Jugu Abraham
Many may not be aware that this film was considered "worthless" in the Soviet Union after it was made and shelved for years. Director Elem Klimov made several changes to the 1975 original version and it was ultimately released in 1981 and shown at the Venice Film Festival 1982 (where it won the FIPRESCI prize) out of competition.The original name of the film was Agony (Agoniya) and not Rasputin, a name by which the film was marketed for a while. The title Agony was evidently in line with what the director had in mind. If we were to accept that argument, was the director's original film about the spiritual agony of the controversial holy man? Or was it meant to reflect the agony of Czar Nicholas, who could not go against the Czarina's total faith in Rasputin? Was the title meant to depict the agony of a great nation afflicted by the abysmal corruption among the monarchists who were there to make money while the poor starved and the indecisive Czar painted flowers to distract himself from the more pressing political problems (One fine sequence in the film soon after the Duma castigates the Czar shows the silent but mentally tortured Czar, with tear filled eyes looking for comfort in the sympathetic gaze of his loyal butler). Was the title also to depict the agony of the Russian Orthodox Church which was suddenly losing its grip on the worshippers with the rise of the Bolsheviks and "holy men" like Rasputin? We will never know unless we see the original version the director made. My guess is the director wanted to combine all these agonies and that Rasputin, the individual, dominated only a segment of the agonizing events. What we do know is that this film and its many versions that were put out by Soviet and the post-Perestroika Russian authorities were at no point of time expected to depict Rasputin as the sole villain that led to the to the 1916 October Revolution.The film does offer several insights into the enigmatic character of Rasputin. He did indeed accept bribes from those wanting favors from the Czar, while the film distinctly indicates that it is debatable that he loved money and wealth. He was least concerned about getting rich, because he could get what he desired without pelf. Rasputin had an ability to foresee the future but could totally misread his dreams (The film includes an interesting sequence where he rolls in a pool of stagnant water, as he can foresee his fall from grace at the Czar's palace). He could perform small miracles, could utter saintly statements ("the cowl does not make a monk") and believed like a village bumpkin that you could sin and then start life with a clean slate! No wonder the Russian Orthodox Church saw in him an evil rascal. What happens to him after the Church traps him is totally unclear in the version of the film I saw. Was he castrated? Klimov's Rasputin is unusual--he is an animal waiting to ravish a beautiful woman one moment, and then a religious zealot throwing out the woman for having tried to seduce him the very next moment.I am convinced that Klimov's film is less about Rasputin than about the people that surrounded him. Take the Czar, for one.Klimov's cinematic essay shows him scurrying away from a meeting on war preparations in dark passageways behind wall-maps worried equally about his haemophiliac son Alexei, the crown prince who is depicted as a brat. The personal worries of the Czar (in the photography dark room, in his relationship with the Orthodox Church, his empathies for his worried wife doting on her children) have been given importance, unlike Franklin Schaffner's Nicholas and Alexandra that seemed to focus on the Czarina (Janet Suzman) more than the Czar. Interestingly, Klimov's film downplays the Czarina's role focusing more on the Czar.Klimov's range of agonies does not end here. Even the assassins of Rasputin are agonizingly guilt-ridden. Most Russians are Church-going Orthodox Christians and Klimov understood his audience quite well. The dubious role of the Orthodox Church in those troubled times are pitch forked into prominence—the film shows the burial of Rasputin officiated by the Church in the presence of the Czar.Finally, Klimov spliced documentary footage to show the agonies of the common man at every given interval to add validity to his essay on the varied agonies he captures on celluloid.While Klimov's film shows patches of brilliance, one needs to recall that he initially made his mark as filmmaker decades before Agoniya having made remarkable satirical comedies like Adventures of a dentist. (I have yet to see the latter film; however, what both films have in common is that wonderful Russian actress Alisa Frejnlikh, who played the Stalker's wife in Tarkovsky's Stalker.) His last few films Agoniya and Idi o simotri (Go and see/Come and see) proved that he was now looking at life grimly. He was then working closely with his wife, actor and director Larisa Shepitko and was reported to be a devoted husband. Equally enigmatic is the role of Lady Vyrubova played by Alisa Frejnlikh. What was the relationship between Rasputin and Vyrubova? Probably the answers lie in the director's cut of Agoniya, which is possibly lost for ever.I was privileged to have met Klimov at Hyderabad, India, in 1986 during a Film Festival. It was after his wife's death. I recall that he was withdrawn and less than forthcoming to questions. Was he afraid to talk? Was he a genius who was never allowed to prove it, because of political pressures? This is probably why both Agoniya and Klimov remain enigmatic for me to this day.
Prokievitch Bazarov
RASPUTIN did not die easily. As his assassins stood by impatiently, Rasputin, the Czarina Alexandra's favorite holy man and one of the most hated figures of pre-revolutionary Russia, stuffed himself with cyanide-laced cakes and washed them down with a sweet wine that had been similarly spiked. His only comment was that the wine was rather poor. The conspirators then shot him repeatedly. He stumbled and fell, but didn't give up his ghost. The murderers bludgeoned him and, at last, when he had lost consciousness, they dropped the body into the frozen Neva River. Later, an autopsy revealed that Rasputin's lungs were full of water. He'd simply drowned. That was in December 1916 in St. Petersburg. Rasputin still isn't dead as far as movie makers are concerned. He has been played by Conrad Veidt (1930), Lionel Barrymore (1932), Harry Baur (1938), Edmond Purdom (1960), Christopher Lee (1966), Gert Frobe (1968) and, most recently, by Tom Baker in the 1971 spectacle ''Nicholas and Alexandra.'' Here he is the subject of a curious Russian film, ''Rasputin''. I use the word ''new'' loosely. ''Rasputin'' (originally titled ''Agoniya'') was made many years ago but was withheld from release in the Soviet Union, when it was cleared in what some perceived as a liberalization under by Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the new Soviet leader. It is easy to understand why the Russians might have had uneasy thoughts about the film, directed by Elem Klimov and with Alexei Petrenko in the title role. In spite of a prologue of newsreel clips accompanied by voice-over narration, which tries to put the story of the ''mad monk'' into proper context, this film might make one believe that the Grigori Rasputin was the major cause of the 1917 revolution, rather than a symptom of the corruption that made revolution inevitable. Except for the newsreel footage, and a sequence showing Rasputin visiting his peasant family in Siberia, the movie is almost exclusively concerned with showing us low-life among the aristocratic St. Petersburg swells and their hangers-on, including Rasputin. In this, ''Rasputin'' is comparatively adventurous, even risky, for a Russian film. It also gives us an almost sympathetic picture of Czar Nicholas, presented as a befuddled, weak but essentially decent man, dependent on his superstitious wife. She, in turn, is seen as being bewitched by Rasputin, whom she believes to be her conduit to God, as well as the only person capable of treating her hemophiliac son. ''Rasputin'' is less a coherently dramatized history than a series of sometimes vivid tableaux vivants. At the center is the remarkable figure of Mr. Petrenko's Rasputin, a huge, heedless, messy, out-of-control zealot, given to epic debauches, severe depressions and mystical revelations. He's a man who finds himself with more power than he knows what to do with and with no real plans to put into effect. He's an opportunist who may well believe in his own powers. Never, however, does the film make any effort to analyze him or to suggest that, given the temper of the times, the emergence of such a man was a foregone conclusion. At times, this ''Rasputin'' suggests nothing much more than a horror film, a somewhat politicized ''Exorcist.'' Mr. Klimov, the director, employs a sort of impressionistic cinema style, cutting back and forth between color footage and monochrome, between fictional scenes and newsreels and, in one of the film's most successful sequences (near the end), between a series of still photographs, some from the archives and some shot for the film. It is not always easy to follow the story, even if one has boned up on the accepted facts before seeing the film, but Mr. Klimov keeps the focus fairly narrow and short. With the exception of Rasputin, the historical figures are scarcely characterized, though Anatoly Romashin looks right as Czar Nicholas. Velta Linne, who plays the Czarina, looks more like a worried Russian peasant woman than the German princess who never felt at home in Mother Russia. Though it's a footnote to history, the life and death of Rasputin retains its fascination. Mr. Klimov does particular justice to the murder plot that ended Rasputin's life. As he stages it, to the sounds of ''Dixie'' on an old-fashioned Victrola, the assassination turns into a macabre slapstick comedy, one in which the victim keeps coming back to life to scare the wits out of the faint-hearted, desperate, high-born perpetrators.
