Nikita Mikhalkov Research Articles

The Cambridge Companion to Tolstoy by Donna Tussing s> Orwin (review)

REVIEWS 725 melodrama could be used to polemicize with and ultimately undermine Stalinistvalues by comparing two family melodramas from differentperiods of Soviet history, AleksandrStolper'swartime melodrama WaitforMe (I943) and Mikhail Kalatozov's TheCranes areFlying(1957), one of the key cultural events of Krushchev's Thaw. Finally, Joan Neuberger's essay brings the reader closer to the present and argues for a reassessment of Nikita Mikhalkov's early film SlaveofLove(I976). Neuberger attempts to persuade her reader that farfrom being, in the commonly held view, 'a light-weightbit of "retro-chic" or romantic nostalgia', Mikhalkov's film is in fact 'deeply ambivalent' (p. 262) for, she concludes, while it 'valorizes and defends the right to a private life, SlaveofLovedoes not let us forget that private fulfilment has its costs and that those costs are moral and political' (p. 28 I). Helena Goscilo's essay, which closes the collection, returns the reader briefly to the pre-Revolutionary period as she considers the melodramatic qualitiesof the funeralof Vera Kholodnaia (i 893-1919), undisputed 'Queen' of the pre-Revolutionary screen, before exploring in the same way Stalin's funeral and recent post-Soviet funerals held in honour of prominent 'New Russians',among others. All the essays on cinema are illustratedby black and white stills from the films they discuss. It is disappointing, however, that the quality of most is so poor. Not only are they reproduced in an extremely small format, but also many are blurred and out of focus. These are relatively minor quibbles, however, and are not intended to detractfrom the overallmeritsof this book. Readers interested in melodrama in general, as well as those whose area of interest is the art, culture, politics, society or history of Russia in particular will findmuch of value and interestin this challenging and thought-provoking collection of essays. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies RACHEL MORLEY University College London Tussing Orwin, Donna (ed.) 77ieCambridge Companion to Tolstoy. Cambridge Companions to Literature. Cambridge University Press, 2002. XV + 271 PP. Chronology. Tables. Notes. Further Reading. Indexes. ?I4.95: $22.00 (paperback). IN many Britishuniversities,studentsof Russian literatureare probablymore likelyto studyTat'ianaTolstaia,who is modern, female and short,ratherthan Lev Tolstoi who is none of the above. It isperhapsa signof the times that only two of the contributors,Richard Freebornand GarethJones, are British.The remaining nine contributors, as well as the editor, work in North America, where the study of the great Russian classicsis evidently thriving. This is the latest in the Cambridge series of Companions, which now runs to some eighty volumes. Two of these have dealt with Russian culture and this is the thirdto dealwith an individualRussianauthor,followingvolumes on Chekhov(edited by Vera Gottlieb and Paul Allain) and Dostoevskii (edited by W. J. Leatherbarrow). 726 SEER, 8i, 4, 2003 Any reader believing that the word 'companion' implies 'reference book' may be somewhat disappointed. This book bears scant resemblance to such invaluable aids to scholarship as V. A. Manuilov's incomparable Lermontov Encyclopaedia (Lermontovskia entsiklopediia) (Moscow, I98 I) and the variousLetopsi zhitni i tvorchestva which were published in both Soviet and post-Soviet times. Notable among these was N. N. Gusev'stwo-volume chronicle of Tolstoi'slife and works (Moscow, I958, I960), due acknowledgement to which is paid by Donna Tussing Orwin at the end of her own chronology (compiled with the help of Megan Swift) of Tolstoi's life and work, which opens this book. It begins, rather shakily,with the name of Tolstoi's mother being given in the first entry as 'Marya Nikolaevich Volkonskaia',but recovers to become the most complete chronology of Tolstoi's life and work yet to be published in English. Otherwise this book, like the other books in the series, is a 'companion' only in the sense that any work of secondary literature accompanies readers in their study of an author's primary texts. It is, the chronology apart, a collection of essays, albeit, according to the blurb, 'specially commissioned' essays. Leaving aside the question as to what other sortof essaysthere might be, it must be said that these are, without exception, very good essays. Indeed, the first three, written by Gary Saul Morson, BarbaraLonnqvist and Hugh McClean and dealing with WarandPeace, Anna...

Little Vera by Frank Beardow (review)

MLRy 99.3, 2004 853 At its core the book is very well argued and researched, with a wealth of secon? dary material from both Russian-language and Western sources, including Russian archives. The 'Analysis' is particularly well structured and presented, with each of the fivemajor characters and all the main narrative events explored in detail, and with important insights into the role of sound in the film. The book follows the established scheme of the KINOfiles series, though not as closely as other texts: the synopsis is brief,and, although the analysis is well sustained and thorough, this reviewer felt that there was rather too much given over to 'Con? text', 'Reception', and in particular the extended and not always relevant Aftermath'; I would have much preferred to read more on the film's impact on the subsequent careers of its two stars, Alexei Batalov and especially Tat'iana Samoilova. These are minor gripes, however. Woll has done fulljustice to a highly significant and influential film,and this erudite, witty,and accessibly written study will continue to be of great assistance to students of Soviet filmfor many years. As with other books in this series, The Cranes are Flying is well illustrated through? out with stills from the film. University of Bath David Gillespie Little Vera. By Frank Beardow. (KINOfiles Film Companion 8) London and New York: Tauris. 2003. x + ii4pp. ?12.99. ISBN 1-86064-611-5. This slender volume continues the KINOfiles series with a careful exploration of Vasilii Pichul's uncompromising melodrama, and as with earlier 'film companions', it positions the film in a number of contexts. A detailed plot synopsis and produc? tion credits are followed by investigations of historical and political settings, central themes, the tenets of Soviet 'youth films', and a closing look at Little Vera's reception both in the USSR and overseas. It is this twofold response that makes the film and Beardow's study attractive; the author has done an admirable job of synthesizing rejoinders from an uneasy Soviet community and equally uncomfortable Western audiences. These reactions even include intermittent industry gossip that helps to re? veal tensions within Russian film-making during major socio-political shifts of direct consequence to a state-run entertainment industry. Given the evolution of Russian film-making since the release of MalenTzaia Vera, it is interesting to note by way of example that Nikita Mikhalkov purportedly worked hard to ensure the feature did not represent the Soviet Union at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival?by refusing Pichul's invitation to participate. This volume contains a protracted plot synopsis (43 pages), which might appear a tad excessive. None the less, given that the Companion is written for a student audi? ence with no prior knowledge of Slavic cinema or society, the summary certainly calls attention to myriad bytovyedetails in late Soviet provincial life that in turn poignantly accentuate dreams of fleeing a very claustrophobic locale: bedroom posters of Viktor Tsoi or Vladimir Pozner's famous Telemost broadcasts playing innocuously in the background of a scene?unreachable people who would always remain so. Beardow also adds much to explain the social stigma associated at this time with many of the film's ills, such as sexual profligacy,alcoholism, and domestic violence. This violence is a result of the very spaces that Telemost was supposed to offeres? cape from?cramped Soviet apartments?and the most noteworthy facet of this book is its enquiry into realms that dictate the activities within them: spaces of officialdom (such as schools and factories), of 'massed' relaxation (parks), Vera's world (bedrooms and balconies), or her own search for autonomy (in cafes and on wretched beaches). The institutions inhabiting the larger spaces?like the militia or sullen members of 854 Reviews a contemptuous health system?are admirably demarcated. The author also offers abundant statistics concerning the city of Zhdanov; the pretensions of Little Vera towards documentary verisimilitude necessitate this explanatory setting of authentic facts and figures for those pretensions to be assessed, for claustrophobia to be explained and Pichul's nasty inversion of socialist realist 'typicality' to be justified. Beardow's brief overview of Soviet youth filmsis extremely useful; although short, ithas...

Burnt by the Sun by Birgit s> Beumers (review)

REVIEWS 337 centuries, and not only Russian: Holbein's I52I painting TheBodyoftheDead Christ intheTomb shows the original inspirationbehind Ivan's troublesome (to Stalin'shenchmen) beard, and a particularlypertinentpoint is made on p. 42 on the relevance of Botticelli's I490 paintingLamentation over theDeadChrist with theSaints _Jerome, PaulandPeter to Ivan's'death'scene in PartOne. Throughout, Tsivian makesexcellent use of stillsto show Eizenshtein'smasteryof light and shadow, foregroundand backgrounddetail, and facial close-ups. He does not shy, either, from the abundant sexual and homoerotic motifs in Eizenshtein's film, and his reading of the role and persona of Maliuta Skuratov, and the section on 'BisexualImagery',are especiallyrewarding. Richard Taylor's book does not indulge quite so much in empirical interpretation, and sets its store out early with the sheer weight of factual information,dealingwith Evreinov's I920 outdoor spectacle TheStorming ofthe WVinter Palace, an inspirationfor Eizenshtein'sfilm.The authorsparesno detail in his account of the filming, editing and reception of the film, for which students of this film will be extremely appreciative. Indeed, of particular interest for film students is Taylor's close attention to Eizenshtein's visual metaphors, reproduced photographically and subjected to rigorous explication. These studies of Ivanthe Terrible and October will undoubtedly be on the booklists of most student film courses, and should also be read by all those with an interestin twentieth centuryRussianculture. University ofBath DAVID GILLESPIE Beumers, Birgit.BurntbytheSun.KINOfiles Film Companion, 3. I. B. Tauris, London, 2000. Xii +I 34 pp. Illustrations.Tables. Figures.Notes. Further Reading. fI2.99 (paperback). BURNT BY THE SUN is one of the first wave of publications in the warmly anticipated I. B. Tauris KINOfiles series devoted to key works of Russian cinema. The choice of Nikita Mikhalkov'sfilm (the Russian title is Utomlennye solntsem) as part of this series is an enterprising,albeit perhaps controversial, one. While no one would deny his importance as an actor and director over the lastthirtyyears, thereare respectedcriticsin Russiawho are stillhostile to his work, who criticize him for lack of artistic integrity, and who tend to dismiss his recent films as opportunistic and commercial vehicles intended mainly for easily impressed and gullible foreign audiences. It is symptomatic of this enduring hostility that, despite its garnering several international awards(thePalme d'Or in Cannes and an Oscar forBestForeignFilm),praise for the film in Russia has not been unequivocal. On the other side of the criticalbarricadeare those who maintain that, whateverthe uneven qualityof his work generally, Mikhalkovis an interestingand provocative directorwho has set himself the unenviable task of making intelligent and commercially successful films during difficult times for the film industry as a whole. According to such a view, Utomlennye solntsemrepays study both as a quintessentially Mikhalkov product and as a thought-provoking polemic directedtowardstheperestroika-period deconstructionsof the I930s. 338 SEER, 8i, 2, 2003 Dr Beumers'svolume in generalfollowsthepatternestablishedby the other monographsin the series:an introductorychapter(inwhich shecontextualizes Mikhalkov's film in terms of the Russian cinema of the I99os); a chapter consistingof aplot synopsis;a chapterwhich analysesvariousthematicstrands in the film (its treatment of historical background, the relationshipsbetween the characters, the use of certain visual motifs, and the use of music); and a chapter which assesses the film in the light of perestroika and post-perestroika treatments of the Stalin period (Tengiz Abuladze's Pokaianie, I984, released I985, Aleksei German's Moi drugIvanLapshin,I979-83, released I985, Ivan Dykhovichnyi's Prorva,I992, and Sergei Livnev's Serpi molot,I993). She deviatesfrom thispatternin an extensive 'The Film in Frames'section, which supplies a detailed breakdown of the film's individual sequences and offers brief commentaries on key moments; and in the final section where, in the place of the usual discussion or paraphrasing of contemporary critical responses,she opts for translatedexcerptswith briefintroductions. A majordisappointmentwith thisvolume is its lackof intellectualambition and seeming reluctance to engage with Mikhalkov as an auteur.Part of the problem stems from Beumers's confusion as to the meaning of the term herself. On page seven, for example, she confuses avtorskoe kino(the Russian equivalent of cinema d'auteur) with 'art-house'or 'intellectualcinema', and thus setsup a falseopposition one certainlynot entertainedby the Frenchcritics who first coined the expression in Cahiers du cinema between...

The Battleship Potemkin: The Film Companion by Richard Taylor, and: The Man with the Movie Camera by Graham Roberts, and: Burnt by the Sun by Birgit Beumers (review)

260 Reviews The Battleship Potemkin: The Film Companion. By Richard Taylor. (KINOfiles Film Companion i) London and New York: Tauris. 2000. xiv + 130 pp. ?12.99. ISBN 1-86064-393-0. The Man with theMovie Camera. By Graham Roberts. (KINOfiles Film Compan? ion 2) London and New York: Tauris. 2000. xvi+io8pp. ?12.99. ISBN 186064 -394-9. Burnt by the Sun. By Birgit Beumers. (KINOfiles Film Companion 3) London and New York: Tauris. 2001. ?12.99. ISBN 1-86064-396-5. It seems fairto say that the beleaguered discipline of Russian Studies has in the 1990s been relieved and enhanced by the rise in Russian Film Studies courses in many universities, and I. B. Tauris can be congratulated for providing accessible (and relatively cheap!) guides to some of the most important films of the Soviet and the post-Soviet period. These three companions are excellent introductions to these major films, and should go a long way towards establishing Russian Film Studies as a core humanities discipline within at least the English-speakinghigher-educational world. These three books display a methodological consistency in providing a detailed analysis of the plot and production background of each film, discussion of the major themes and motifs, as well as an account of their significance and/or reception. Each author is careful to locate the director within the relevant cultural and historical contexts, and to analyse these films not only as socio-historical documents, but also as artistic texts. But they offer other insights, too. For instance, Graham Roberts provides much detail on the innovative techniques employed by Dziga Vertov, and also demonstrates how Vertov's 1929 film 'can be viewed as a manifesto for Stalin's policies of the 1930s: crush resistance in the countryside, urbanize, industrialize and purge opposition' (p. 63). Indeed, Roberts's book offers a tantalizing glimpse into the psychology of a gifted and committed artist who desperately wanted to become a Stalinist, but was not allowed to by the very man he wished to worship. Richard Taylor's book has the expected hallmarks of accomplished scholarship and close attention to detail. Volumes have been written about The Battleship Potemkin (1926), Eisenstein's film about the failed 1905 revolution, and one could feel entitled to ask ifthere is anything left to discover within this magnificent and hugely influential film. Most emphatically, replies Taylor. Indeed, I doubt if any other Eisenstein scholar has given such a thorough interpretation of the significance of the swan as represented on the buckle of the young mother who is shot on the Odessa Steppes, as Taylor traces its usage back to Shakespeare and Greek mythology. The book excels in explaining to an undergraduate readership Eisenstein's concepts of 'typage' and 'montage', and in analysing the director's cinematic style and devices, whereby 'Eisenstein was able to turn real defeat into reel victory' (p. 57). Taylor's book, as detailed and thorough as it is, retains sufncient humility to remind us that, like all great works of art, The Battleship Potemkin contains much that still needs to be investigated : such as, for instance, camera movement and the use of light and dark, the gender relations, and the sexual connotations of some of the imagery. Nikita Mikhalkov's 1994 film Burnt by The Sun is perhaps the most celebrated Russian film of the post-Soviet period, largely because it was awarded a prize at Cannes in 1994 and the Oscar forbest foreign-language film in 1995. Birgit Beumers places it within the context of other contemporary films about Stalinism, and within Mikhalkov's own ceuvre, most tellingly his 1977 filmAn UnfinishedPiece for Mechanical Piano. Beumers provides a thorough examination of the personal histories and interrelationships of the three central characters Kotov, Marusia, and Mitia, as well as the other main players. The real strength ofthe analysis, though, is in its dissection of the film's themes and stylistic motifs, such as the use of diegetic music, masks and mirrors, and, ultimately, the inversion of the fairy tale. A significant plus is the MLRy 98.1,2003 261 inclusion of much ofthe critical reception ofthe film on its release. Particularly delicious is Beumers's identification of negative reviews...

National Identity, Cultural Authority, and the Post-Soviet Blockbuster: Nikita Mikhalkov and Aleksei Balabanov

In this article, Susan Larsen argues that the plot lines, aesthetic choices and marketing strategies of the four most commercially successful Russian films of the last decade—Nikita Mikhalkov’sBurnt by the SunandBarber of Siberiaand Aleksei Balabanov’sBrotherandBrother-2—are shaped by anxieties about Russian national identity and cultural authority that these films articulate in gendered terms as threats to paternal bonds and fraternal communities. Aiming both to emulate and to displace the Hollywood films that dominate the Russian film market, Mikhalkov and Balabanov exploit the conventions of the historical melodrama and the crime thriller to construct an explicitly Russian and emphatically masculine heroism in stories of charismatic, vanished fathers and dangerous, but irresistible brothers who defy the moral decay, crass materialism, economic imperialism and cultural solipsism that all four films associate with the west and, in particular, the United States.

Moscow 2002

MOSCOW INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2002 Some highly plausible reasons were given by the organizers of the 24th Moscow International Film Festival (21-30 June 2002) for scaling down the budget to approximately half of last year's 3 million rubles (circa $1 million as fluctuating exchange rates go). According to one insider, the budget remained the same as before, but some outstanding debts from previous years had not yet been paid off. Also, since a blowout festival is planned for the 25th anniversary in 2003, the 24th outing was stylized as a modest showcase of better things to come. Nikita Mikhalkov, MIFF's president, opened and closed the festival in Gorky Park, on the very spot where he has regularly expressed hopes to erect a festival headquarters of appropriate representative proportions in the near future. Hollywood VIPs -- Bob Rafelson, Harvey Keitel, Holly Hunter, among others -- were invited to breakfast with...

The Making of the Stalin‐Era Dacha

As postcommunist Russia began to inventory the perquisites of the Soviet elite, the dacha emerged as one of the main accessories of the privileged class. There was no more high-profile commentary on this subject than Nikita Mikhalkov’s Oscar-winning Burnt by the Sun (1994). In its mise-en-scene this film is a Chekhovian ensemble piece: a family assembles at its country house, but soon the air is thick with tension as long-standing animosities and disagreements are discharged into the atmosphere. Conflicts—along social, generational, and emotional fault lines—threaten vaguely, but persistently, to erupt into acrimonious skandal. But this is no cherry orchard. Rather, it is a dacha owned by a family from the prerevolutionary Moscow intelligentsia—the older generation remembers receiving here such illustrious guests as Shaliapin and Rakhmaninov—that has now been incorporated into a settlement for artists, writers, performers, and musicians (the acronym, KhLAM, spells a Russian word meaning “junk”). The daughter of the family, Marusia, has married an Old Bolshevik and civil war hero, Kotov, a rough-hewn national celebrity. This domestic milieu provides the setting for the entrance of the other main character, Mitia, a former sweetheart of Marusia, who, after compromising himself by siding with the Whites, was lured into becoming a Bolshevik agent. Now, in 1936, he is working for the NKVD and, as is revealed in the denouement, has been given the task of arresting Kotov, who is to fall victim to the next wave of the Terror. The film was deservedly admired for its fine acting and high production values. But, like so much of Mikhalkov’s work, it aims for rather more than that, implying nothing less than an interpretation of modern Russian history and society. The broad-shouldered, potent, heroic, nationally rooted, ultimately martyred man of the people (Kotov) stands in opposition to the opportunist, cowardly, villainous, slightly built, childless cosmopolitan intellectual (Mitia). Kotov’s manly qualities are in further contrast to the almost painfully Chekhovian family into which he has entered by marriage. His in-laws are as cultured, sociable, high-strung and charmingly set in their ways as any Gaev or

Reconfiguring the Past: The Return of History in Recent Russian Film

Russian cinema has often returned to its traditions in order to explore ways forward, and nowhere is this truer than in the historical film. Originally seen as a means of legitimizing the (Soviet) present, the cinematic investigation of history has tended in recent years not only to debunk past ideologies, but also to create new myths as pointers to the future. Directors whose recent work is included in this study are Nikita Mikhalkov, Andrei Konchalovskii, Pavel Chukhrai, Alexander Sokurov and Gleb Panfilov.

The creation of the fetish, as illustrated by Nikita Mikhalkov's (1994) Burnt by the Sun.

The creation of the fetish, as illustrated by Nikita Mikhalkov's (1994) Burnt by the Sun.

The creation of the fetish, as illustrated by Nikita Mikhalkov's (1994) Burnt by the Sun.

The creation of the fetish, as illustrated by Nikita Mikhalkov's (1994) Burnt by the Sun.

Identity Signifiers in Contemporary Russian Films: A Lacanian Analysis

The claiming of an essential identity is a common psychological mechanism human beings use to characterize themselves. For Russians in the last decade of this century, searches for the meaning of the self are endemic. Much of Russia is engaged in re-writing the narrative of community and re-constructing history in an effort to fill the identity void left by the collapse of the Soviet Union and its monolithic Ideological State Apparatus. 1 Contemporary Russian films are both symptomatic of and a productive force in this process of identity reconstruction. In the last ten years, Russian film production has frequently focused on problems that originated with the breakdown of the Soviet Union. Film producers, liberated from the ideological constraints of the Communist Party, have embraced the search for alternative ideologies as a primary narrative. The protagonists of new films are often in the position of confronting old values that are no longer realizable and so distort those values in their search for viable social and personal standards. In order to explore the limits on traditional signifiers, they look for alternatives and find them in chimerical discourses such as pre-Revolutionary Russia (e.g. Stanislav Govoruchin's controversial documentary, The Russia That We Have Lost). Three films made in the early 1990s characterize this quest for alternative identities: Pavel Loungin's Luna Park (1991), Vladimir Khotinenko's Muslim (1994), and Nikita Mikhalkov's Urga (1991). Each movie addresses issues of post-Communist Russia in different locales--in Moscow, in a Russian village, and in China. Each film works through problems of identity, concentrating on one particular conflict in discourses that threaten the identity of the protagonists. Thus Luna Park stresses the conflicts arising from racial and gender [End Page 95] stereotyping; Muslim focuses on the difficulty of achieving religious tolerance in a traditional rural community; Urga depicts the intrusion of Western commercialism on a remote, idyllic Eden. The reception of these works, as well as interviews with the directors, suggests that each of these films attempts to find an essential Russian identity, to reassess traditional signifiers of what it means to be Russian in the era of post-Communism. 2 Our interpretation of these films is based on psychological theories developed in the work of Jacques Lacan. Lacan rejects the understanding of identity as essential and transcendent. Rather, he views it as constructed through the play of signifiers within a socially produced symbolic order. In his work, Lacan distinguishes between the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real--three sites which are important for understanding an individual as well as his or her universe. The imaginary is established in early childhood, when the infant experiences the reflection of his own body as a unified and unproblematic whole in the mirror. This mirror stage constitutes a basis for that subject's sense of "I" as a center of the universe where the surroundings--the Others--are made whole in the optic of one's own imaginary order. If individuals share premises from the symbolic order of their era in their own imaginaries, the Other and the "I" can have successful interaction. Such acts of relating through a social set of signifiers promote an individual's entrance into language and into identity. Yet Lacan views the realization of one's own identity in language as constructed in absence and lack because no signifier is ever adequate to its signified. Words remain the surrogates of desire. The human subject experiences this sense of his or her own lack as measured against the symbolic order. That subject uses language or other sign systems (e.g. behavioral norms) to create a relationship between his or her imaginary and the symbolic order of the exterior world. At moments of successful communication, when perceived desires appear to be fulfilled, the subject believes that his or her identity is complete and autonomous. This transient illusion of success is inevitably permeated with the reality of individuals' unfulfilled desires. In order to cover this...

РОССИЙСКАЯ ИМПЕРИЯ НИКИТЫ МИХАЛКОВА

SUMMARY: Ilya Gerasimov’s review article on the recent Nikita Mikhalkov’s movie The Barber of Siberia directly addresses the major theme of the journal section The Newest Mythologies , namely construction and reconstruction of the imperial and national past in the contemporary discourse of culture and politics. The Barber of Siberia as a cultural product is situated in the broad context of conceptual and political changes of the post-imperial period of Russian history. The author suggests that the movie could be considered both as a blueprint for and reflection of the psychological need in a new Russian empire. The movie is subjected to a textual analysis which reveals the ambiguous transformation of the attempted idealization and nationalization (as Russian/ russkaia ) of the empire’s historical image in the semantic field of Russian culture and politics. According to Ilya Gerasimov, the movie, interpreted as a text, deviates from the Mikhalkov’s blueprint, encapsulating an alternative perspective on such basic venues of Russian history as relationship between Russia and Europe, technology and organic society, political oppression and individual liberty. The article leaves open the question of the movie’s impact on the construction of the empire in Russia, contemporary and past.

Unfinished Pieces: From Platonov to Piano

Chekhov's Platonov has been plundered on a number of occasions by directors and playwrights, to create "new" works (such as Michael Frayn's Wild Honey) — but never, perhaps, so successfully as in Nikita Mikhalkov's 1976 film, Unfinished Piece for Mechanical Piano (Neokollchennaya p' esa dlya mekhanicheskogo piaino). Mikhalkov's screenplay, co-written with Alexander Adabashyan, eliminates a number of characters and strips the play of some its melodramatic excesses. It draws on a number of Chekhov's short stories for characters, themes, and dialogue, and it transplants motifs and devices found in the later plays. Platonov, for example, ends with the protagonist's death at the hands of his jilted lover, Sofya. Mechanical Piano, on the other hand, ends with a grotesque, failed suicide attempt. Platonov leaps into a river — only to find that it is too shallow to drown in. He is comforted by his wife, Sasha, in words that echo Sonya's final speech in Uncie Vanya:

<bold>Burnt by the Sun</bold> [<italic>Utomlennye solntsem</italic>]. Produced by Michel Seidou and Nikita Mikhalkov; directed by Nikita Mikhalkov; screenplay by Nikita Mikhalkov and Rustam Ibragimbekov. 1994; color; 152 minutes. Russian with English subtitles. Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics and <bold>The Interpretation of Dreams</bold> [<italic>Tolkovanie snovidenii</italic>]. Directed by Andrei Zagdansky; screenplay by Semen Vinokur. 1990; color and black & white; 50 minutes. Russian.

<bold>Burnt by the Sun</bold> [<italic>Utomlennye solntsem</italic>]. Produced by Michel Seidou and Nikita Mikhalkov; directed by Nikita Mikhalkov; screenplay by Nikita Mikhalkov and Rustam Ibragimbekov. 1994; color; 152 minutes. Russian with English subtitles. Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics and <bold>The Interpretation of Dreams</bold> [<italic>Tolkovanie snovidenii</italic>]. Directed by Andrei Zagdansky; screenplay by Semen Vinokur. 1990; color and black & white; 50 minutes. Russian.

Close to Eden (Urga). Dir. Nikita Mikhalkov. Screenplay Rustam Ibragimbekov. Based on an original idea by N. Mikhalkov and a story by Mikhalkov and Ibragimbekov. Photography Vilen Kaluta. Music Eduard Artemyev. In Mongolian/Russian/Chinese with English subtitles. Released by Miramax Films

Close to Eden (Urga). Dir. Nikita Mikhalkov. Screenplay Rustam Ibragimbekov. Based on an original idea by N. Mikhalkov and a story by Mikhalkov and Ibragimbekov. Photography Vilen Kaluta. Music Eduard Artemyev. In Mongolian/Russian/Chinese with English subtitles. Released by Miramax Films - Volume 53 Issue 2

Rehabilitating the Superfluous Man: The Films in the Life of Nikita Mikhalkov

Rehabilitating the Superfluous Man: The Films in the Life of Nikita Mikhalkov

Rehabilitating the Superfluous Man: The Films in the Life of Nikita Mikhalkov

Rehabilitating the Superfluous Man: The Films in the Life of Nikita Mikhalkov