Russians on the screen, Russians in print

Helen Mir­ren and Chris­toph­er Plum­mer as the Tol­stoy couple

I just fin­ished watch­ing The Last Sta­tion, the Tol­stoy movie from the sum­mer of 2010, and won­der­ing about screen Rus­si­ans (old style) as opposed to screen Rus­si­ans (new style, i.e. Orlov). In the inter­view from the DVD’s spe­cials, the dir­ect­or goes on about how he tried to make the movie feel Rus­si­an though it was shot in Ger­many (with bits actu­ally in Halle and land­scapes from Sax­ony-Anhalt, Thuringia and Branden­burg), while at the same time try­ing not to make it too Rus­si­an. He claims he was aim­ing for a more uni­ver­sal implic­a­tion — rela­tion­ships and love. IMHO that has suc­ceeded beau­ti­fully; I have rarely seen a more touch­ing and thought­ful rendi­tion of love in all its aspects, and one that keeps me com­ing back, and think­ing. It is a very impress­ing movie and the act­ing is, well, simply stunning.
And yet there it is, behind the dir­ect­or’s words: If you want a ser­i­ous, widely applic­able mes­sage, you need to move away from see­ing merely two Rus­si­an couples, a spin­ster, and a bach­el­or friend. That would be too simple(s)? Or too not­ably con­struc­ted and didactic?
Whatever it is, I found myself think­ing of my daugh­ter­’s fore­most objec­tion to Pnin by Nabokov: “The nar­rat­or seems all funny at first, but he’s just mer­ci­less with Pnin. He only makes fun of his main char­ac­ter. And Pnin ends up really too pathet­ic for words. It’s cruel.” That stopped me short in my pre­vi­ous defence of Nabokov’s sar­casm, then, because I could not help remem­ber­ing that I once worded my main objec­tion against Thack­er­ay’s Van­ity Fair in very sim­il­ar terms when I was a stu­dent. And that when I did so, all those many years ago, my biggest oth­er example, my example for a truly humane nar­rat­or was Chek­hov’s short story voice, which, no mat­ter how clin­ic­ally dis­sect­ive, always remains aware of a char­ac­ter­’s dig­nity. Even (or par­tic­u­larly!) if oth­er char­ac­ters fail miser­ably in accord­ing one anoth­er this respect. The most evid­ent example of such fail­ure would be the med­ic­al stu­dent in “Any­uta” whose cal­lous indif­fer­ence and assumed superi­or­ity to his girl speak volumes in con­trast to her prim­it­ive devo­tion and admir­a­tion. Chek­hov is not one to shrink from depict­ing the det­ri­ment­al con­sequences of a love based exclus­ively (stub­bornly) on self-deni­al (think “The Darling” here, anoth­er one of his stu­pidly self-effa­cing female char­ac­ters), yet the respons­ib­il­ity for the abuse this devo­tion meets with again and again rests with those char­ac­ters who fail to accord these women a share in basic human dig­nity and respect. Those who selfishly use this devo­tion to their own ends and dis(re)gard the women who provide it.
Noth­ing could pos­sibly be more Rus­si­an than the Darling of Check­hov’s short story, yet there is no need to lessen that fea­ture to make her impact uni­ver­sal, and make her ignor­ance, devo­tion, and cheer­ful cling­ing-vine-self cringingly pain­ful to any read­er. Yet as a human fig­ure to her nar­rat­or, Darling remains unscathed. (In fact, some­times I can­not help think­ing there is a quiet admir­a­tion for her sheer per­sist­ence in Check­hov’s nar­rat­or. Noth­ing, ulti­mately, gets this woman down: water off a goose’s back. Fair enough, she can be seen as vacu­ous but the sheer sur­viv­al she accom­plishes is admir­able. And she can love, so deeply.)
& See­ing as I brought in Thack­er­ay as an example: This is not so with Thack­er­ay, whose nar­rat­or in Van­ity Fair sees only twis­ted aber­ra­tions and cor­rup­tion. Thack­er­ay’s cling­ing-vine-char­ac­ter, that sac­char­ine Amelia, really has it com­ing a long way. She only gets in George Osborne what she deserves for her wil­fully naive blind­ness and stu­pid­ity, and boy, does she cop it.
Fair enough, there is social satire and social drama. Pnin is clearly of the Thack­er­ay vari­ety, mer­ci­less and, well, cruel, while the movie The Last Sta­tion takes a very Check­hovi­an stance; indeed the dir­ect­or men­tions in the inter­view he read the four most import­ant plays by Check­hov just before cre­at­ing the final screenplay.
Which still leaves the ques­tion unanswered why a con­tem­por­ary rendi­tion of Rus­si­an char­ac­ters’ exper­i­ences and feel­ings at their most basic (love & death) would not be uni­ver­sally applic­able, why they should need to be less Rus­si­an to be more access­ible… “The Coast of Uto­pia” by Tom Stop­pard would be anoth­er con­tem­por­ary example, BTW, where Rus­si­ans whenev­er they move close to the ste­reo­type (party­ing on too much Vodka in Lon­don, buy­ing morn­ing coats in Par­is, moon­ing around the Medi­ter­ranean) become ridicu­lous. Any suggestions?
Is this a long-term con­sequence of the Cold War? Has the West­ern view­er or read­er become so detached that Rus­si­an char­ac­ters’ idio­syn­crasies now eas­ily provide com­ic fare — yes, laughter as ban­ish­ing fear of the Oth­er — but no longer have iden­ti­fic­at­ory potential?
More poin­tedly, per­haps: Does Orlov then need his whiskers and fur to be appeal­ing and not merely pathet­ic? And if so, what nos­tal­gic appeal is added by his great-grand­father­’s nine­teenth-cen­tury uni­form and medals? Orlov, Count Tol­stoy, the revolu­tion­ary fools in “The Coast of Uto­pia”, even Pnin, all have a feud­al and mil­it­ar­ist­ic back­ground that is pecu­li­arly tsar­ist. Here’s anoth­er thought…

Por­trait of Aleksandr Orlov’s Great-grand-father