Tsar

Film 'Tsar' made some social resonance in Russia,- dividing people who do not accept film because of huge mortality and deaths in film(it's true - 'Tsar' is dark and cruel) and those who see the human Drama in face of Tsar Ivan, drama of the governor - is really not the best in Lungin's biography,though the best in my.

I had opportunity to take participation in this film, i was acting eye- blinded Serafim and should say that the plot of this film is really great. and Im thanking life and faith to let me do my job as good as i could))))

Also i've got lots of new friends,- among them Tom Stern -

the cinematographer of 'Tsar'.- really good American,- i took a look on his projects with Clint Eastwood, and opened this to brave Americans for myself.

Who was Ivan the Terrible? Was he really as terrible as the name suggests or it this mostly myth and bad PR? Pawel Lungin seems to agree with the previous and paints a terrifying portrait of his persona with the ultimate counterpoint in Metropolitanate Philipp, the religious overseer of Moscow and the Church. In this tale of madness, torture and dementia the innocent will perish, but will stick with their ideals, while the cruel remain with only eternal damnation that awaits them...

Both main actors Pyotr Mamonov (Ivan) and Oleg Yankovskiy (Philipp) are a real tour de force. They are absolutely unbelievably good in the parts they play and especially Mamonov gives possibly the best performance I have seen in years. And yet with some much going for the movie in the actor department I felt massively under-awed by the direction of this movie.

The story never really flows or builds and essentially history passes this movie by. This would be acceptable if the focus on the two protagonists was well handled and showed a consistent cause and effect. However we never really get to feel what is happening in Russia and how that is affecting the Tsar. In the end most is left to imagination or historical knowledge, as the movie merely suggests several key moments in time, but all this happens off screen. The background - so necessary for clarity - is hardly mentioned or is passed totally. In the end you never really understand the changes in Ivan and the engulfing madness. Additionally his actions and words are incoherent and show either bad script-doctoring or an inability to convey the character as being inconsistent in his madness. Within several minutes you see Ivan turn from a god-fearing fanatic claiming all his deeds are in the name of God and for his glory into someone claiming that ruling a country takes place outside of God. No credible build-up was really given to such a sudden change of views.

All in all the madness is inconsistent and after watching the movie I feel like I know less about Ivan than before watching it. Also the overly religious motifs, which plague the movie really irked me in the wrong places.

more than a film. it is a form of visual essay about power and religion, about solitude and about the roots, laws and vision of tyranny. it is a fight against Russia's history. a parable. portrait not of Ivan Vasilievich but for a manner, an usual manner of East to use the authority with high force and profound fear. Pyotr Mamonov gives a strange, cold, unpredictable, vulnerable Ivan. a Tsar looking for himself, lost in good intentions and noble projects. but, maybe, the hero is Philip. the voice of Church and good sense. the voice of conscience in a dark circle of confusion. the Metropolit is a splendid role. the last for great Oleg Ynkovsky and that status impose a special status to it. more than a film. maybe, useful subject for reflection. about power. in our time. in each period of history.

I agree completely with the author of "Sergei Eisenstein honored" in calling this film the third part of Eisenstein's intended trílogy of the most debatable of all Russian tzars. Eisenstein had planned a third film to his great "Ivan the Terrible" project but never came to fulfill it since already the second part was forbidden by Stalin, and Eisenstein died before Stalin. However, this film would have satisfied Eisenstein completely as a fulfillment of his last cinematic dreams.

Of course, it has flaws. Pyotr Mamonov is not quite convincing as the tzar and does not stand up to a comparison with the incomparable Nikolai Cherkasov as the leading actor in Eisenstein's masterpieces. While Eisenstein's films are monumentally theatrical with every scene a masterpiece of composition and every face unforgettably impressive in pictorial portraiture, Mamonov as the tzar is too much of a caricature and is overdoing it in a grotesque way that falls out of the personage that the tzar really was. This twisted interpretation of the life on the throne is worsened by the revolting presence of the fool, who pushes the exaggerations far over the top of any credibility.

All this grotesqueness, which really was part of Ivan's reign but only one side of it, is wonderfully balanced by Oleg Yankovsky as the metropolitan and childhood friend of Ivan, who the tzar desperately appeals to for friendship, which his ways make impossible. Here you have the full integrity of a real man who just can't compromise with his conscience and sense of right and wrong, while Ivan is way beyond any hope of insight in this matter. The metropolitan dominates the film, and the film is a masterpiece mainly because of him.

Of course, there is very much you miss of Ivan's other aspects as a tzar. Neither Eisenstein nor Lungin included the episode of the slaughter of his son Ivan, and concentrating exclusively on the personal relationship between the tzar and the metropolitan, the film feels more episodic like a rhapsody than like an accomplished epic. There is certainly room in the future for a part IV of the complex, gigantic and humanly unfathomable story of the most debatable of Russian tzars.

I saw that this film had won the Nike award (Russian equivalent of Oscar), so took advantage of a showing on the Russian channel on DirectTV (unsubtitled). I checked out the "Hollywood Reporter's" review of the showing in Cannes, and the first line of that review corresponds to the first comment I would post myself, relating it to Tarkovsky's "Andrei Rublev"(1967) and Eisenstein's "Ivan the Terrible." (1944)

While the title of the film is "Tsar," the personality of the Metropolitan Fillip, played by Oleg Yankovsky, really dominates. Ivan is viewed through Andrei's eyes, and is judged by his values. Like Tarkovsky's "Rublev" Fillip attempts to find spiritual meaning in the harshness of his times, and Ivan at first come across as an object of pity to whom the church father attempts to give spiritual guidance. The film presents of trinity of "Holy Fools" (Iurodyvye), who traditionally speak prophetic truth to power - in the persons of Fillip, the little girl, an the jester (whose revelations of Ivan's cruelty are for the film-viewers alone). Ivan tells Fillip to speak the truth to him, but becomes progressively more opposed to the holy truth and therefore more and more "terrible."

Stalin found confirmation for the "great man" approach to history in Eisenstein's earlier historical epics, but Eisenstein's "Ivan the Terrible,Part II" was banned when the historical necessity argument gave way to grotesque depiction of the oprichniki and the murder of a young pretender to the throne. Lungin's gritty realism is the director's means of unmasking the tsar's barbarity. The magnificence of the regal costuming and sets do not startle the viewer with pageantry, but rather offer a grotesque contrast between the mask of wealth on display in the presence of masses violently spilled blood.

What may appear as "straightforward storytelling" is in many ways a polemic with historical narratives of the past. Ivan is most terrible in the power that he wields through insanity and belief in his role as God's appointed servant.