This is a four-part Russian TV series about the last two years in the life of
the most important Russian tsar, Peter the Great, or Big Pete as I like to call
him. Actually, I like to call him Peter the Great by Russian Standards, a
qualification which annoys the hell out of my Russian relatives. Based on a semi-historical novel by the venerable Daniil
Granin, this series centers around Peter's relationship with
Maria Cantemir, a beautiful and well educated
young Moldavian princess who became
Peter's last mistress and possibly his greatest love, if you believe the
screenplay. According to the novel and this series, Cantemir become pregnant with Peter's child, whereupon Empress
Catherine conspired with Cantemir's physician to abort the pregnancy before
Peter could name the child as his heir.
(NOTE: The English Wikipedia page linked above offers minimal info about
Cantemir. If you want some detail about her, switch to the Russian version of
her Wikipedia page, then translate it into English.)
The story presented here is essentially a collection of all the most lurid
tidbits of gossip from the Russian court in that era. I believe it is a fair
analogy to say that this story bears the same relationship to history as the
famous BBC series "I, Claudius," in that the basic outline of the story does not
contradict what we know to be true, but the screenplay embellishes the facts and
fills in the details in the juiciest possible way. Just as with the Suetonius
version of ancient Rome presented by "I, Claudius," we aren't even very sure
that what we "know to be true" about Peter's era is actually true, because it
was not any wiser for a contemporary to print something unfavorable about Peter
the Great than it was to do so about Caligula. Most historians and journalists
prefer the fashion statement they can make with their heads attached to their
bodies. So it was in tsarist Russia, as it was in imperial Rome, that many
events were never recorded by an objective contemporary observer. This
TV series recounts, for example, the heroic tale of how Peter the Great died from an
illness he incurred by his nearly superhuman effort to save some common sailors from icy water.
Although that story is widely believed, many
historians feel that it was entirely concocted. Similarly, very little is
really known about Maria Cantemir's relationship with the Tsar, which was
conducted away from prying eyes because he was married to another woman at the
time. It is possible
that the empress ordered Peter's mistress to be poisoned, but it is also possible that
did not happen at all. Some
historians claim that the child was born, but died in early infancy,
unremarkably, as so many
children did in those days. (Peter and Catherine had eleven children over a
19-year period, of which
only two made it to adulthood, and only one of those two lived past her 21st
birthday. That one became empress of Russia some 16 years after her father died,
and ruled for more than twenty years.)
Anyway, I guess that a Russian version
of "I, Claudius" is not such a bad idea. As presented here, the machinations
of the courtiers are entertaining and often funny, Peter's mistress looks
great with her clothes off and on, and some of the revenge plots shown here
would not be out of place in a Quentin Tarantino movie. You may well enjoy
this if you value sensationalized mass entertainment over scrupulous
historical accuracy.
In Russian, with optional English sub-titles, no features.
Nudity:
Elizabeta
Boyarskaya looks and sounds fantastic as Maria Cantemir. (She has a great
speaking voice, ala Kathleen Turner.)
Irina Rozanova.
Frankly, you can skip this one. She played the elderly empress. 'Nuff said.
Some random woman got
whipped while she was topless. It is a running theme in the film, you might
even say a running joke, that people are constantly being punished and executed
in the public square for some crimes against God or Russia or both. As they
execute a seemingly endless parade of local governors and mayors, the ceremonial
executioners are perpetually reading aloud from long lists of crimes both grand
and petty. I don't know enough about the Russian sense of humor to know whether
this interminable droning of details, specifying events of wildly contrasting
gravity (like "chewing gum on line and stealing from the Tsar"), was supposed to
be funny, but these scenes closely resemble the Tuco execution scenes in The
Good the Bad and the Ugly, and I found this to be an amusing backdrop to the
story.
