interest in Sveta who he sees has a vortex over her head. He decides to try to help Sveta also and in doing so uses his flashlight. In the novel he uses up the power of the flashlight prematurely and then does not have this weapon for use when he needs it against Andrei the barber. I cannot remember what the film does for the flashlight. Even if he does still have use of the flashlight he doesn't have his mind focused on just Yegor and almost loses him. Infact he does lose him so that he could not keep him safe before the vampires almost got to him. Had he been more focused and intent to only help Yegor he may have not had to kill Andrei to get Yegor back. Anton's interest in helping out all of society or trying to do the right thing instead of only doing what he is ordered to do is a part of the main reason why he comes off as a modern Russian hero in this novel and film for this time. He is willing to risk more than what he is told to risk, but does it not for the orders or the boss above him, but for the person he wants to be and for the person around him. This is how he gains a sort of superhero/messianic role in the film.
**This is not entirely unlike the film/comic book Unbreakable with Bruce Willis**
Anton walks out of the metro car and runs into Sveta in order to get a better look at her or to imprint her in his mind. This is time wasted if he were only going after Yegor. The Metro shows the crossroads as a metaphore in Anton's life. He does not ride it again and uses the streets above the metro for the rest of the film. In his apartment Anton has a map of the metro on his wall and has figured out that the vampire murders are taking place in the form of a pentagram - a common satanic symbol and of the occult. Here it represents the evil of vampirism, in case there was a question as to whether vampires were going to be shown as good in the film. **This is like the film The First Power where the pentagram is used to determine where the next murder will be.
Imprisonment as a symbol in Oedipus cycle is Antigone walled up in her death prison. It shows Creon's affronts to the gods and his bad decisions by inverting the responsibilities of life and death and cruelty. Olga is imprisoned in the body of an Owl, but she is allowed to get out from time to time and ultimately is able to prove herself and can stay out when she helps in the vortex of Sveta. Her imprisonment is a punishment, but an unnatural one that shows the lifespan of an Other and the true love one can have for another that they would be willing to risk such a life for another. As she teams up with Anton she is there as a lesson to him not to do what he wants to do and to watch what he does. He is also set opposite her to show his freedom from this imprisonment. Do only women get imprisioned this way? Why is Sveta shown to be a victim of her curse and Yegor come off as a great other that will decide fate?
Fate
In Oedipus Jocasta sees what she wants to see and after she believes that the prophesy of Laius being killed by someone other than his son seems to her to have taken place that the idea of prophesies is outright false. There is no disavowel of prophesies or fate in NW. At no point does Anton or any of the other Others try to work actively against fate in such a way that they believe it is not true. The prophesy is laid down as it was written and all work accordingly to it and accepting it without a hint of disbelief. It is true that they have their hands full of real-world issues so delving into the problems of fulfilled prophesies is not very helpful or useful, but they don't confront this idea on any level except to accept the idea that their lives may be a part of the prophesy and that they can but try to solve the immediate problem and not look to the future. This is one of the issues that the NW has is that they have not done a very good job with coping with the world around them and continue to work with an outdated mindset. They do not look to the future and have not laid the plans to deal with the changing world. They see the DW acting against the truce around them - and in fact act against it themselves when it is convenient - but do not see how they must react and plan and not just react to the issues that come up. Anton is not very active in his own life. He does what he is told and follows orders, though he does it with his own sense of direction as a fuck-up.
Why do the characters adhere to the idea of fated prophesy? Is it because they desire order in their world? There is not a lot of order in this world, except for that of the future. Everyone knows that there will be order when the great Other comes and makes order. **Is this similar to the teleologic future predicted by Marx and supported by Lenin and the Communists that such a future is believed in without question? Is it in the mindset of Russians to believe that everything is terrible now, but if they hold on a bit longer that things will be ok? Rather the opposite, I should think. This is too opptimistic and not fatalistic for Russia where people more often believe that things are bad now and they cannot do anything about it and the future will be whatever it will be regardless of their ability or efforts to change it as their lives are not really in their own hands.
The dichotomy of the two opposing sides - light and dark - self and others is not capable of continuing in this world. Light can only hope that Darkness doesn't take over too far as it is much easier to be dark than light and there would be little if any light at all if there were not those willing to fight for light. This world is one of transition - it is a chronotope of change and uncertainty and carnivalesque liminality. The gloom is a great midground of this space and place in that it accepts dark and light equally and doesn't exist by either group's definitions. The rest of the world in which they live is on the edge of an abyss. Waiting for the apocalypse or the choice made for them by prophesy - which side will get the upper hand? Soon the great judgement is upon them and the waiting will be over. There is only to wait and see what will happen. The dark side is working for them to take the advantage and the light is working against the dark. The light are not in a good position as they do not work for themselves, but only against. There can be only one. This is an idea that permeates the film. The idea of two in constant battle is untenable even if the idea of one or the other is hard to envision. Could the world actually exist with the world of Light Others in proper charge? There is not enough true light to make that happen - even for those in the light there is corruption of the dark. They take what they can get and don't always wait for the hard lesson, but try to deal with the short term and use whatever means necessary to advance the ideals of the light - even if this means using the ideas and subterfuge of the dark. Indeed the dark is taking over even in the midst of the light. Not just Anton sees this, but he is a bit of a pure heart in the midst of the callous and the jaded. He is the light of the zealous - not for the name of the cause, but for the heart of the cause - he believes intrinsically what needs to be the guiding moral model - and he is in a position to do so better than others as he has seen the darkness of his soul. He knows his worst moments and has stared it in the face and knows he cannot go back to that. He cannot let himself live or he may be sucked into the temptation again. This is why he has laid low for all these years. He has been afraid to live. Now he is forced out and forced to deal with his demons and the wrongs of society at the same time and sees the hipocracy. He has been let out of the prison of his own making and sees the same sins around him, yet cannot understand how they exist as he could not let them exist in himself. He is the converted, the apostle Paul that has been bad and now understands what it really means to be good. He is the champion of this cause and like an embattled saint has to undergo the temptation to eat the bread the devil is offering. He chose it once and was cursed, so he recognizes the evil in his heart and is more able to keep it off even when others only see the sins he committed and not the change he has wrought inside himself.
Does the end of DW mean that there is an end to the dichotomy? no. Just running away from the decision?
*Fight for light - confrontation is key - passive existence will only bring darkness and death**
Is it pride that leads to Anton's downfall? He wanted to get his wife back, but was it pride that made him try magic? Was he more interested in not being seen as a cuckold then he was in not losing his wife? This is a bit different than in other Soviet films where it is the women that have to consider what to do when they have a cheating husband and there are not enough men to go around in a post war world. Rebro Adama, Oscennii Maraphon and Moskva Slezam ne Veryt. To have a man in this society is to be successful and to not have a man in to be without something important. However this is the opposite where a man is in the position of losing a woman and dealing with the consequences. What could have been the faults that Anton had that lead to his wife leaving him? Did he already have an alcohol problem or just one that began with the loss of his wife and the abortion of his wife's son? Was it pride that lead him to the place where he had nothing left to lose?
In the beginning of the film the audience is made to feel sorry for Anton. He loses his wife, he is told that she has a child in her belly that is not hers. He makes a bad decision and lives with it and then finds out that he is an Other and has to live with these events and work through them alone as he is in his apartment trying to find a vampire. There is not much heroic here and the pathos is greater for his lack of energy given to his job. He is not much to look at. Then after he is a part of killing the barber Andrei and trying to save a child from a vampire, and from it gaining a moral compass, that he takes on the role of hero and the audience is on his side. From this moment, he is the only real moral character that the audience has to follow and so we make him the hero of the film. When he realizes that Yegor is his son, the audience has greater sympathy for him as they realize that his poor choices in the beginning of the film have not all come to haunt him. He never gets his wife back and may not have, but certainly it is made clear that the witch's spell did not work. Then his decision not to have the abortion at the last minute is understood to have taken place. His decision to do so and to change his mind at the last minute are not his downfall. Indecisiveness is a part of his character - or at least the inability to properly see what is the best choice for him to make in any moment. He struggles to find the right way to go and often chooses the wrong path only to struggle physically through it and come out right. He is not much of a seer as he is said to be in the beginning or at several points in the film. He does not see what is the right choice and has to continually suffer the consequences only to find himself in the right in the end as a result of his sense of purpose and moral compass. The sympathy the audience feels for him is greater after they learn that Yegor is the son that he thought he never had. It is not just the idea that he thought he was aborting a child - someone elses - but that when he realizes that the child is his own - did he come to love Yegor even before he knew he was his own and not just the child of his wife's and another man? It seems that he did.
Oedipus's taking out of his own eyes is similar Anton slapping Zavulon. A physical response to a phychological ordeal. He doesn't have the ability to hold in the anger of 12 years or know how to curse himself without causing much damage - he only knows how to react to a situation and the reaction right now he seeks is physical carnage and Zavulon is the one that has helped to keep his son away. It could be argued that the reaction that Anton has means that he is not taking responsibility for his own guilt in the Yegor going to the dark side, that he only blames the DW for all the troubles he has, but they have in his defense been actively working against him in all of this and have the most to gain from his failure. He manages to solve all of the world's problems in one day, yet does not get to keep his son at the end. He has become a demi-god in a sense by becoming an Other, but cannot quite win against the gods when they seek out to stop him. He can only do so much.
Zavulon is not seen as a monster at the end of the film - after all of the sins of the NW are laid out against them and the birth father - Anton is shown to have been most guilty of all in trying to kill the son when he was unborn - although he had been working pretty hard to save the son since realizing that the boy was his and even before - Zavulon becomes the new father of the boy. He will show him perhaps the evil side of man, but it is a side of man that exists. He will show him the other side of being human. Zavulon will also guide him in the manner of being an Other. Perhaps he will even do a good job. It is unfortunate for the NW and for Anton, but when the cards are all laid out it doesn't show Zavulon to have been such a bad man and the NW as such good people after all. Zavulon doesn't try to make any promises to Yegor at the end and doesn't try to do something that he is not able or cannot do. He says he will take care of him and that those that have tried to harm him should stay out of the way. This is not a bad trait as a father. It certainly is better than a tyrant or a murderer/alcoholic. Anton losing his son may not seem just since he has recently worked so hard for the child, but there is not a pretty past and Yegor has been without a father for the better part of his 12 years. Why now does Anton deserve a shot at making it up to him. He saved him a couple times and risked his life, but was also complicit in the first attempt on Yegor's life by using him as human bait against the vampires. Give and take.
http://classics.mit.edu/Sophocles/oedipus.html
JOCASTA
An oracle
Once came to Laius (I will not say
'Twas from the Delphic god himself, but from
His ministers) declaring he was doomed
To perish by the hand of his own son,
A child that should be born to him by me.
Now Laius--so at least report affirmed--
Was murdered on a day by highwaymen,
No natives, at a spot where three roads meet.
As for the child, it was but three days old,
When Laius, its ankles pierced and pinned
Together, gave it to be cast away
By others on the trackless mountain side.
So then Apollo brought it not to pass
The child should be his father's murderer,
Or the dread terror find accomplishment,
And Laius be slain by his own son.
...
OEDIPUS
... this is the handiwork
Of some inhuman power, who could blame
His judgment? But, ye pure and awful gods,
Forbid, forbid that I should see that day!
http://www.bartleby.com/8/5/3.html
ŒDIP.
CREON
Does Anton ignore the truth the same way that Oedipus does. Oedipus hears of the child of Laius having his ankles bound, but ignores the fact that his own ankles are swollen, according to his name. Anton reads that he is known to be an alcoholic and a killer, but does not believe it of himself.
Anton and free will. In NW there are prophesies. The foretelling of the witch does not really factor into this as she simply lies to Anton. However, the prophesies of the coming of the great one that will signal the end of the truce and the definition of whether light or dark seems nigh. This is especially true as the coming of the virgin - Sveta - seems true too,
*however, she is not a virgin?* She sleeps with the don Juan character in the Russian film and maybe in the novel also. *
Are the prophesies in charge of Anton's life or is he in charge of is own. Did Oedipus have any choice in fulfilling the prophesy? It seems that he was not entirely in charge of his fate, though he is brash and quick to action instead of contemplation and this causes him some damage. He tries to flee his fate and leave Corinth, then flee Thebes after having left so much damage. Does he have a "Tragic Flaw" - it is hard to tell. Anton does not flee his fate. He tries to wrestle with it and fix it. He made a single bad choice and fate does seem to come back to him, but he does not let it go without a battle. He tries to fix the issue of Sveta and wants to do so without killing her and living out his supposed ability to kill. He tries and succeeds to do more with little. Unlike Oedipus, he does not shy away from situation in which he is called upon to show action, but also some forethought. He doesn't always choose right. In fact he could have done more in the gloom to arrest the barber - this is sort of his moment at the crossroads where Oedipus kills Laius - Anton kills Andre - and the killing of the this person also haunts him and is part of the doom that seems to follow Anton.
The crossroads in Oedipus is a place where there is choice - a place where consequences matter, but still a choice exists. It also shows the power of fate and the lack of true choice. Does this exist in NW? Anton is at a crossroads in several parts of the film. He makes the decision in the witch's apartment, but there is little crossroads here, just a choice to be made. He does so in the metro. He has a choice to stay focused on Yegor or to also show his interest in Sveta who he sees has a vortex over her head. He decides to try to help Sveta also and in doing so uses his flashlight. In the novel he uses up the power of the flashlight prematurely and then does not have this weapon for use when he needs it against Andrei the barber. I cannot remember what the film does for the flashlight. Even if he does still have use of the flashlight he doesn't have his mind focused on just Yegor and almost loses him. Infact he does lose him so that he could not keep him safe before the vampires almost got to him. Had he been more focused and intent to only help Yegor he may have not had to kill Andrei to get Yegor back. Anton's interest in helping out all of society or trying to do the right thing instead of only doing what he is ordered to do is a part of the main reason why he comes off as a modern Russian hero in this novel and film for this time. He is willing to risk more than what he is told to risk, but does it not for the orders or the boss above him, but for the person he wants to be and for the person around him. This is how he gains a sort of superhero/messianic role in the film.
**This is not entirely unlike the film/comic book Unbreakable with Bruce Willis**
Anton walks out of the metro car and runs into Sveta in order to get a better look at her or to imprint her in his mind. This is time wasted if he were only going after Yegor. The Metro shows the crossroads as a metaphore in Anton's life. He does not ride it again and uses the streets above the metro for the rest of the film. In his apartment Anton has a map of the metro on his wall and has figured out that the vampire murders are taking place in the form of a pentagram - a common satanic symbol and of the occult. Here it represents the evil of vampirism, in case there was a question as to whether vampires were going to be shown as good in the film. **This is like the film The First Power where the pentagram is used to determine where the next murder will be.
Imprisonment as a symbol in Oedipus cycle is Antigone walled up in her death prison. It shows Creon's affronts to the gods and his bad decisions by inverting the responsibilities of life and death and cruelty. Olga is imprisoned in the body of an Owl, but she is allowed to get out from time to time and ultimately is able to prove herself and can stay out when she helps in the vortex of Sveta. Her imprisonment is a punishment, but an unnatural one that shows the lifespan of an Other and the true love one can have for another that they would be willing to risk such a life for another. As she teams up with Anton she is there as a lesson to him not to do what he wants to do and to watch what he does. He is also set opposite her to show his freedom from this imprisonment. Do only women get imprisioned this way? Why is Sveta shown to be a victim of her curse and Yegor come off as a great other that will decide fate?
Fate
In Oedipus Jocasta sees what she wants to see and after she believes that the prophesy of Laius being killed by someone other than his son seems to her to have taken place that the idea of prophesies is outright false. There is no disavowel of prophesies or fate in NW. At no point does Anton or any of the other Others try to work actively against fate in such a way that they believe it is not true. The prophesy is laid down as it was written and all work accordingly to it and accepting it without a hint of disbelief. It is true that they have their hands full of real-world issues so delving into the problems of fulfilled prophesies is not very helpful or useful, but they don't confront this idea on any level except to accept the idea that their lives may be a part of the prophesy and that they can but try to solve the immediate problem and not look to the future. This is one of the issues that the NW has is that they have not done a very good job with coping with the world around them and continue to work with an outdated mindset. They do not look to the future and have not laid the plans to deal with the changing world. They see the DW acting against the truce around them - and in fact act against it themselves when it is convenient - but do not see how they must react and plan and not just react to the issues that come up. Anton is not very active in his own life. He does what he is told and follows orders, though he does it with his own sense of direction as a fuck-up.
Why do the characters adhere to the idea of fated prophesy? Is it because they desire order in their world? There is not a lot of order in this world, except for that of the future. Everyone knows that there will be order when the great Other comes and makes order. **Is this similar to the teleologic future predicted by Marx and supported by Lenin and the Communists that such a future is believed in without question? Is it in the mindset of Russians to believe that everything is terrible now, but if they hold on a bit longer that things will be ok? Rather the opposite, I should think. This is too opptimistic and not fatalistic for Russia where people more often believe that things are bad now and they cannot do anything about it and the future will be whatever it will be regardless of their ability or efforts to change it as their lives are not really in their own hands.
The dichotomy of the two opposing sides - light and dark - self and others is not capable of continuing in this world. Light can only hope that Darkness doesn't take over too far as it is much easier to be dark than light and there would be little if any light at all if there were not those willing to fight for light. This world is one of transition - it is a chronotope of change and uncertainty and carnivalesque liminality. The gloom is a great midground of this space and place in that it accepts dark and light equally and doesn't exist by either group's definitions. The rest of the world in which they live is on the edge of an abyss. Waiting for the apocalypse or the choice made for them by prophesy - which side will get the upper hand? Soon the great judgement is upon them and the waiting will be over. There is only to wait and see what will happen. The dark side is working for them to take the advantage and the light is working against the dark. The light are not in a good position as they do not work for themselves, but only against. There can be only one. This is an idea that permeates the film. The idea of two in constant battle is untenable even if the idea of one or the other is hard to envision. Could the world actually exist with the world of Light Others in proper charge? There is not enough true light to make that happen - even for those in the light there is corruption of the dark. They take what they can get and don't always wait for the hard lesson, but try to deal with the short term and use whatever means necessary to advance the ideals of the light - even if this means using the ideas and subterfuge of the dark. Indeed the dark is taking over even in the midst of the light. Not just Anton sees this, but he is a bit of a pure heart in the midst of the callous and the jaded. He is the light of the zealous - not for the name of the cause, but for the heart of the cause - he believes intrinsically what needs to be the guiding moral model - and he is in a position to do so better than others as he has seen the darkness of his soul. He knows his worst moments and has stared it in the face and knows he cannot go back to that. He cannot let himself live or he may be sucked into the temptation again. This is why he has laid low for all these years. He has been afraid to live. Now he is forced out and forced to deal with his demons and the wrongs of society at the same time and sees the hipocracy. He has been let out of the prison of his own making and sees the same sins around him, yet cannot understand how they exist as he could not let them exist in himself. He is the converted, the apostle Paul that has been bad and now understands what it really means to be good. He is the champion of this cause and like an embattled saint has to undergo the temptation to eat the bread the devil is offering. He chose it once and was cursed, so he recognizes the evil in his heart and is more able to keep it off even when others only see the sins he committed and not the change he has wrought inside himself.
Does the end of DW mean that there is an end to the dichotomy? no. Just running away from the decision?
*Fight for light - confrontation is key - passive existence will only bring darkness and death**
Is it pride that leads to Anton's downfall? He wanted to get his wife back, but was it pride that made him try magic? Was he more interested in not being seen as a cuckold then he was in not losing his wife? This is a bit different than in other Soviet films where it is the women that have to consider what to do when they have a cheating husband and there are not enough men to go around in a post war world. Rebro Adama, Oscennii Maraphon and Moskva Slezam ne Veryt. To have a man in this society is to be successful and to not have a man in to be without something important. However this is the opposite where a man is in the position of losing a woman and dealing with the consequences. What could have been the faults that Anton had that lead to his wife leaving him? Did he already have an alcohol problem or just one that began with the loss of his wife and the abortion of his wife's son? Was it pride that lead him to the place where he had nothing left to lose?
In the beginning of the film the audience is made to feel sorry for Anton. He loses his wife, he is told that she has a child in her belly that is not hers. He makes a bad decision and lives with it and then finds out that he is an Other and has to live with these events and work through them alone as he is in his apartment trying to find a vampire. There is not much heroic here and the pathos is greater for his lack of energy given to his job. He is not much to look at. Then after he is a part of killing the barber Andrei and trying to save a child from a vampire, and from it gaining a moral compass, that he takes on the role of hero and the audience is on his side. From this moment, he is the only real moral character that the audience has to follow and so we make him the hero of the film. When he realizes that Yegor is his son, the audience has greater sympathy for him as they realize that his poor choices in the beginning of the film have not all come to haunt him. He never gets his wife back and may not have, but certainly it is made clear that the witch's spell did not work. Then his decision not to have the abortion at the last minute is understood to have taken place. His decision to do so and to change his mind at the last minute are not his downfall. Indecisiveness is a part of his character - or at least the inability to properly see what is the best choice for him to make in any moment. He struggles to find the right way to go and often chooses the wrong path only to struggle physically through it and come out right. He is not much of a seer as he is said to be in the beginning or at several points in the film. He does not see what is the right choice and has to continually suffer the consequences only to find himself in the right in the end as a result of his sense of purpose and moral compass. The sympathy the audience feels for him is greater after they learn that Yegor is the son that he thought he never had. It is not just the idea that he thought he was aborting a child - someone elses - but that when he realizes that the child is his own - did he come to love Yegor even before he knew he was his own and not just the child of his wife's and another man? It seems that he did.
Oedipus's taking out of his own eyes is similar Anton slapping Zavulon. A physical response to a phychological ordeal. He doesn't have the ability to hold in the anger of 12 years or know how to curse himself without causing much damage - he only knows how to react to a situation and the reaction right now he seeks is physical carnage and Zavulon is the one that has helped to keep his son away. It could be argued that the reaction that Anton has means that he is not taking responsibility for his own guilt in the Yegor going to the dark side, that he only blames the DW for all the troubles he has, but they have in his defense been actively working against him in all of this and have the most to gain from his failure. He manages to solve all of the world's problems in one day, yet does not get to keep his son at the end. He has become a demi-god in a sense by becoming an Other, but cannot quite win against the gods when they seek out to stop him. He can only do so much.
Zavulon is not seen as a monster at the end of the film - after all of the sins of the NW are laid out against them and the birth father - Anton is shown to have been most guilty of all in trying to kill the son when he was unborn - although he had been working pretty hard to save the son since realizing that the boy was his and even before - Zavulon becomes the new father of the boy. He will show him perhaps the evil side of man, but it is a side of man that exists. He will show him the other side of being human. Zavulon will also guide him in the manner of being an Other. Perhaps he will even do a good job. It is unfortunate for the NW and for Anton, but when the cards are all laid out it doesn't show Zavulon to have been such a bad man and the NW as such good people after all. Zavulon doesn't try to make any promises to Yegor at the end and doesn't try to do something that he is not able or cannot do. He says he will take care of him and that those that have tried to harm him should stay out of the way. This is not a bad trait as a father. It certainly is better than a tyrant or a murderer/alcoholic. Anton losing his son may not seem just since he has recently worked so hard for the child, but there is not a pretty past and Yegor has been without a father for the better part of his 12 years. Why now does Anton deserve a shot at making it up to him. He saved him a couple times and risked his life, but was also complicit in the first attempt on Yegor's life by using him as human bait against the vampires. Give and take.
http://classics.mit.edu/Sophocles/oedipus.html
JOCASTA
An oracle
Once came to Laius (I will not say
'Twas from the Delphic god himself, but from
His ministers) declaring he was doomed
To perish by the hand of his own son,
A child that should be born to him by me.
Now Laius--so at least report affirmed--
Was murdered on a day by highwaymen,
No natives, at a spot where three roads meet.
As for the child, it was but three days old,
When Laius, its ankles pierced and pinned
Together, gave it to be cast away
By others on the trackless mountain side.
So then Apollo brought it not to pass
The child should be his father's murderer,
Or the dread terror find accomplishment,
And Laius be slain by his own son.
...
OEDIPUS
... this is the handiwork
Of some inhuman power, who could blame
His judgment? But, ye pure and awful gods,
Forbid, forbid that I should see that day!
http://www.bartleby.com/8/5/3.html
ŒDIP.
| Apollo! oh, my friends, the God, Apollo! | ||||
| Who worketh all my woes—yes, all my woes. | ||||
| No human hand but mine has done this deed. | ||||
| What need for me to see, |
CREON
| To have thy way in all things all thy life. | |
| Thou hadst it once, yet went it ill with thee. | 1576 |
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