What was going on here? Nikita Mikhalkov, director of the acclaimed, Oscar-winning “Burnt by the Sun” (a harrowing look at Stalin’s purges), has come out with “Barber,” his latest, long-awaited production. That by itself would have ensured an enormous amount of hype in Moscow. But the 4,000 guests at the premiere were as interested in Mikhalkov’s alleged political ambitions as they were in the movie.
Political ambitions? Chewing over who will succeed Boris Yeltsin as Russia’s next president–the election is in the summer of 2000–has already become Moscow’s most tiresome parlor game. But Mikhalkov perked it up a few weeks ago by telling a London newspaper that he couldn’t rule out running for president next year. “I am not seeking power over people,” he said, “but if I feel that people really want and need me as president, then I would have to think seriously about it.” Oligarch Boris Berezovsky said he might chip in to back Mikhalkov (never mind that his support, after Moscow’s economic collapse last summer, would be the kiss of death), and Moscow’s political press went into a tizzy–just in time for the opening of “Barber.”
Mikhalkov does love talking about his country–and its current, pitiful plight–almost as much as he does about his movies. He says there are present-day lessons to be drawn from his new movie, a lushly filmed–if utterly incoherent–romance starring Russian heartthrob Oleg Menshikov and Britain’s Julia Ormond. It’s set during the time of Aleksandr III, whom Mikhalkov (an accomplished actor as well as director) portrays in a small part in the film. Aleksandr was the next-to-last tsar, and during his reign “no wars were fought,” Mikhalkov says, “and the the ruble was strong.” Honor, dignity and self-sufficiency are important concepts to the director, and they are exemplified by a group of cadets–led by Menshikov–at a Moscow military academy. The plot has Menshikov standing up for what he believes in–his love for Ormond, who portrays an American trying to seduce a Russian aristocrat to aid the business interests of an old, eccentric entrepreneur. Menshikov pays the consequences: he’s shipped off to Siberia and his fellow cadets stand by him. That, Mikhalkov says, is the message of the film: “This is what you once were [a nation of honorable people living in a powerful nation], and this is what you are today [a mess],” he says.
Could Mikhalkov actually be the world’s first Oscar-winning Russian president? He’s sufficiently mediagenic that the idea isn’t out of the realm of possibility. His fans believe his ability to make a knock-your-socks-off political commercial–which he did for Yeltsin in 1996–makes him Ronald Reagan and Michael Deaver in one package. He also speaks in the sort of aphorisms that go over well on the stump: “You don’t go to sleep red and wake up white, red and blue,” he says, implicitly criticizing the economic “shock therapy” of the early Yeltsin years. Some of Moscow’s political class has typecast him as a less threatening version of Aleksandr Lebed: “Mikhalkov is a talented director but at the same time a reactionary and dangerous figure,” two political analysts from the Jamestown Foundation, a U.S. think tank, wrote recently. It’s hard to shake the idea that political buzz surrounding the opening wasn’t part of the hype machine behind it. Asked about his plans, Mikhalkov answers coyly that “I will participate in the next election, which is the moral duty of all Russians.”
And will there be another Oscar? “Barber,” for all its lush beauty, is way too long (three hours) and the script is chock full of cliches, both Russian and Western. The main Westerner (Ormond) behaves in a devious manner because (as she tearfully reveals in the film’s most ludicrous scene) her stepfather abused her when she was 14 years old. (Question for historians: was “Oprah” on the air in tsarist Russia?) Put it this way: Nikita Mikhalkov has a better shot at getting elected than he does at winning an Oscar for “Barber.”
