Film Tsar Mikhalkov Eyes Political Role
February 23, 1999 - 0:0
MOSCOW Nikita Mikhalkov, whose epic The Barber of Siberia received a gala premiere before a star-studded audience in the Kremlin Saturday, has political ambitions that may take him far from the glitzy world of movie award ceremonies. The Oscar-winning director plays a cameo role in the film as Tsar Alexander III, boosting speculation that he may join the race to succeed Boris Yeltsin whose presidential term ends in June next year, or earlier if Yeltsin's health takes a turn for the worse.
Already a giant of the Russian film industry at 45 million dollars, The Barber of Siberia is the most expensive movie ever made in Russia Mikhalkov has long displayed signs of wanting to play a leading role on the political stage. Elected to Parliament in 1995 on the list of the pro-Yeltsin party Our Home Is Russia, then led by former Premier Viktor Chernomyrdin, he turned the seat down in order to work on his new film but joined the Yeltsin election campain a year later.
Since then he has tirelessly preached a set of conservative beliefs including the creation of a constitutional monarchy, Russian Orthodoxy and the urgent need to restore national pride. He told foreign media last month that though he had no ambitions to lead the country, he would think seriously about it if called on to stand for president. Questioned again earlier this month he said it would be immoral to discuss candidacies for the presidency while Yeltsin was still in office.
However his plan to take his latest work, a feel-good movie with a strongly patriotic theme, on a country-wide tour for screening in his own mobile cinemas will be seen as having all the hallmarks of a presidential campaign. Supporters of a Mikhalkov presidency bid could be expected to include Chernomyrdin, who as premier decided that the impoverished Russian state should put up 10 million dollars of the budget for The Barber of Siberia. With its stress on Russia's uniqueness and inherent immunity to Western ideas, the film is likely to win the director friends among the other leading members of the political establishment.
As the son of the poet Sergei Mikhalkov, who wrote the words to the Soviet national anthem under Stalin, and scion of a family whose lineage is traceable back to catherine the great, the 53-year-old Mikhalkov has impeccable patriotic credentials. From early works such as Unfinished Partition for a Mechanical Piano (1975) and Slave of Love (1976) through to Dark Eyes (1986) and beyond, his films have favoured a distinctively Chekhovian style of story-telling.
The anti-Stalinist Burnt by the Sun, which like his latest film stars Oleg Menshikov, won the 1994 academy award for best foreign film along with the grand jury prize at Cannes. Dark Eyes was acclaimed at Cannes in 1986, though missing out on the top prize, while Urga won the Golden Lion award at venice in 1991. Astute in business matters, Mikhalov set up his own highly successful production company and a tourist agency.
With the Russian film industry in deep crisis, the union of film-makers elected him in December 1997, as the only Russian director with an international reputation, to become their president, effectively the country's cultural figurehead. He thus obtained ample revenge for the humiliation undergone in 1986 when, in the early stages of Mikhail Gorbachev's Perestroika campaign, he was roundly jeered by his fellow members of the union for speaking in support of the old guard of communist film-makers.
Mikhalkov's elder brother Andrei Konchalovsky is also a prominent film-maker, the director notably of Asya (1967), which was banned by the Soviet authorities for 22 years. (AFP)
Already a giant of the Russian film industry at 45 million dollars, The Barber of Siberia is the most expensive movie ever made in Russia Mikhalkov has long displayed signs of wanting to play a leading role on the political stage. Elected to Parliament in 1995 on the list of the pro-Yeltsin party Our Home Is Russia, then led by former Premier Viktor Chernomyrdin, he turned the seat down in order to work on his new film but joined the Yeltsin election campain a year later.
Since then he has tirelessly preached a set of conservative beliefs including the creation of a constitutional monarchy, Russian Orthodoxy and the urgent need to restore national pride. He told foreign media last month that though he had no ambitions to lead the country, he would think seriously about it if called on to stand for president. Questioned again earlier this month he said it would be immoral to discuss candidacies for the presidency while Yeltsin was still in office.
However his plan to take his latest work, a feel-good movie with a strongly patriotic theme, on a country-wide tour for screening in his own mobile cinemas will be seen as having all the hallmarks of a presidential campaign. Supporters of a Mikhalkov presidency bid could be expected to include Chernomyrdin, who as premier decided that the impoverished Russian state should put up 10 million dollars of the budget for The Barber of Siberia. With its stress on Russia's uniqueness and inherent immunity to Western ideas, the film is likely to win the director friends among the other leading members of the political establishment.
As the son of the poet Sergei Mikhalkov, who wrote the words to the Soviet national anthem under Stalin, and scion of a family whose lineage is traceable back to catherine the great, the 53-year-old Mikhalkov has impeccable patriotic credentials. From early works such as Unfinished Partition for a Mechanical Piano (1975) and Slave of Love (1976) through to Dark Eyes (1986) and beyond, his films have favoured a distinctively Chekhovian style of story-telling.
The anti-Stalinist Burnt by the Sun, which like his latest film stars Oleg Menshikov, won the 1994 academy award for best foreign film along with the grand jury prize at Cannes. Dark Eyes was acclaimed at Cannes in 1986, though missing out on the top prize, while Urga won the Golden Lion award at venice in 1991. Astute in business matters, Mikhalov set up his own highly successful production company and a tourist agency.
With the Russian film industry in deep crisis, the union of film-makers elected him in December 1997, as the only Russian director with an international reputation, to become their president, effectively the country's cultural figurehead. He thus obtained ample revenge for the humiliation undergone in 1986 when, in the early stages of Mikhail Gorbachev's Perestroika campaign, he was roundly jeered by his fellow members of the union for speaking in support of the old guard of communist film-makers.
Mikhalkov's elder brother Andrei Konchalovsky is also a prominent film-maker, the director notably of Asya (1967), which was banned by the Soviet authorities for 22 years. (AFP)