April 17, 1999	atimes.com

Central Asia / Siberia The Barber of Siberia stirs controversy By Sergei Blagov MOSCOW - While nurturing political ambitions, Nikita Mikhalkov - Russia's most celebrated film actor and director - is for the time being the target of thrown eggs and accusations of plagiarism and embezzlement for his latest movie, The Barber of Siberia. Mikhalkov had apparently intended to launch his campaign for the 2000 presidential elections with the noisy release of his movie at the Kremlin last February, attended by a crowd of 4,000 - by invitation. The premiere was attended by Russian political and business elites - including Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov and Communist party leader Guennady Zyuganov - with one visible absentee: President Boris Yeltsin. Most of them refrained from comments on the film, though their mere presence could be understood as a sign of muted approval. The caution is not surprising as the movie is not just an artistic production, but also a sort of manifesto, glorifying 19th-Century tsarist Russia. Thus some observers have labeled The Barber of Siberia not only the most expensive film in the history of Russian cinema, with its $45 million budget, but also the most expensive public relations exercise by a political hopeful. The film tells the story of an American woman falling in love with a Russian officer in the late 19th Century. Twenty years later Jane Callaghan - portrayed by Britain's Julia Ormond - writes a letter to her son telling him about her trip to Russia, to assist Douglas McCracken, an engineer seeking the grand duke's patronage to support a wild invention of his, a machine to harvest the forests of Siberia. Jane then meets a young cadet, Andrei Tolstoy - played by Russia's Oleg Menshikov - and the influential general Radlov. Both Tolstoy and Radlov become obsessed with Jane. She unsuccessfully tries to balance her interests, between the young man - whom she promises to marry- and the general, who has access to the grand duke. The general, assaulted by the jealous cadet, sends him into exile in Siberia while Jane - in a touch of Socialist realism- chooses neither of them, marrying her boss instead. Decades later, Jane returns to Russia to discover that Tolstoy had settled in Siberia, in a barber's shop. The movie reunited Mikhailov's Oscar Award-winning team, including one of Europe's leading producers, Michel Seydoux, whose 1994 film Burnt by the Sun won an Oscar as Best Foreign Film. In The Barber of Siberia, set during the rule of Alexander III, Mikhailov plays a small but highly symbolic role: he rides a horse inside the Kremlin - filmed on the spot - under the tsarist insignia. Mikhalkov's was born in Moscow in 1945, into a family of long artistic traditions. His great grandfather, Vassily Surnikov and his grandfather, Piotr Konchalovsky, were both acclaimed painters. His father, Sergei Mikhalkov, a well known writer, wrote the lyrics for the Soviet national anthem. His older brother is filmmaker Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky, whose movies include Hollywood productions such as Runaway Train and Tango and Cash. Since 1968 on Nikita Mikhalkov has directed 14 movies, and he has starred in as many films, including five of his own. His international reputation dates back to the mid-1970s. Italy's Marcello Mastroianni received in 1987 the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival and an Academy Award nomination for his performance in Mikhalkov's Dark Eyes, based on several short stories by Anton Chekhov. Nikita Mikhalkov wrote, directed and played the leading role of Sergei in Burnt by the Sun, which vividly depicts the horrors of political oppression under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in the late 1930s. Many critics, however, seem upset with Mikhalkov's revision of Russian history in The Siberian Barber, which portrays a mighty empire but ignores the deep social tensions that made it eventually collapse. Others are confused by the fact that a would-be manifesto of Russian patriotism is an English-language production. Some of his foes opted for a pro-active protest. While Mikhalkov was teaching a class at the Union of Cinematographers - which he chairs- two members of writer Eduard Limonov's extreme- left National Bolshevik party threw eggs at Mikhalkov, marring his clothes. Apart from artistic and historical criticism, Mikhalkov has also been accused of embezzlement, by allegedly getting a $10 million government loan, with the help of former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, which has apparently not been repaid. Furthermore, in yet another smear, Russian writer Evgeny Mitko now claims Mikhalkov plagiarized his ideas for the script. Mitko, author of some 30 film and television scripts, alleges he had submitted a manuscript, Happy Monday - depicting a love story between a Russian man and an American woman - to a 1991 contest. The jury was headed by Mikhalkov and included Rustam Imbraguimbekov, co-author of The Barber of Siberia's screenplay. The jury awarded Mitko - he claims- 500 dollars as ''encouragement,'' while the film idea was taken up for The Barber of Siberia. According to his foes, Mikhalkhov's political ambitions have had the support of Boris Berezovksy, Russia's most powerful businessman, who is now the target of a wide investigation on charges of fraud, corruption and money laundering. A few weeks ago, Mikhalkhov was openly voicing his political ambitions to foreign correspondents, while at home he insisted that he would be just a regular voter in the presidential election - which may well turn out to be true. It seems, given the troubled waters he's sailing on, that he will have to launch another film if he wants to run in 2004. (Inter Press Service)

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