Speed and nakedness

Vladimir Bortko’s Master i Margarita (2005) is a series timely for this Lent and Holy Week in that it nods unknowingly to Palestine then and now, Aleksei Navalny and Russia’s “secret police”, and Satan and his minions practicing black magic as political rally.

This ten-part television series is promiscuously faithful to Mikhail Bulgakov’s classic Soviet-era novel from which it was adapted, braiding four main narrative strands: one among Soviet writers in Moscow on the eve of Josef Stalin’s Great Purges, connected with a second in which a Soviet Everyman finds his feet in Stalin’s Russia; the third a love story in which a muse-inspired novelist imagines the relationship between a certain Yeshua Ga-Notsri and Pontius Pilate; and a fourth in which Satan and his entourage visit Soviet Russia to assay the mettle of New Soviet Man—Mister Twister as cyclone.

The production is notable for Igor Kornelyuk’s musical score reimagining the Russian romantics, inflected with sacred and traditional music; for Nadezhda Vasileva’s costumes, impeccable, odd-fitting confections from contemporary photographs; and Marina Nikolaeva and Vladimir Svetozarov’s production design along with Yevgeny Krasilnikov and Marina Zubkova’s set decoration, notably revisiting the urban Soviet obsession over living space in a society in which severely limited available housing was rationed: from each regardless of his circumstances to each according to his pull. The English subtitles are generally adequate if Delphic on occasion. 

Никогда не разговаривайте с неизвестными—“Never talk with strangers.”

“Never Talk with Strangers” is the novel’s famous opening: in a Moscow park, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Berlioz (Aleksandr Adabashyan), a somewhat silly, self-important literary bureaucrat, and Ivan Nikolayevich Bezdomny (Vladislav Galkin), a poet celebrated for a hack screed disparaging Jesus, discuss with a mysterious stranger who calls himself “Woland with a W” (Oleg Basilashvili)—the Russian language has no “W” (a German name which nods to Goethe’s “Faust”)—whether Jesus Christ was an historical figure. This discourse sets these two Russians on course for cataclysmic events.

The notorious Lubyanka: Little besides the name “secret police” is secret, which may be the point.

Bulgakov makes sport of sycophantic colleagues he despised. But in this nightmarish decade of Russian history which Bulgakov perhaps miraculously survived, sycophancy was no guarantee of the “good graces” of Stalin’s NKVD (Peoples Commissariat of Internal Affairs), the so-called “secret police” though little about them actually was “secret”. Writers, poets, and artists were among the millions exiled to labor camps or shot outright. Despite Bulgakov’s jokes and many references, the NKVD make people disappear only slightly less theatrically than Satan and his minions.

Мастер и Маргарита: Margarita gave Master his title and sewed “M” on his cap.

Master (Aleksandr Galibin) relates his story to fellow inmate Bezdomny in a state psychiatric institute: his novel about the historical Jesus and Pilate, its circumstances, and his muse Margarita Nikolayevna (Anna Kovalchuk) who dubbed him “Master”. Bezdomny is Bulgakov’s Everyman. Soviet “reality” is shot in sepia or muted blue moonlight, the work of the author’s imagination in color. Bulgakov’s novel, “written for the drawer” during the 1930s as was said in the Soviet period because the author had no expectation that it would be published, did not see light of day until 1966 in a censored edition.

“What is truth?” Master’s consideration of Pilat and Ga-Notsri ventures far beyond the Gospels.

Master crafts his novel from details in the Gospels. Though “from personal experience,” as Woland breezily assures the gaping Berlioz and Bezdomny, the Gospels are worthless as an historical source because the events they describe certainly never happened as recorded. So this is not a Sunday school New Testament story but a meditation on the relationship the author imagined between the historical figures Pontius Pilate (Kirill Lavrov) and Yeshua Ga-Notsri (Sergei Bezrukov). These scenes are filmed in color in Jerusalem and include parts by Kaifa (Valentin Gaft) who spares Var-Ravvana from crucifixion, Yuda iz Kiriafa (Dmitry Nagiyev), and Levi Matvei (Semyon Strugachyov), among others.

“Please allow me to introduce myself”: Satan and his minions test the mettle of New Soviet Man.

“Messir” Woland and his motley crew may remind those unfamiliar with Bulgakov’s novel of Charles Addams’s family of cheerful oddballs, featuring Koroviev (Aleksandr Abdulov), a tall voluble eccentric with narrow shoulders in clashing plaids and a pince-nez; Behemoth, an articulate black cat whose skills include card tricks (played in catsuit by Vano Miranyan and Semyon Furman and as a man by Aleksandr Bashirov); Azazello (Aleksandr Filippenko), Woland’s “enforcer”; and Gella (Tanya Yu) Woland’s sexy handmaid, disarmingly nearly naked to all but the gang: “Seen ‘em naked? I’ve seen ‘em flayed clean!” as one-eyed Azazello cheerfully says. Their palatial digs and fine food and drink were luxuries beyond all but a handful of the top party leadership, if even.

Полет—“Flight”: Liberated women explore Moscow’s upper atmosphere—быстрота и нагота, speed and nakedness.

“Flight”, our favorite chapter, in which Margarita and her maid Natasha (Kseniya Nazarova) apply Azazello’s body cream empowering them to fly to Satan’s Great Ball—Margarita on a broom, Natasha on their prurient neighbor Nikolai Ivanovich (Vadim Lobanov) turned into a pig—may be best imagined by each reader from the written word than fixed onscreen for all. The original conveys an exhilarating sense of flying free of earthbound oppression. Special effects render them less than entirely naked, though the extended initiation ceremony that precedes Satan’s Ball and the ball itself may display more barenaked ladies than many Americans would be comfortable with.

Reception at Satan’s Great Ball—the barenaked ladies are straight from the novel.

Rather than trouble over shoveling each detail into a ditch of identity and meaning, enjoy the romp for what it is, a great belly-laugh over the human condition and the high-blown hyperbole of political rhetoric, from all time for all time, and well-suited to troubled times anywhere. And read the novel: We discovered “Master and Margarita” through Mirra Ginsburg’s delightful translation of the first-published manuscript; Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky are among several who have translated a subsequent fuller version.

Woland to the Master: Рукописи не горят—“Manuscripts do not burn.”

Master i Margarita (2005) Russia. Goskino; Rossiya 1. Series directed by Vladimir Bortko, adapted by Bortko from the novel by Mikhail A. Bulgakov; produced by Bortko and Ruben Dishdishian; music by Igor Kornelyuk; cinematography by Valeri Myulgaut; editing by Leda Semyonova; production design by Marina Nikolaeva and Vladimir Svetozarov; set decoration by Yevgeny Krasilnikov and Marina Zubkova; series costume design by Nadezhda Vasileva.

Ivan Bezdomny (Vladislav Galkin) is a Soviet Everyman in “Master and Margarita”.