2024-04-01 18:55:46
by Paolo Valentino
The film based on Bulgakov’s novel, directed by Michael Lokshin, conquers the Russians. And the government wants to ban it and suspend screenings
While Vladimir Putin celebrated his fifth re-election at the helm of Russia, the most plebiscite ever, Professor Woland had already returned to Moscow. It happened last January 25th, when the screening of a new film version of The Master and Margarita, the immortal novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, began in the theaters of the capital and throughout the Federation.
That of the Devil on the Patriarsie Prudy, the Patriarch’s ponds, was a triumphal return. To date, 5 million Russians have already seen the film, which has grossed over 2 billion rubles, at current exchange rates 20 million euros, almost double its production cost.
The most extraordinary thing about this success is that it has nothing to do with the Zeitgeist. Indeed, it is radically against the trend. The director Michael Lokshin, in fact, is American. August Diehl, the actor who plays Woland, is German. But above all, the film is a ferocious satire against tyranny and censorship, which seems to aim straight at the heart of Putin’s system. Furthermore, it is the tastiest paradox, filmed in 2021 and therefore before the invasion of Ukraine, The Master and Margherita benefited from a substantial financial contribution from the Russian Ministry of Culture, incredibly escaping the net of censorship, which even the war had made more and more ruthless. This did not please the regime’s supporters, who lashed out against the director and for months have been calling for the work to be banned from cinemas, considering it subversive.
How did it happen? Written in the 1930s, an absolute masterpiece of world literature, the novel is a fantastic and philosophical tale, a satirical fable with Faustian accents that juxtaposes Stalin’s Moscow and Pontius Pilate’s Jerusalem, Satan and Jesus Christ, evil and good. In a crazy kaleidoscope move the figures of the satanic Woland, of a mad writer called the Master and his Muse, the disturbing Margherita Nicolaevna, of a talking cat called Behemoth and of a crowd of characters from the court of miracles. Even though Stalin did not order the killing or arrest of Bulgakov, the novel was published in the Soviet Union in a censored version only in the 1960s (a quarter of a century after the writer’s death) and it was not until 1973 that the full version was released. .
Lokshin, who in the meantime left Russia for safety, is the son of a Russian scientist who emigrated to America and lived between Texas and Moscow, where he also graduated. When he embarked on the task, he immediately thought of rereading Bulgakov’s work as an allegory of today’s Russia. The film was co-produced by Universal Picture, which then had to withdraw after the start of the war and the introduction of sanctions. All seemed lost, also because the director criticized the invasion on social media and called on his friends to support Ukraine. There have been several postponements. «But deep down I was convinced that sooner or later he would come out. I still think it was a miracle. But I didn’t expect such a public response,” Lokshin said in an interview with the New York Times.
That’s it. The film is a true hymn to freedom of expression and creativity, which without giving up Hollywood effects ridicules totalitarian power and its context of betrayals, denunciations, corruption: «This version of the Master and Margherita – wrote the critic Anton Dolin, who had to leave Russia since the beginning of the war after being branded a “foreign agent” – resembles Putin’s reality more than Stalin’s and is full of incredibly current images and situations.” There is regular laughter and applause in the room when the poet Ivan Bezdomny, one of Bulgakov’s characters, says: «Why do we need heaven? We will go to Crimea! Or again: «Oil production will be our spiritual nourishment!». Or when Woland-Diehl, who speaks Russian with a German accent, pronounces the famous phrase: “Never ask anything of anyone and especially of those who have more power than you.”
Too much for the ultras of the regime, who reacted in a disorganized manner: “How was a Russophobic American allowed to make this film, which is nothing but unpatriotic rubbish?”, thundered Vladimir Solovyov, Putin’s chief propagandist, on public television. who defined the work as “a special operation”. Yegor Kholmogorov of «Russia Today» branded the film as «a demonstration of terrorist and satanic propaganda, conceived by a Ukraine fan». The controversy also reached the Duma, where several United Russia deputies called for the suspension of screenings and the banning of the film.
And perhaps it was also these appeals that triggered the spectators’ spring, pushing millions of Russians to rush to see the film before it is removed from circulation. «Today the country – wrote Dolin – is unable to react or respond to persecution, restrictions and censorship. Someone does it by going to see The Master and Margherita.” «Not everyone can afford to be so intransigent – says a friend to the Master, before betraying him by snitching – someone has alimony to pay». The audience applauds.
When I was in Moscow in the early 1990s I went to the Taganka Theater to interview director Yuri Lyubimov, who had recently returned from exile in Europe to direct again. And I asked him what that place had represented in the years of the Soviet dictatorship: “Here – was his answer – we came to breathe”. In recent months, Muscovites have breathed in the cinema with Bulgakov’s masterpiece. But the Crocus City Hall massacre, with its corollary of fear and repressive measures, risks closing these openings too.
April 1, 2024 (modified April 1, 2024 | 08:28)
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