Shakespeare To Siberia: A Transatlantic Odyssey





By Gerald Schmitz





Schmitz is adviser to the Canada-Europe Parliamentary Association.
  The long Day of the first round Alliance Party leadership vote found me, not celebrating Quebec's fete national (hello there, Gaspé), but taking in six hours of glorious Shakespeare far across the Atlantic. Appropriately, though, the two plays I saw, Coriolanus and Richard II, are each profoundly chilling meditations on power which resonate still.

And what a thrilling theatrical experience it was! Staged by the cutting-edge Almeida Company in the ruined shell of the former Gainsborough Studios in London's Shoreditch borough (site of Shakespeare's first theatre) -- where Alfred Hitchcock made some of his most famous movies into the 1940s -- the setting provided a unique, though sadly temporary, atmosphere for productions of unparalleled quality. The structure is to be demolished after this exceptional run to make way for, what else, but trendy high-rent lofts and studios.

How 21st century, I thought. But the plays themselves transported one back, through tales of imperial Roman and medieval kingly folly, into the deepest recesses of the disordered human condition. The harder they fall indeed. Both title roles were played by the incomparable Ralph Fiennes (Schindler's List, The English Patient), with admirable support from Linus Roache (Priest, Wings of the Dove), the other male lead in a superlative cast.

Fiennes was Europe's and my choice for best actor in last year's best film, Sunshine, which was also eligible to scoop up the Genie top prize on the strength of Hungarian Canadian producer Robert Lantos' financial stake.

By chance, on a flight back from London a week later, I was able to catch Fiennes' remarkable performance as Eugene Onegin in Onegin, a luminous, achingly poignant 19th century Russian period drama of tragic lost love, wonderfully directed by his sister Martha Fiennes, and scored by his brother Magnus. And, of course, another younger brother, Joseph, portrayed the Bard himself in the Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love. This kind of virtuosity really must be genetic!

Coincidentally, too, the same June 24 that I was marvelling at Ralph's acting genius in the Shoreditch Shakespeares, Sunshine was receiving a special screening at the magnificently refurbished Odyssey theatre in my next stop of Strasbourg, France. This was as part of a first week-long Heritage of European Cinemas festival showcasing 10 features supported by the Council of Europe's "Eurimages" cultural fund.

Identified as a Hungarian/UK co-production, the Canadian content of Sunshine was an absent partner here, so no Genie for that! But the official program did get it right in recalling German wunderkind director Wim Wenders' declaration: "Europe needs cinema more than the cinema needs Europe." Substitute Canada, and it fits even more aptly, I say.

Taking a break from Council of Europe Assembly sessions in Strasbourg, I was fortunate to see the latest epic from Russia's leading director, Nikita Mikhalkov. To say that The Barber of Siberia is an extravagant big-budget tragi-comic romantic indulgence, which critics mostly hate and audience mostly love -- at least judging from the passionate comments posted on the Internet Movie Database -- is only to hint at what is in store.

The improbable plot involves a white-haired mad American inventor (Richard Harris) of a tree-cutting machine (the "barber" of the title) and a gold-digging raven-haired American femme fatale (Julia Ormond) who eventually becomes his wife. But not before she becomes the lover, and the downfall, of a smitten young Tsarist Russian army cadet, named Tolstoy no less, and played by the superb Oleg Menshikov (who also starred in Regis Warnier's Oscar-nominated drama of Stalinist betrayal Est-Ouest). Banished to Siberian hard labour, Tolstoy never learns of his Mozart-loving American son. Many flashbacks later, however, mother reveals all to her soldier boy in training.

Mikhalkov, who earned such international respect for his own anti-Stalinist masterpiece, Burnt by the Sun, has been accused of since going "Hollywood." And his technique and tone here are wildly uneven. The Siberian landscapes are stunning but fleeting. Most of the action takes place in the decadent glow of the Kremlin, and seems to revel in Mother Russia's imperial heritage (with Mikhalkov himself playing Tsar Alexander III), as much as it also exposes its foolish and fatal flaws. Surely no more offensive, though, than the sanguinary American bombast of Mel Gibson's The Patriot.

Russians' desire to recover pride in a great-power past is almost palpable. And understandable. But not without concerns about what this may portend in the Putin era. Just ask the Chechens! I watched this spectacle on the eve of another wrenching debate in the 41-nation Council of Europe Assembly on that scorched-earth conflict. While the parliamentarians have been the only international body to invoke sanctions so far against the Russian military's gross human rights violations, the council's governments have stuck to the path of appeasement.

The other bad news is that, although both The Barber of Siberia and Onegin were completed in 1998, they have been virtually unreleased in North America. It shouldn't take transatlantic odysseys to be able to see them. A global movie marketplace? In this distribution game, corporate showbusiness still speaks louder than multicultural expression.

 

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