In a flea market or thrift store, when we were last out and about, I bought a DVD containing two lesser-known films starring the late and much lamented Robin Williams : Jakob the Liar, and Moscow on the Hudson. Neither title was familiar to us. We eventually got around to watching them last week, one after t'other. It's interesting, and probably the reason they are bundled onto one DVD disc, that Russia has a "supporting part" in each movie.
It's a relief to think about Russia in different lights; all the current, and seemingly endless, Russiagate stuff flying around media and internet got old for me many weeks ago.
In these two movies, Russia plays different characters - in the first Russia wears the white hat and is a factor for good - as was Russia for us in the UK during World War 2. We ought never to forget that if not for their brave armies opposing Hitler's regime, keeping him busy in eastern Europe, Britain might not have survived uninvaded.
In the second movie Russia itself isn't the bad guy in the black hat, it's the KGB and the Soviet regime then in power. Russia itself never is the bad guy - or at least never should be. Ordinary Russians are, I feel certain, just like us. They want peaceful lives, families and friends and to live without undue fear from day to day.
In Jakob the Liar, a 1999 movie set in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War 2, Jakob (Robin Williams) finds a way to combat the overwhelming depression pervading the ghetto, and causing regular suicides among its inhabitants. He lies. He claims that he hears regular news broadcasts claiming that Allied advances, in particular Russian troops, are very close, so relief is near. His plan does lift hearts and refresh optimism - but...and there's always a but... (no more detail!)
Slow, interesting, well played, but ultimately leaving one feeling a tad depressed.
In Moscow on the Hudson, a 1984 film, a younger-looking Robin Williams plays Vladimir Ivanoff, a saxophonist from a Soviet Circus touring in the USA with his troupe. He decides to defect while in New York, and finds refuge with the family of a black security guard he met in a luxury department store. In the same store he also met a lovely young Italian woman working in the makeup department. He is introduced to a shrewd Cuban immigration lawyer to help with his asylum application. So, from these brief details it's already clear that this movie had a diverse cast, and a positive feel for immigrants of all stripes! It's really a multi-cultural romantic comedy with hints of some earnest flag-waving efforts, especially in the later scenes.
Enjoyable movie in spite of the flag-waving potential.
It's Music Monday - and the flavour of the day is...Russia! Enter my favourite Russian composer, Aleksandr Borodin.
Liatoshinsky Ensemble , Kiev, plays Borodin's nocturne during ICF (International Conductors' Festival) under the conducting of Christophe Rody (Switzerland). This piece, and other pieces of Borodin's music was used in the 1955 movie "Kismet". With lyrics added this piece became "And This is My Beloved".
Husband and I, sharing sorrowfully thoughts about the death of Robin Williams this week, considered the sad but inevitable truth that, as one ages the loss of long-appreciated, loved at a distance, fellow-travellers who've been with us for much of our adult life, is going to be a fact of elder life. Increasing numbers will leave us, some much too tragically soon, others at a time more to be expected.
In the last few weeks and months we've lost Philip Seymour Hoffman, James Garner, Tony Benn, and now Robin Williams, then in news quickly following, Lauren Bacall, among many others less known to us by their work. These, especially for us (or for me in the case of Tony Benn) leave gaps nobody else is likely to fill, even for us, let alone for their families whose loss is tremendous. We're simply minute parts, tiny part-pixels of the lost ones' vast international audiences.
Our antidote to these losses, if there is one, as well as keeping their work and attainments handy for re-viewing, re-considering, re-reading, has to be a cultivation of new favourites, new "heroes" who, though never filling the shoes of those gone before, will offer new and different talents, and perhaps different perspectives.
As the kaleidoscope of life shakes a little, the view changes.
"And, as always happens, and happens far too soon, the strange and wonderful becomes a memory and a memory becomes a dream. Tomorrow it's gone." ― Terry Pratchett, "Wintersmith".
