Saw Nicholas and Alexandra (thanks, Lea!) It was a historical epic about the fall of the last of the Russian Czars. This is the one that fell to the communist Russian revolution during WW1, and with Anastasia and Rasputin and all. Quite an adventure!
The film is dense and long. It contains many information-passing scenes where we hear that the Duma is doing this or that the peasantry are doing that and Czar Nicholas is going to do thus-and-such about it. Interrupting these fairly dry bits are little cherries of surprisingly moving scenes. At one point a peasant in some kind of fiber-processing-plant has a bitter monologue about his mother's death. How she was born in this place, worked there all her life, and now died there and never had a chance to be anything. Then we go back to Nicholas in his palace or whatever.
The film plays this trick over and over, of juxtaposing terrible strife with Nicholas's opulent lifestyle. He is portrayed as an uncertain leader, thrust into what is essentially a ceremonial role (the real work is clearly being done by "advisors") but frustrated by his own powerlessness and ineffectiveness. He would make a fine leader during times of prosperity perhaps, but is totally overwhelmed by the rising tide of the masses seizing power all over Europe. Trotsky and Lenin are also major characters.
Nicholas's wife is played well but directed badly, I think. She's supposed to be somewhat hysterical and strongly opinionated. She's played like a white-knuckled robot however: all sublimation and implied hysterics. I have a hard time understanding her attachment to Rasputin however, or Nicholas's inability to say no to her. This film was made in the 70s when female hysteria took the form of neurotically clutching at throats and pressing handkerchiefs, but I would have liked some more shouting and carrying on.
The film follows Nicholas even after his fall from grace and in defeat he is quite sad and noble, having been chastened by not only his destruction but the destruction of the entire Czar-ship. We must not forget the first half of the film however, with its juxtapositions. In one of those cherry scenes, a minister harangues him for asking who is responsible for peasant resistance to his armed guards: "How long do you think they're going to stand there and let you shoot them? You ask me who's responsible? You ask?" Nicholas is a brutal ruler. Personally perhaps he is only in over his head, but his actions in large part destroyed Russia.
Part of Nicholas's troubles stem from his only son being a secret hemophiliac - unlikely to live long enough to become a Czar in his own right. I feel as the film progresses he becomes a stand-in for Russia in general, or for Nicholas's reign: doomed from the start, prone to resentment and pique, indulging in needless acts of attention-seeking violence. This is my pet theory and small foray into Analysis.
Anyway, the film is largely a character study of Nicholas. He is in over his head, but how much blame should be laid on him and how much understanding and forgiveness is he worthy of? As leader, he must ultimately own the responsibility of all that happens, but is it his fault that he lost track of a complex society, of a no-longer-cowed populace? The film seems to argue that he too is a victim of the monarchy. In another life, perhaps he would have been quite happy as a peasant, his lack of talent for leadership harming no one. As is however, he must command armies and statesmen and he suffers for it. I have a hart time maintaining a ton of sympathy, but we are watching him and he suffers.
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