Tsars -- Hanky-Panky at the Russian Palace

[Nancy Condee]

Alessandra Stanley's tongue-in-cheek, in my experience, leaves more blood on
the gums than this.  I was relieved at what--to me--read like amused
restraint.

-----Original Message-----
From: Slavic & East European Languages and Literature list
[mailto:SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU]On Behalf Of Charlotte Douglas
Sent: Monday, May 26, 2003 10:09 AM
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: [SEELANGS] Tsars -- Hanky-Panky at the Russian Palace


Goodness - it doesn't sound like a good review to me -- this is Alessandra
Stanley at her most tongue-in-cheek!

Here it is:


>Hanky-Panky at the Russian Palace
>
>May 26, 2003
>By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
>
>When the narrator of "Russia, Land of the Tsars," explains
>that Ivan the Terrible was prepared to rule with a ruthless
>hand, "even if it called for blood," the documentary cuts
>to bright red blood oozing across a stone step.
>
>When viewers are told that the Russian Orthodox patriarch
>condemns Czar Vasily for locking his barren wife, Salomea,
>in a convent to marry Yelena and prophesies "terror and
>tears," a lightning bolt flashes across a blackened screen.
>
>
>And Catherine the Great's death by a sudden stroke is
>illustrated by a woman's hand sliding lifelessly off an
>open jewelry case.
>
>Tonight and tomorrow, the History Channel's four-hour look
>at the Russian monarchy is one of those rare documentaries
>that reach the highest level of television entertainment:
>if it were any better, it would be worse.
>
>In this chronicle of czarist tyranny, from the rise of
>Vladimir, Grand Prince of Kiev in the 10th century to the
>fall of the Romanovs in 1918, there is always blood on the
>step or blood on the steppes. Viewers are spared a dry
>academic survey of history's landscape, with its complex
>topography of statistic and detail, and its plate tectonics
>of trend and theory. The History Channel's focus is fixed
>on the peaks of death, disaster and repression; "Russia,
>Land of the Tsars," bristles obligingly with pinnacles of
>bad behavior. It's a pop-up textbook of grisly moments
>brought to lurid life in heavily costumed and scored
>re-enactments.
>
>Best known for its tireless retelling of World War II -
>hours of engrossing archival shots of Hitler's last days or
>the Yalta Conference - the History Channel also generously
>relives the Kennedy assassination, the Hindenburg disaster
>and the Lindbergh-baby kidnapping case. (The channel's Web
>site invites hard-core buffs to "re-examine the Treaty of
>Versailles.") "Russia, Land of the Tsars" is a departure
>that is true to the History Channel's raison d'Ítre.
>
>Anyone who has sat through all four acts (and a prologue)
>of Mussorgsky's opera <object.title class="Movie"
>idsrc="nyt_ttl" value="109809">"Boris
>Godunov"</object.title> knows that medieval Russian history
>can be impenetrable. The documentary, blessedly, skips over
>Boris Godunov altogether. He may be the best known of six
>rulers who grabbed the throne during the Time of Troubles
>between 1598 and 1613, but <object.title class="Movie"
>idsrc="nyt_ttl"
>value="153770;215129;155330;108553">"Russia"</object.title>
>chose to showcase the more colorful "False Dmitri," a
>Polish imposter who, once discovered, was killed and burned
>and had his ashes stuffed in a cannon and fired back to
>Poland. (The film cuts to a shot of a cannon firing across
>a field.)
>
>Reform is signaled by a hand scribbling on parchment with a
>quill pen, conspiracy with a close-up of a card table laden
>with wine goblets and wreathed in cigar smoke, repression
>by a wall of flames. (Bloodstained snow is reserved for
>really major figures who died violently: Pushkin, the
>assassinated Alexander II and Rasputin.)
>
>Even in a lavish, two-part special, the History Channel is
>commendably frugal. The same shots of fur-hatted horsemen
>galloping menacingly in slow motion across a sandy shore
>are used to illustrate warrior invasions, from
>ninth-century Vikings to the Mongol horde 400 years later.
>
>Some viewers may find the reshuffling of the same tableaus
>too stinting, but it is actually quite fitting in a
>documentary on Russia, a land where shortages are a way of
>life; until recently, foreign films in Russia were shown
>not with subtitles or dubbing, but with a Russian-language
>narrator whose voice-over delivered the lines of all the
>characters, from amorous ingÈnues to hard-boiled
>detectives, in the same uninflected, sonorous tone.
>
>The historians gathered to shed light on the czars and
>their empire include Dominic Lieven, a professor of Russian
>history at the London School of Economics, and Michael
>Farquhar, author of "A Treasury of Royal Scandals: The
>Shocking True Stories of History's Wickedest, Weirdest,
>Most Wanton Kings, Queens, Tsars, Popes and Emperors."
>
>But some of the more wanton details are left out: tales of
>Catherine the Great's more unorthodox sexual escapades are
>omitted.
>
>So are some of Russian history's most famous anecdotes.
>Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin is identified as the
>Empress's lover and adviser (cut to a man and woman
>reclining on a rumpled bed, powdered wigs tossed aside),
>but there is no time to explain that the rustic false
>facades he erected along the route of her inspection tours
>down the Volga were the origin of the term, "Potemkin
>village."
>
>"Russia," cannot cover everything, but it delivers the
>greatest hits of Russian history in a punchy, memorable
>way. The documentary opens, predictably, with Churchill's
>description of Russia as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery,
>inside an enigma."
>
>But Professor Lieven has a perhaps more down-to-earth
>explanation for the Russian empire's lasting allure. "It is
>Europe," he says. "Then again, it isn't quite Europe."
>
>RUSSIA, LAND OF THE TSARS
>The History Channel, tonight and
>tomorrow at 9, Eastern and Pacific times; 8, Central time.
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/26/arts/television/26STAN.html?ex=1054957580
&ei=
>1&en=743724eed5e91335
>

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