DISQUS

The Viscount · 2 years ago

I saw the film when it was in theaters. I didn't see much of the nuance back then that you have so deftly described, but I liked it all the same. My friend and co-worker (who was some 25 years older,) was from the Soviet Union. He had managed to get out in the mid-seventies. I remember thinking during the movie that I couldn't wait to ask him his opinion.

"I don't like!"

"Why not?"

"It vas bullshit propaganda!"

"Really?"

"I deedn't like za way zey showed life in Soviet Union."

"Oh. Not so bad there?"

"NOT SO BAD??? IT VAS VORSE! Zey made life in Soviet Union seem LIVE-ABLE!"

Not surprisingly, while he loved it here, he had a hard time with Americans.

"In Soviet Union, we had to fight for every tiny scrap of freedom! Here, you have all za freedom in za world, and you don't appreciate. You shit on freedom as if it is vorthless!"

Dan Leo · 2 years ago

Ah, Viscount, what a great little story. For some reason this anecdote reminds me again of how I felt when I first saw photos of Americans putting hoods over prisoners' heads. How did Americans become the sort of people who put hoods over prisoners' heads? And then of course it just got worse. My WWII vet dad would have been fucking outraged.

And Lance, thanks for reminding us of this movie, which I also haven't seen in ages.

Tom Watson · 2 years ago

Great piece Lance and I think your interpretation is right on (like the Viscount, I was just munching popcorn and digging the performances 23 years ago).

I think it's definately a movie of its time - defection, so quaint, my kids wouldn't get it - but the freedom theme....Yeah, that's out there. I think Mazursky had the same theme in mind two years later with Down and Out in Beverly Hills, only instead of global politics, it was the clas/money line - ie, what's really free?

Nick Nolte's character was all about freedom - Bette Midler had none.

Lance Mannion · 2 years ago

Dan, I don't want to make too much of it, but it's a small gem of a film, if not a minor classic of the last 25 years.

Tom, I need to see Down and Out again, but you're right, it's a good companion piece to Moscow.

Viscount, it's ironic---your friend's last speech there? He sounds just like Robin Williams does in one of the later scenes in the movie. I swear Williams has a line that's close to word for word what your friend said.

I've known several people who came here from Soviet Bloc countries who had one thing in common---they couldn't stand it that nobody here hated the Soviet Union as much as they did. Of course, you couldn't hate it enough for them. Even if you agreed it was a terrible place, they got mad because you didn't sound mad enough about it.

Lance Mannion · 2 years ago

One more thing. Tom, I watched the movie with the soon to be 14 year old. He's a bit of a history buff anyway, but he'd also recently studied the Cold War in school, so the defection plot, even the facts of life behind the Iron Curtain, resonated with him.

I suppose it's like asking how well do you have to understand why all those people are waiting around Casablanca for the plane to Lisbon. But I think the movie itself teaches the lesson it needs us to know in order to follow the rest of movie.

Tom Watson · 2 years ago

Oh sure, the "escape" from controlling evil and enslavement plot can work even if the political situation is far in the past, or made up (Star Wars, et al).

I think for Robin Williams, his Russky character and the fear he shows come back as a different character, but you feel the fear and the weird freedom too, as the damaged loner in the Fisher King.