Tsareubiytsa

The title, which concludes the tradition of Soviet cinema, was completed after the political collapse of the Soviet Union, but the script and direction are clearly influenced by the Soviet school. Soviet production always aimed to refine and elevate the viewer, which was reflected in the choice of film techniques and the final form of the film. In addition to strict censorship and ideological dogmatism, this is one of the reasons why genre films were generally not successful in the Soviet Union, with few exceptions. In the hands of someone like Polanski, the subject matter would be transformed into a compelling, chilling psychothriller, where the mysterious layer of the story would help connect the testimonies of ancient regime atrocities on their climb to power and their ruthless supporters with the hesitant reality of the tarnished late communism, which no longer had the balls (remember the fate of Soviet coup plotters against Gorbachev) to harness the talent of people of a peculiar nature, like the hero of Shakhnazarov's story. In that case, casting Malcolm McDowell would be a triumph, because his charisma and acting style would do half of the work for you. With just a single look, you would feel his inner demons preparing to emerge. But Shakhnazarov doesn't know how to be dark, raw, and gritty; he doesn't understand the genre's needs and therefore fails to create the necessary atmosphere. In his portrayal, the sense of fate is represented by café conversations where fate is juggled, while the real feeling of fatefulness is absent. It can be said that the dialogues mean defeat altogether. Jurovsky and his associates represented a completely different type of people than what Shakhnazarov imagines. They could barely write Heine's poems on the walls. Similarly, executioners did not see the shooting of teenage girls as a problem; rather, they focused on meticulously looting all the corpses. One star is for the set design, which, thanks to the involvement of foreign capital, provided a generous glimpse into the past, and another star is for the casting, as Malcolm and his Soviet colleagues all do a very decent job. The rest of it should have been completely different. Overall impression: 40%. (02.10.2018)