Review – Agony

If this movie is any ground on which to judge, Eisenstein would hide his head in shame if he saw what became of Soviet film after his death. This 1975 epic about Rasputin is one of the most inept pieces of propaganda I’ve ever seen. A chunk of the blame falls on the head of the actor playing the lead role. This guy must be Russia’s answer to Val Kilmer. He plays Rasputin as an awkward combination of Charles Manson and The Dude from The Big Lebowsky. Though this is clearly part of the long line of pictures designed to justify the Russian Revolution by making the Romanovs look bad, the worst they seem to do here is possibly boring peasants (not to mention the audience) to death. Further, the translation is odd in places. It’s hard to say if the lines are some kind of Russian idiom that doesn’t make much sense to foreign audiences or if the characters are genuinely intended to spout nonsense. In either event, the bizarre dialogue is just another cog in a highly ineffective machine. And in another fine Soviet tradition, the picture is awfully hard on the animals. CHLITM rating: 30 minutes. Wish I’d skipped it