AGONIIA (RASPUTIN)
Directed by Elem Klimov
[YouTube]
Description and Commentary by Alan Kimball
A KIMBALL FILES "SAC Narrative Extension"
The following scenes or sections of the film, and their titles, are of my contrivance =
ONE = An overture with suggestion of main themes
TWO = War profiteers influence state policy via Anna Vyrubova and Rasputin
THREE = Nicholas II flees a meeting with his ministers, sees his ill son, and retreats to the darkroom
FOUR = Big party and high politics at the cabaret "Villa Rode"
FIVE = Certain high-ranking persons chafe under these circumstances
SIX = Rasputin at full steam
SEVEN = The war profiteers are a sordid lot
EIGHT = The Orthodox Church and others try to shut Rasputin down
NINE = Even Nicholas II turns against him, but Rasputin wins the Emperor back
TEN = Rasputin’s influence sends the Russian army into disaster
ELEVEN = High ranking conspirators decide to kill Rasputin
TWELVE = Back in his village, Rasputin alienates everyone, then learns of military catastrophe
THIRTEEN = Now everyone, including conservatives in the Duma, are after Rasputin’s hide
FOURTEEN = Even war profiteers lose faith in Rasputin
FIFTEEN = Rasputin himself realizes the game is over
SIXTEEN = A brief debate on the morality of deadly violence
SEVENTEEN = The assassination of Rasputin at the Yusupov palace
EIGHTEEN = Rasputin’s funeral reveals Alexandra's nasty side, but it opens a new historical era
The film was made in 1975, but not released until 1985. It had been gathering dust on the shelves for ten years because Goskino [State agency in control of Soviet film making and distribution] would not allow its release.
"AGONIIA" refers to “death agonies” or "death throes", the final moments before death. The film thus portrays the Russian Empire in its final death agonies. The film concentrates on a symbolic and most famous symptom of mortal disease gripping the old regime, namely, Grigorii Rasputin. The squalor, corruption and petty opportunism of the imperial elite, the suffering of the peasant soldiers, the puzzlement of the weakling tsar, the strength but also the spiritual gullibility of his zealous wife, and other infestations are portrayed in fictional and historical footage.
The assassination of Rasputin is the most dramatic event, but the central motivating event is a Russian military disaster at Baranovichi, an important rail intersection about 100 miles northeast of the Polish/Belarus border. Until the summer of 1915, Baranovichi was the location of Russian General Headquarters [GHQ]. Russian losses forced the relocation of GHQ about 100 miles further northeast at Mogilev. From scene FOUR on, the film reveals the way in which various speculators and profiteers seek to recapture Baranovichi, at whatever the price in peasant soldiers, thus to promote their various shady enterprises, even in the face of strong objection from the most important commanders at the front. They manipulate Rasputin and certain tsarist officials into a position of persuading Nicholas II to launch an ill-advised attack to recoup Baranovichi. The result is a horrible and deadly failure. The movie sets the Baranovichi disaster in the fall of 1916. Rasputin was killed that December.
It should be noted that “HISTORICAL FOOTAGE” sometimes means Klimov's black and white imitations of original film footage. One of the esthetic features of the film is its revivification of historical footage by mixing “movie footage”, made to seem old, with actual historical footage. The audience’s identification with Klimov's fictional footage carries over to a new way of seeing the old material. A clever mix of original and fabricated historical film occurs near the end of the film when a series of group portraits makes the terrible loss in human life and human enterprise in 1914-1916 subtly but painfully obvious.
For Soviet viewers, this brought a dimension of the pre-Soviet period to life in a new and very useful way. Many commented on the way in which Nicholas II was treated with sympathy. Reaching toward an even more remote interpretive possibility, the film suggests that Rasputin was perhaps "more to be pitied than blamed". It could be said that the closest thing to a "hero" in this film is the reactionary politician and assassin Vladimir Purishkevich, and the closest thing to villains would be the shady cabal of war profiteers.
There exists a release of this film titled simply RASPUTIN. This faulty release concentrates "blame" or "credit" on the single figure Rasputin. The most important issue excluded in this faulty release is the expose of the military/industrial grafters and their efforts to manipulate religious and patriotic feelings in the tsarist court and in society at large in order to line their own pockets, as in scenes TWO, FOURTEEN, FIFTEEN, and SIXTEEN.
ONE = An overture with suggestion of main themes
The film opens with HISTORICAL FOOTAGE of the 1913 celebration of the 300th anniversary of Romanov rule in Russia, as well as other turn-of-the-century footage, and we witness scenes from the calamitous World War One and revolutionary disorder on Russian streets. In one historical scene, soldiers march past with their commander, the giant Grand Prince Nikolai Nikolaevich at their side.
The credits roll by with the sound of a schmaltzy light waltz tune, reminiscent of the light-hearted, pre-world-war-one epoch. The waltz continues as a royal family skating party is under way. The Empress Alexandra (in striped fur cap) is pushed in a small sled to the party. We meet Emperor Nicholas II painting at the edge of the outdoor ice rink. President of the State Duma Mikhail Vladimirovich Rodzianko delivers a brave report to Nicholas [actually 1912fe26].
Like an opera overture, this scene predicts the major themes of the movie = a failing war effort, a throne in jeopardy, a political opposition ready to take advantage of weakness at the top, and, of course, Rasputin.
The Tsar expresses his confidence in God. But Rodzianko replies, “God gives us nothing." We see the tsarist children throwing snowballs at a soldier standing with his back to a wall like someone subjected to an execution by firing squad (an eerie premonition of how the tsarist family would meet its end in 1918).
"Get rid of him”, says Rodzianko.
"Get rid of whom?" Nicholas asks.
“Get rid of him”, Rodzianko repeats. He refers to Rasputin. Tsarina Alexandra strains with apprehension to hear what is being said. Nicholas declares the meeting over, saying that his family affairs do not concern others. But Rodzianko won’t let the topic drop. He shows scurrilous cartoons of Rasputin with high-ranking women, including a scandalous cartoon depicting Nicholas II, Alexandra and Rasputin "partying". Rodzianko emphasizes that this "trash", as Nicholas calls it, circulates everywhere, even to the provinces and soldiers at the front. Nicholas shrugs this off, saying "my people love me".
HISTORICAL FOOTAGE = Late 19th-century, early 20th-century scenes of life in Imperial Russia, mainly the 1913 celebration of the 300th anniversary of Romanov rule. The footage includes some of the world’s oldest moving film footage, for example, the 1894 coronation of Nicholas II. The narrator relates how a deadly stampede (not depicted) killed many onlookers at this event, a bad portent of things to come. Then portraits of past Romanov tsars quickly account the history of the dynasty since 1613. Among these we see some of the most powerful and effective rulers known to European history = Aleksei Mikhailovich, Peter I, Catherine II, Alexander I and Alexander II. These offer a serious contrast with Nicholas II.
Brief review of some revolutionary events (a Soviet
cultural imperative, but not included in the release of the film titled RASPUTIN) = Razin,
Pugachev, the
Decembrists,
Narodnaia volia [People’s Will], and the
1905 Revolution. It is notable that no
version of the film emphasizes the rise of Marxist revolutionary parties in these earlier years.
TWO = War profiteers influence state policy via Anna Vyrubova and Rasputin
[YouTube]
Three people -- Minister Ivan Manasevich-Manuilov (ex-police agent and infamous petty grafter, now a member of Rasputin's inner circle), Prime Minister Ivan Goremykin and Anna Vyrubova (lady-in-waiting at tsarist quarters, author of memoirs available on the internet) -- walk through the snow across the minister's landed estate. Manasevich and Vyrubova are trying to convince Goremykin to approve something like a lucrative non-bid war contract to supply mineral water to troops at the front.
"A million rubles for foo-foo?" the Prime Minister asks the two opportunists. This deal, as it turns out, also requires the state to construct a railroad to the Manasevich private estate and its private mineral springs, all at public expense.
A peasant laborer looks up from a muddy well. He wears a gasmask, that quintessential symbol of modern mechanized war. He spoons cloudy mineral water samples for the wily schemers. Anna rejects the drink with prissy disdain.
The scene establishes the role of Rasputin as a person who can promote the interests of military procurement thugs. This is so because he has spiritual influence in high circles. [Rasputin is either a knowing and willing accomplice or perhaps only a naively unconscious ally of utterly cynical war profiteers who care little whether the war is being won or lost. These insider grafters find that religion and patriotism serve them as useful devices to fatten their own purses.] Rasputin is able to influence business arrangements that bring great profit to certain individuals.
Goremykin is no angel, but he resists. He observes that there is no bread at the front; why strain to supply mineral water? Goremykin is not yet persuaded. He is warned that Rasputin thinks it is a good idea.
HISTORICAL FOOTAGE = Typhus. Coffins carried to cemetery on wagons. Maybe this is a dream. The tinkling of wagon bells blends into the ringing of Goremykin's phone. It's now the middle of the night and Goremykin is asleep in bed.
Picking up his phone, Goremykin hears raucous music in the background. The caller is at a wild party and apparently drunk. Goremykin concludes that the caller is Rasputin [but was it?]. Whoever it is, he confirms the mineral water deal and threatens Goremykin if he doesn't help the sordid cause. Goremykin, in a sweat, accedes.
Through photos, we catch up with how Rasputin came to this vital position
wrangling big war-contract deals. We learn about the khlisty
(flagellant sect that sprang forth out of the sweaty, late-imperial Orthodox
spiritual/religious environment), a pilgrimage to Mt. Athos (a monastic center,
most holy in the Orthodox tradition, located on a Greek peninsula on the Aegean
Sea), and Rasputin's memoirs, "My Thoughts and Reflections" (about his trip to
Jerusalem). Soon Rasputin finds his way to Petersburg. There follows a review of
all the clairvoyants and charlatans who where granted access to, and influence
over, the Russian imperial throne
THREE = Nicholas II flees a meeting with his ministers, sees his ill son, and retreats to the darkroom
Nicholas II meets with cabinet members and military commanders in a war-room with maps on all walls and manikin soldiers on guard. Interior Minister Aleksei Khvostov advises the arrest of all political opposition, suppression of dissent, and dissolution of the State Duma (an elected parliamentary body). Prime Minister Goremykin argues instead for patience and tact. At this point the film is establishing the significant distinction between radical and corrupt right-wingers (as per Khvostov) and more traditional, however extreme, conservatives (as per Goremykin). Both agree in their strong advice to Nicholas = It's time to make a firm decision. Nicholas smokes his cigarette with the long cardboard mouthpiece [traditional Russian papirosa] and reacts in micro-expressions of pain. Minister of War General Polivanov delivers grim news from the front and brags about executing soldiers for misbehavior.
[YouTube]
As the general describes how soldiers are deserting the trenches, Nicholas himself "deserts" the briefing. He slips behind one of the maps and out of the room, down a long drab corridor to tsarist family quarters.
Here we see Rasputin, soothing the hemophiliac son (the tsarevich, oldest male heir to the throne). Anna Vyrubova and Empress Aleksandra look on. Rasputin rubs the boy's thickly bandaged knee. The boy's eyes open. Everyone is relieved. They hardly acknowledge that the Emperor Nicholas II has just entered the room.
Rasputin, Aleksandra and Anna simply turn their backs on Nicholas and rush away, carrying the miraculously cured boy from the room. Nicholas II steps toward them, tripping lightly on a magnificent steel model of a railroad locomotive. He bends to move it out of the way.
In a little piping voice, the young heir to the throne, only just restored to consciousness by the miracle-working holy man, orders, "Stop it. Don't touch [my locomotive]".
Emperor and tsar Nicholas II has just been snubbed, then rudely reprimanded in his own quarters. He reacts like a whipped dog. [Is the spoiled brat also taking advantage of Nicholas' famous weakness, unwittingly in league with Rasputin to enthrall and dominate the royal household?]
Still dazed by the scold, Nicholas is then startled by Alexandra's return to the room in a rapturous mood. The crisis has passed. The Savior has seen us through again. She bows before an icon of Rasputin and prays in Russian, transitioning into German/Danish.
Nicholas again deserts the scene. In the war room and in family quarters, Nicholas has been emotionally shaken. Vyrubova sighs, "God help us all to survive moral decline. Goremykin accepts bribes". From the narrow passage, Nicholas peaks at Goremykin in the briefing room one more time, then slinks down the long hall to his darkroom.
He settles in the isolated darkroom. He takes a stiff drink of vodka and proceeds under a dreadful red light to develop photos of the happy royal family. Something crashes. Another drink of vodka.
HISTORICAL FOOTAGE = Earlier revolutionary events (Bloody
Sunday, 1905 [ID], then further flashback to Russo-Japanese War with the tones
of the Orthodox liturgy as soundtrack), all
under the lurid red light of the darkroom.
FOUR = Big party and high politics at the cabaret "Villa Rode"
This may well be the party from which someone, presumably Rasputin, phoned Goremykin. [This must be the infamous cabaret "Villa Rode" where separate rooms were set aside for Rasputin to dance and sing with gypsies. This was a favorite night spot for the financial elite of Petersburg.] Party scenes are intercut with historical footage.
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Rasputin seems genuinely given to the pleasures of dancing and carousing with gypsies, but unscrupulous businessmen are busy there making deals. We witness some haggling over Baranovichi property. High ranking politicians also conspire there. Millionaire I. P. Manus refuses to buy Baranovichi "futures", but the wily banker D. A. Rubinshtein makes an offer, so Manus jumps back into the haggle.
M. M. Andronnikov (a Rasputin associate and messenger-boy for power elites, sometimes called "kniaz' klop" [Prince Bedbug] or "Pobirushka" [Beggar-girl]) threatens to have a cabaret waiter sent to the front if he doesn't immediately fetch Rasputin from his drunken frolic.
Rasputin reluctantly leaves a gypsy woman to crawl along the hallways into Interior Minister Aleksei Khvostov's private dining room to talk with Khvostov and Andronnikov. Andronnikov passes on to Rasputin a substantial bribe. They discuss the weakness of Prime Minister Goremykin and the need to find someone (hint, hint) to replace him. [Here we learn that it is not enough in these stinking times to be an unwavering conservative and loyal patriot, as was Goremykin. One had to be part of the community of malfeasance to survive.]
The party rages on. Rasputin is clearly wasted by drink. He assaults a beautiful woman, Baroness Sasha Akilina. The Baron, her husband, sees what's happening and pushes his way through the amused crowd, down the elaborate staircase, and strikes Rasputin. The crowd nearly kills the Baron for his attack on this holy figure.
[YouTube]
As a riot spills onto the street, the mistress of high-ranking tsarist official Boris Shtiurmer, L. V. Nikitina, herself the daughter of the commander of the Peter-Paul Fortress, whisks Rasputin away. She takes him to Shtiurmer's apartments. Anna Vyrubova accompanies them. The car stops along the way to allow a column of wagons and soldiers to pass, apparently from the trenches to hospitals. Sullen soldiers are framed in glare of bright headlights.
What follows at Shtiurmer's is another example, as in the meeting between Rasputin and Khvostov, in which Rasputin is pressured to influence a significant government appointment, and in which it is clear that Rasputin, on his own account, sizes up ambitious claimants.
Shtiurmer makes a comical self-presentation, quoting Fedor Tiutchev and rhapsodizing about the Slav soul. Rasputin interrupts Shtiurmer soaring at such lofty heights. Rasputin puts a question from the gutter = "Who are you? German? Are you going to steal?" Everyone laughs.
Shtiurmer is for a moment flummoxed but quickly comes to his own defense and bursts forth with the well-known Russian folk song "Step' da step' krugom" ["In all directions the steppes recede...", a song about a doomed carriage driver, stymied in a blizzard]. He projects his song out an open window onto the troubled, dawning streets below.
Rasputin advises Shtiurmer to be patient. He will be Prime
Minister. Then Rasputin moves close with a threat. He will break Shtiurmer's back
if he doesn't fall into line. [Shtiurmer did, indeed, replace Goremykin in
February, 1916.]
FIVE = Certain high-ranking persons chafe under these circumstances
The next scene introduces three important future conspirators against Rasputin, Prince Feliks Yusupov, Grand Prince Dmitrii Pavlovich (a member of the royal family), and Lieutenant Sukhotin. Yusupov is heir to one of the greatest Russian fortunes and an active member of the highest social circles in the Empire. Prince Yusupov and Grand Prince Dmitrii meet at the Badmaev sanatorium while the upright Lieutenant waits at the wheel of Yusupov's car.
The sanatorium is a curious gathering of high-society "naturopaths", a sort of eccentric faith healing assembly. The event is held in what appears to be a barn filled with well-dressed "patients" seeking wondrous healing. Petr Badmaev, the "Owl", a Tibetan Buddhist faith healer of Buriat family origins, is in charge. He recommends breathing vapors off manure. That's what makes the Russian peasant so healthy, he asserts. [Badmaev specialized in herbal treatments for male impotence. He was a widely connected and shady business dealer, as well as a quack.]
As the healing session continues, Yusupov tells the Grand Prince that he is going into exile forever. Why? Rasputin has asked to meet Yusupov’s wife Irina, and everyone knows what that means. Yusupov's gaze fixes on the pitiful eyes of a suffering (manure-producing) animal. Yusupov fears he is losing his mind. He knows they must decide to act against Rasputin.
[YouTube]
The Grand Prince stares at an axe on the floor. It will mean blood. Do we know anyone up to that? Military aide Sukhotin waits at Yusupov's car, as if ready to answer that question.
All patients are asked to "take a deep breath". The Grand Prince inhales an unnatural volume of air into his lungs, then toots out a romping hymn between tightened lips.
HISTORICAL FOOTAGE = artificial limbs. Cripples go to Grand Princes Mariia Pavlovna’s
workshop to be fitted out. [Mariia Pavlovna is Grand Prince Dmitrii Pavlovich’s sister.]
SIX = Rasputin at full steam
The next scene is a complex one, set at 62 Gorokhovaya ulitsa in Petrograd, Rasputin’s home. Beautiful Baroness Sasha Akilina, earlier assaulted by Rasputin and now dressed as if for a funeral, passes through a crowd of supplicants and job seekers lined up at Rasputin’s door. She feels compelled to go to Rasputin because her husband slapped Rasputin’s face in public. Now she must give herself to Rasputin in compensation, in order to be "forgiven" by the divinely inspired holy man.
Rasputin is at his desk, busy handing out positions, favors and other bits of direction and advice. High and low, all have gone to rot and are in line to seek favors from this holy man with insider influence. When Andronnikov breaks in to report on threatening developments in the State Duma, a man in line protests he’s been waiting since Tuesday. Rasputin drives him out.
Raputin’s “civilian” associates are political schemers and opportunists, cashing in on the war, and they fear elected Duma delegates might expose them, spoil their rackets and drive them away from their profits. They report that the Duma, which they call a pig sty, may launch an official investigation of them. The Duma must be neutralized, they say.
A secretary reminds Rasputin that, again, there is a singing woman on the phone. [We will hear this woman again and be confirmed in our apprehension that she is a siren.] He listens in rapture to the singing on the phone while, behind him, a follower paces, a woman with moustache and beard. Rasputin feeds other women who are seated around the phone, hand to mouth, a sultry profanation of the Holy Communion.
He then sees Akilina waiting and all in black. The sound of a small and simple church choir can be heard in the background. Rasputin and Akilina retire to his room. A raucous pop jazz record replaces the sound of the choir.
Akilina undresses to the sound of typing from the adjoining reception room. A cuckoo clock chimes. Rasputin suddenly falls back from her, accusing her of being Satan.
[YouTube]
He staggers from his room to the table where the women sit. "Write", he orders. "God is love; hate is death." [Rasputin was famous for his numerous little notes bearing conventional, sometimes ambiguous homiletics of this sort. These were highly prized possessions among Petersburg ladies of fashion, often kept in lockets next to the heart.]
In the kitchen he enchants a squawking chicken. [Or has he throttled it in some crafty peasant manner?]
Rasputin speaks with the Tsarina by phone. She is returning his call. She is frightened. He seeks to soothe her. He reports his dream, a divine dream with which he manipulates the credulous and gullible Tsarina. He is full of “faith-based” advice, and Alexandra needs this badly. He dreamed two rainbows, one over the Tsar, the other over the Duma. These rainbows intersected to form a Christian cross. He urges the Tsar to appear before the State Duma, to confront his enemies directly. God is with him.
Vyrubova looks on in amazement.
This scene is split to show Nicholas as he appeared before the Duma. Great ceremonial expression of patriotism surrounds Nicholas. It is a political triumph. For this moment, Tsar and Duma are one. [Was the influence of Rasputin occasionally positive?]
Some time later, but a thematic part of this one long scene, Anna Vyrubova gathers more political advice from Rasputin. She is reading from a list of names recommended for appointment to the State Council. The list was submitted by Buddhist mystic Badmaev. Rasputin offers a series of quick, rash judgments on several important figures listed there and hands out recommendations [but in fact he recommends only a portion of the longer list drawn up by Badmaev].
With the list business completed, Anna tells Rasputin that the phone conversation with the Tsarina left a strong impression on her. Did he really have such a dream of two rainbows making a cross? Rasputin replies that whether he told Empress Alexandra the truth about his dream, or not, the results are good.
Still, Anna fears the consequences of Nicholas' weakness. Alexandra leads him. Vyrubova asks, "What happens if they lose faith in you?" Rasputin assures her that they (Rasputin and Vyrubova) lead the Tsar together.
Anna urges him to go to the Tsarina, bring a miracle. Do something mystical. Rasputin at this point slaps his right hand against his open left hand at his knee, then slaps the back of his head. He repeats this hand-jive, setting up a staccato tattoo in a rhythm that imitates iron being shaped in a forge, or under the hammer of a skilled village smithy. He jabs the hammered hand into his footbath, making a percussive hiss with his mouth, imitating the sound of red-hot iron being tempered. He brandishes the tempered fist. "Put this up your ass", he growls. [Does this action also remind us of his association with Khlysty (flagellants)?] He sees himself as a mighty power. What would the great folks do without him. If he were not here, "whom would you blame?"
But he wants to go back to the village and smell the grass. [We are given some indication that Rasputin might be some sort of country bumpkin and scoundrel who is being maneuvered into this perilous situation by greedy, high-class profiteers and their associates. Is he just a simple country boy? We are, however, given some indication that he knows perfectly well what he is doing.]
The door bursts open, and one of Rasputin's female aides drags into the room the mustachioed hermaphrodite we saw earlier = "She is stealing underwear again".
Even insider Anna is caught in Rasputin’s spell. She asks, is god with him right this moment? Rasputin falls back in apparent fear.
[YouTube]
He grabs and smashes a holy icon. This blasphemous tantrum arouses Anna. Rasputin replies to her question with old-testament phraseology, deeply intoned. He affirms that he is with God. He even suggests he is “channeling” God. [Is this profound derangement or elaborate hoax?]
A secretary enters the room at this awkward moment with a big wad of rubles in his
hand. He asks if they take torn banknotes. Rasputin says, “We take them all”.
SEVEN = The war profiteers are a sordid lot
HISTORICAL FOOTAGE = People riot on the streets (actually scenes from old Soviet-era movies about riots). Then scenes of village hunger and suffering. Now only the people can decide their own destiny.
A cabbie complains when a millionaire war profiteer pays only 15 of 20 kopecks owed as full fare. The cabbie dropped off the millionaire at the banya [baths]. It appears to be Badmaev's Tibetan-style sanatorium. In the curative baths "merchants of death" continue to haggle as they had at the cabaret Villa Rode. Baranovichi has been captured by the German army, and the cheapskate millionaire has lost his property.
Badmaev, standing among idle camels in the yard, talks to Rasputin. He says he hasn’t slept in three days because of his "karma". Behind all this, we can again hear that mysterious phone-lady singing. Badmaev describes visions of barany [sheep] being herded (perhaps to slaughter). It makes him think of Baranovichi and the need for military action there. Here we see the conman conning the conman.
But Rasputin surprises us (or deceives us) with his naive sincerity. The fortunes of profiteering associates hang on the balance of this decision. Badmaev toys with the thought that the weakling Nicholas ought to be deposed in favor of his son, under Alexandra's regency. Rasputin dislikes such talk. "Don't touch the Tsar." [We sense division growing between the "holy fool" or "mad monk" Rasputin and his "handlers", the insider grafters like Badmaev.]
There's that phone-lady and her intriguing song again. Rasputin heads off to see
the singing woman. Badmaev whispers instructions to his aide (in Buriat?), "Tell them he is on his way".
EIGHT = The Orthodox Church and others try to shut Rasputin down
Rasputin goes to see the singing woman who has for some time taunted him over the phone.
[YouTube]
He preaches to her that sin is like a thorn. Once it is pulled from the flesh, it is no longer a sin. She has no time for thorn talk. She is but a lure, given the assignment some time back to bring Rasputin into the grasp of angry Orthodox Church leaders.
Several Church officials appear from behind screens. They accuse Rasputin of his many crimes, being a Khlyst (flagellant), among other irregular behavior. “Cast the lecher from the church”. His accusers insist that he sign an oath never to go to the royal palace again. Rasputin is roughed up badly. A strange and beastly, half-dressed creature of a man aids Church officials as they administer physical punishment. [The film gives us no reason to think the Church can help much in Russia's darkest hour. Church officials are apparently at the beck and call of war profiteers like Badmaev. who helped arrange this ambush.]
Rasputin awakens from his beating. Badmaev is at the head of the bed. Rasputin tries to call the Tsarina, but the Winter Palace switchboard will not put through his call. Badmaev tells him he is a dog and will die like a dog. Rasputin orders his car, but it has been taken from him.
He stumbles from his sickbed. An associate, sitting on the floor, fumbles a pile of papers as Rasputin dresses in beggars’ rags. He peels the false moustache and beard from the face of the androgynous woman lying also on the floor. This all has to come to an end.
He crosses a bridge over the wide Neva on a lonely pilgrimage to the Tsar and Tsarina themselves.
[An impression is mounting that the famous and sophisticated Russian religious renaissance in the early 20th century [ID] had this back side = gullibility, credulity, spiritual charlatanism, clairvoyancy, magic, thaumaturgy, mystagoguery, and miraculous idiocy (these words from Fűlöp-Miller, Rasputin:125). This was the generation of Vladimir Solov'ev, but it was also the generation of Madame Blavatsky.]
Perhaps the desire to believe knows no restraints, knows no bounds. Rasputin
heads out now to test that transcendent possibility to the fullest =
NINE = Even Nicholas II turns against him, but Rasputin wins the Emperor back
In private tsarist quarters, Vyrubova appeals to Tsarina Alexandra to allow Rasputin to come see her, but Nicholas refuses to let this happen. He denounces Rasputin. The Tsarina is ill in bed, but defends Rasputin. Nicholas says that Rasputin is no friend. He is an associate of those who conspire against the royal family. Anna, defensively, calls all those accusations nothing more than intrigue. Is Vyrubova correcting the Emperor? Nicholas surprises us. He seems on the verge of discovering some courage and firmness.
Meanwhile, approaching the tsarist residence, Rasputin rolls through a shallow mud hole, preparing himself to present a more persuasive repentance.
None of that should have any effect because Nicholas has decided to send Rasputin out of Petersburg. He is beginning to act as Nicholas the Emperor, not Nicholas or "Nikki" the weak husband or tormented father.
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Just then self-abasing Rasputin appears at the lacy bedside, all covered with drippy mud. He offers clever holy blessings, playing on the maternal and religious vulnerabilities of the Tsarina. His blessings rise in pitch to a rant, but they are always cleverly focused on the Tsarina's familial and spiritual anxieties. We are at the heart of a very pathetic confusion of roles, parent or leader of a vast nation, loving mother and father of one sick child or monarchs with the fate of millions in their hands. Pathetic and tragic, a confusion in which selfish miscreants of all sorts flourish, with no concern for sick child or the millions, admitting only an emotional, super celestial commitment to God and patriotism.
HISTORICAL FOOTAGE = church towers being pulled down in the Soviet era of militant atheism. [Does this suggest that Rasputin’s words are predictions of disaster if his counsel is not heeded? More likely this suggests that simple-minded religious credulity has a natural parallel in simple-minded godless atheism. With these scenes of future despoliation of the Church, does the film identify the oozy religious atmosphere of the late-tsarist period as the matrix out of which the painful and militant atheist policy of the Soviet Union arose?]
Rasputin falls in a holy fit, speaking in tongues. We again see a vision of lambs being herded in wild lines, again hinting at imminent slaughter. Nicholas falls back. He is losing his resolve to banish Rasputin. Vyrubova leans over prostrate, babbling Rasputin and reports that he has said “Baranovichi”. Nicholas interprets this inspired word as advice about where to launch the next great military offensive against the Germans.
Aleksandra rises from her sickbed and approaches him with a menacing stare = "Nikki, Yes. Yes, Nikki".
[Now that Nicholas has assumed supreme command himself, he needs
a strategy. The foaming prophet, as "interpreted" by the scheming lady-in-waiting and enforced by the domineering
wife, has just given him one.]
TEN = Rasputin’s influence sends the Russian army into disaster
HISTORICAL FOOTAGE = Troops at front
Mogilev, GHQ (steam engine sounds in background). Experienced generals, Mikhail Alekseev and Aleksei Brusilov, for example, argue against an offensive on good technical grounds. The attack would have to pass through a swamp. German guns were well concentrated on the path of the attack. Other generals refuse to risk contradicting their emperor and express a readiness to obey, whatever Nicholas suggests. Russian soldiers would be slaughtered in massive numbers. "What do you mean, 'massive'?" Nicholas asks. Nicholas shrugs off the problem of massive casualties. "This is war, after all."
The Tsar takes a walk in the wintry woods. He initiates a senseless crow shoot with heavy gauge shotguns. Bloody birds in the snow are a premonition of bloody soldiers [Why would this troubling scene be removed from the version of the film intended for "the West" and named RASPUTIN?] =
HISTORICAL FOOTAGE = Orthodox priests bless troops. A priest
chants the Orthodox liturgy in background. Ultimate sacrifice of life and limb
for the good cause was here blessed and thus validated by the Orthodox Church.
ELEVEN = High ranking conspirators decide to kill Rasputin
[YouTube]
Man enters room and shoots. Conspirators practice for the assassination of Rasputin. They plan to carry it out soon in one of the Yusupov Palaces, this one on the Moika Canal in Petersburg. Images of Yusupov Palace = [W#1 | W#2 | W#3 | W#4 | W#5]
Conspirators prepare cakes, fruit, Madeira wine, all laced with potassium
cyanide poison. They take an oath together to carry out the
assassination. The active conspirators are Prince Yusupov, Grand Prince Dmitrii,
conservative Duma deputy Vladimir Purishkevich, and Dr. Lazavert
(an associate of Purishkevich's charitable project to provide medical treatment
of war wounded in a Red-Cross railroad hospital shuttling back and forth from the front).
TWELVE = Back in his village, Rasputin alienates everyone, then learns of military catastrophe
Rasputin returns to his village Pokrovskoe in Tobol'sk guberniia, Siberia. [Suddenly it’s summer, but this is not the first chronological bump in the film.] He stands in the teamster's box to urge his wagon forward in a headlong race against another wagon driven by a peasant woman. The wagons are filled with both high society ladies and peasant women. Anna Vyrubova is on the excursion. The two wagons race along a bumpy lane through the Siberian forest. The peasant-driven cart passes Rasputin. Shouts echo into the distance between tall trees.
Rasputin walks through a barn to join a feast that is laid out on a narrow and long Russian-style banquet table, hastily constructed of wood planks. Peasants and high aristocrats sit together. Rasputin's peasant wife, his son and two daughters as well sit at the head of the table. Rasputin takes a sumptuous white hat from the head of one fine lady and places in on the head of a very uncertain, reluctant peasant woman. Villagers react coolly to Rasputin. They are uncomfortable with the easy and all-too-familiar mixing of remote social types, "high and low".
One elder speaks out to call Rasputin a thief. You’ve always been one and you’re one now, he says. He accuses Rasputin of stealing hard-made fishing poles years before. Rasputin goes on a rampage.
As always, Rasputin is being tailed by spies. This time it is his favorite, Terekhov, in disguise. Terekhov intercepts an important message sent to Rasputin, but Rasputin hunts him down like a dog to retrieve the message. Vyrubova has to read it to the semi-literate holy man. The message says that "the wolf has slaughtered the innocent lambs" at Baranovichi [offensive has failed].
Now the prophet has been terminally dishonored, and he knows it. Even fellow villagers have shut him out. He seeks forgiveness.
HISTORICAL FOOTAGE = Dumping the war dead. This footage is
mixed with scenes of self-abasing Rasputin, now alienated everywhere. Only the young village boy,
his son, attends him and crows like a rooster. Rasputin says "I hate everyone". Dogs eat the dead at the front.
THIRTEEN = Now everyone, including conservatives in the Duma, are after
Rasputin’s hide
[YouTube]
At a meeting of the State Duma, even right-wing deputies sound the alarm. These are not radicals. In fact they cheer when they are reminded that the Bolshevik deputes to the Third Duma have been expelled.
Purishkevich is featured delivering an impassioned attack on government policy, a speech carried on the radio. Things are turning toward revolution, he says. (We are deliciously aware that he is himself a sworn member of the group planning to murder Rasputin at the Yusupov palace.) The autocracy is in peril. Rasputin is the cause. Purishkevich attacks ministers seated to the left of the rostrum. They reply in confidence that only the tsar can appoint ministers. But Purishkevich continues = Those who love the Tsar and Russia must throw themselves at the feet of the Tsar and plead that he send Rasputin away. He's worse than the Germans. Wild applause in Duma.
Nicholas listens on the radio and is much grieved. He sees the truth of these attacks, as he saw it earlier when he tried to have Rasputin sent from Petrograd. Earlier, religious hysteria overwhelmed his good judgment. What might he do now? Events intervened before history would learn the answer.
HISTORICAL FOOTAGE (actually still photos) = Series of
photos of pre-revolutionary Russian groups, volunteer societies, unions, university
faculty, workers, dead soldiers, men in prison, bodies on ground, etc..... This
is a rich world of human endeavor betrayed and utterly destroyed by a religion-crazed, rotten and militaristic old
regime. Here we see 26 group portraits, a résumé of a modernizing Russian
society of 1916, in the months before history ate them all up.
FOURTEEN = Even war profiteers lose faith in Rasputin
War profiteers are running scared. Andronnikov and a millionaire war-profiteer gather at Rasputin’s place. Their schemes are under assault. Manasevich-Manuilov has been arrested. A woman sings a folk song and strums a five-string guitar, while naked women move around the darkened room. Rasputin slinks out of the darkness.
HISTORICAL FOOTAGE = A giant bell utters a deep sonorous squeak as it begins to swing on its axle, that squeak a premonition of the booming tone that will follow when the great clapper works up to the lip.
Profiteers and schemers urge Rasputin once again to act in such a way as to promote their greedy ambitions. [At least for the moment, Rasputin has been stunned, if not fully chastened, by Baranovichi failure.] Rasputin responds to pleas with religious mumble that fails to comfort his skeptical henchmen. In their minds, religion has nothing to do with their purposes. Rasputin, as religious figure, means nothing to them. To them, he is only an instrument of their sordid ambitions.
HISTORICAL FOOTAGE = Prison door opens
Andronnikov gets Shtiurmer on the phone. He tries to get Rasputin to talk to Shtiurmer, to make the arrangements they require of the government. Rasputin won't talk. A henchman grabs the phone and imitates the crude foulmouthed Rasputin in making demands that the Prime Minister do their dirty business. He brings an abrupt end to the conversation and recommends to the assembled schemers that a new prime minister was needed. [That voice imitating Rasputin -- have we heard it on the phone before?]
Rasputin does not like what he has just seen of himself in this impersonation. Rasputin begins to understand that he has been the dupe of these war profiteers.
[YouTube]
HISTORICAL FOOTAGE = Drawbridge over the Neva begins to open (symbol = too late to cross)
Rasputin nonetheless finally agrees. Who should be the new Prime Minister? Never mind, says Rasputin, I'll just put down an X, and you decide later. He cries out for Anna. He senses that the jig is up. He breaks out of his own rooms in search of Vyrubova.
Nicholas II orders the military by phone to shoot down street demonstrators.
FIFTEEN = Rasputin himself realizes the game is over
Rasputin flees along wintry Petersburg streets and up cold back allies. Hooded crows circle overhead and caw. He hears riots on streets. No one will let him in. Smug Petersburgers, noses to glass doors and windows, look out on the rising revolution and the desperate, disheveled holy man. [Angry mobs and a desperate spiritual refugee, two different sorts of disorder, both loose in the city.] Rasputin runs across the frozen Neva. We see the Peter-Paul fortress in background. He gestures with left hand toward the Winter Palace and with right hand at rioters. He grunts incomprehensible blessings or curses. Purishkevich looks out, through windows, at the raving religious freak.
HISTORICAL FOOTAGE = Rioting crowds on Petersburg streets
SIXTEEN = A brief debate on the morality of deadly violence
A small gathering at a private residence discusses the Russian crisis. Marxist delegate to the State Duma, P. N. Balashov, acknowledges that Nicholas II is incompetent, but he predicts chaos without him. He sees that if Nicholas is blamed for all this malfeasance and failure, then autocracy falls, if autocracy falls, Russia falls. Anarchy, chaos, the abyss will follow.
Vasilii Maklakov says violence is immoral.
[Yet this punctilious moderate member of the KD Party supplied the potassium cyanide that would be inserted
into cakes and wine to poison Rasputin.] You cannot achieve a moral society with immoral acts, said Maklakov.
He found an excuse not to take part in the actual murder.
SEVENTEEN = The assassination of Rasputin at the Yusupov palace
Rasputin at the Yusupov palace stares at a portrait of the gorgeous Irina Yusupova. His dissolute face is reflected in the glass over the portrait. Feliks Yusupov pushes cakes, zakuski and wine at him. Here, eat, drink. But Rasputin is thinking only of Yusupov’s wife. Gramaphone in background plays an odd combination of "Dixie" and "Yankee Doodle". Rasputin finally starts to eat poisoned cakes and drink poisoned Madeira. He complains that Madeira is not very good. Yusupov fears the poison is not working. He excuses himself to go upstairs. "Bring back your wife," says Rasputin. Yusupov is waivering.
[YouTube]
Co-conspirators fake big party upstairs. Yusupov reports that the potassium cyanide is not working. Conspirators start to fall apart. Grand Prince Dmitrii seeks to flee.
But wait, is that the sound of Rasputin coming upstairs? Yes, but he is failing. Purishkevich urges calm and resolution. Yusupov grabs a pistol, hides it behind his back, and leads the unstable Rasputin back to the basement. [The conspirators had decided against use of pistols except as last resort. A police station was across the way from the Yusupov Palace.] Rasputin was beginning to see through the plot, but Feliks shoots him in the back as he tries to open the door out of the basement. Other conspirators appear at door as Rasputin falls to floor. Conspirators kick the apparently lifeless body. They leave to get the car. Feliks looks at body and smokes. A fine moment follows.
Rasputin breaks into the wintry December night, but the palace courtyard gate is chained shut. All but Purishkevich are unhinged by events. Purishkevich catches Rasputin in the courtyard and shoots him. Then again. And again, and again.
EIGHTEEN = Rasputin’s funeral reveals nasty side of Alexandra, but it opens a new era
Nicholas and family attend Rasputin’s funeral in his village Pokrovskoe. The coffin is lowered into a watery grave.
Empress Alexandra says, "I hate this country” [an echo of Rasputin's earlier expression of generalized hatred].
The royal family is taken away in a carriage, accompanied by wide-shouldered Circassian horsemen. Rasputin's family stands near the grave as the carriage goes around the snowy shoulder of the distant hill.
HISTORICAL FOOTAGE = 1917 Revolution. Double-headed eagle is struck from building facade.
On the 25th of October, 1917, a new history of Russia begins.
THE END
WEBSITE BIBLIOGRAPHY =
*--Correspondence
of Yusupovs, Grand Prince Dmitrii Pavlovich and others
*--Radzinsky's
Rasputin Files [excerpts]
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