Within the
Whirlwind is a historical and biographical drama (based on a true story) which
premiered in 2009. It is produced by companies in Belgium, Germany and Poland.
But the story is set in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and the 1940s. And the
main character is Eugenia Ginzburg, a teacher at the University of Kazan, who
was a victim of the Great Purge (1936-1938), which is also known as Stalin’s
Reign of Terror.
Here is some basic information about this drama:
** Director:
Marleen Gorris
** Writer: Nancy
Larson
** Based on Eugenia
Ginzburg’s autobiography (first published in the west in 1967)
** Language:
English
** Run time: 117
minutes
The cast includes
the following:
** Emily Watson
as Eugenia Ginzburg (1904-1977) – a teacher at the University of Kazan
** Benjamin
Sadler as Pavel Aksyonov – Eugenia’s second husband – a Soviet official in
Kazan
** Pam Ferris as
Avdotya Aksynova – Eugenia’s mother-in-law
** Ian Hart as
Beylin – a Soviet official in Kazan
** Ben Miller as
Krasny – editor of a Soviet journal published in Kazan
** Pearce
Quigley as Nikolai Yelvov – a teacher at the University of Kazan
** Radoslaw
Krzyzowski as Dimitrij Dikovitsky – a man on the train to Moscow
** Jimmy Yuill
as Sidorov – a Soviet official in Moscow
** Ulrich Tukur
as Anton Walter (1899-1959) – a German doctor in Siberia
** Nick Dong-Sik
as Confucius – Dr Walter’s assistant
A note on
family:
** Eugenia’s
first husband Dimitrij Fedorov is the father of her first son Alexei (Alyosha)
(1926-1941)
** Eugenia’s
second husband Pavel Aksyonov is the father of her second son Vasily (Vaska)
(1932-2009)
The husband Pavel
and the two boys appear briefly in the beginning of the movie. After that they
disappear.
Since this drama
is based on a true story, the basic facts are part of the public record. They
are not a secret. Therefore I feel free to mention some of them in this review.
Besides, I need to mention some details in order to explain my rating.
While this drama
is based on a true story, it is not a documentary film. It is a dramatized
version of events. Not everything happened exactly as shown in this movie. But
the basic story is true.
As stated above,
this drama is about Eugenia Ginzburg, but it does not cover her whole life from
the beginning in 1904 to the end in 1977.
** The first 30 years (1904-1934) are
excluded
** The last 30 years (1947-1977) are also excluded
** The time frame is
1934-1947
In 1934, when
the story begins, Eugenia lives in Kazan, located ca. 800 km east of Moscow,
with her husband Pavel and her two sons. She is a loyal member of the communist
party. She works as a teacher at the University of Kazan. Her husband Pavel is
a Soviet official in Kazan. The family has a good life and a nice home.
But in 1934
Eugenia’s life is turned upside down and soon the whole family will fall apart.
In the wake of the killing of Kirov in Moscow, the communist party begins a
hunt for subversives, disloyal members of the communist party, who are accused
of working for or with Leon Trotsky who is at this time living in exile,
The first local
victim is Yelvov who is removed from his position. Soon Eugenia is also under
suspicion. She claims she is innocent, and at first she is not arrested. For
three years her life is in a limbo because she is often interrogated and barred
from teaching, but still free. In 1937, she is arrested and placed in a prison
in Moscow. She is tried in a court of law and sentenced to ten years in a labour
camp in Siberia. She is sent to Kolyma in eastern Siberia where she serves her
sentence.
In 1947, she is
released, but not allowed to leave the region. In 1955, two years after Stalin’s
death, she is exonerated, declared innocent, and she moves to Moscow where she
writes her autobiography.
Since it cannot
be published in the USSR, the manuscript is smuggled out to the west where it appears
in 1967.
In this
historical drama, we follow Eugenia from 1934 when she is caught up in the
whirlwind until her release in 1947. What do reviewers say about it? Here are
the results of two review aggregators:
36 per cent =
Rotten Tomatoes (the general audience)
68 per cent =
IMDb
As you can see,
the ratings are not impressive. They range from poor to average. Is there a
reason for this harsh verdict? Is it fair? I have to say yes. The topic is interesting
and important, but the movie about Eugenia’s turbulent life has a number of
flaws, which cannot be ignored. Let me explain:
# 1. The story
takes place in the USSR where most people speak Russian. But in this movie, all
characters speak English. It is odd to hear Soviet officials bark their orders
in English when they should be spoken in Russian.
This is a
serious violation of historical truth. All efforts to recreate the Soviet world
of the 1930s and the 1940s are totally shattered whenever a character starts to
talk.
# 2. In the
movie, Eugenia is a professor of Russian literature. In the real world, she was
an associate professor teaching the history of the All-Union Communist Party
and later the history of Leninism. Which is not as romantic!
# 3. In the movie,
we see Eugenia teaching. Her teaching means reading out loud lines of a Russian
author with a solemn voice. Then asking student A to take over the declamation.
Then asking student B to take over the declamation. And so on.
Reading lines of
a poem out loud is not teaching. When you teach literature, you must talk about
the author and his style. You must ask questions: does the author have a
message? If yes, what is it? How does the author work? In this a great work? If
yes, what makes this a great work?
Eugenia never
asks questions like this. Perhaps because she never was a teacher of Russian
literature!
# 4. In one
scene, Eugenia returns essays which her students have written for class. One
student did not use punctuation. When she asks him why, he says it does not
matter. The reader may add punctuation if he wants.
Eugenia
disagrees. Punctuation is very important, she says, and to prove her point she
writes a sentence on the blackboard. If we put the comma in one place, the
sentence has one meaning. But if we put the comma in another place, the
sentence has the opposite meaning. This is an interesting observation. However,
there is a problem here. What is wrong?
The sentence on
the blackboard is Russian. The words are written with Cyrillic letters. But the
characters speak English! In order to create some historical reality, Emily
Watson writes the words with Cyrillic letters, but when she talks about the
sentence, she speaks English which means the historical reality is completely
broken.
Are we in a
Russian world or not? Look at the blackboard, and the answer is yes. Listen to
the actors, and the answer is no!
# 5. As stated
above, Eugenia’s husband Pavel and her two sons appear briefly in the beginning
of the movie. But the movie does not reveal that Pavel is her second husband
and only the father of her younger son Vasily (Vaska).
The movie does
not reveal that her older son Alexei (Alyosha) is the son of her first husband
Fedorov (who is never seen).
Perhaps the
movie-makers decided that this detail was too complicated to explain?
# 6. In one
scene, Eugenia takes the train to Moscow. She wants to find someone who can support
her claim of innocence. We see her sitting in a compartment. She is in one
corner, reading a book. In the opposite corner there is a man. They do not
talk. We have the impression they have been sitting in silence like this for a
while.
Suddenly the man begins to talk: “Eugenia? I
think you are Eugenia Ginzburg.”
It turns out they know each other. They were
friends many years ago. She remembers his name: Dimitrij Dikovitsky. But if
they know each other, why did they not recognize each other when he entered the
compartment? The scene is odd.
In Eugenia’s autobiography,
she does not meet Dikovitsky on the train from Kazan to Moscow. She meets him
in Moscow outside the building where she hopes to find someone who will accept
that she is innocent. This makes more sense. In the movie the meeting is moved
to the train and the scene is odd.
# 7. When
Eugenia gets to Moscow, she meets with a Soviet official Sidorov who is very
helpful. Having looked at her case, he says the charge can be dropped and the
ban on teaching can be cancelled. This is fine. She leaves his office and
leaves the building in a good mood.
But when she is
outside, she hears someone calling her from a window on the first floor.
Sidorov is calling: “Please come back inside.” When she meets him again, he
sings a different song:
He says the
charges cannot be dropped and the ban on teaching cannot be cancelled. In
addition, she must hand over the card which shows that she is a member of the
communist party. This change took place in five minutes! This is not realistic!
In the real
world, Sidorov did try to help her at first, but when Beylin found out what
Sidorov had done, he was so upset about it that he forced him to reverse his
decision in the case. There was a change, but the decision was not changed in
five minutes. Why do the movie-makers create a scene which is unrealistic?
# 8. Eugenia’s
older son Alexei (Alyosha) was taken from Kazan to Leningrad. In 1941, Eugenia
is told that her son is dead. He has died of starvation during the German siege
of Leningrad. Eugenia is so devastated that she loses the will to live. In the
movie, we see how she is nursed back to life by the camp doctor, the German
doctor Anton Walter, who is friendly and optimistic, in spite of the difficult
conditions in the camp.
In the real
world, the person who nursed her back to life was a Russian doctor, Angelina
Klimenko, who was the wife of an NKVD police officer. But Klimenko is not seen
in the movie. She has been removed from history, perhaps because she was
married to a member of the NKVD.
The German
doctor Anton Walter is a real person. In the movie it is clear that he likes
Eugenia. But she does not want to like him, because she regards him as part of
the Soviet system of oppression. When she is told that he is a prisoner too,
she changes her mind. She likes him as well.
Anton Walter was
a Volga German who had been arrested in the 1930s and then sent to Siberia. He
was the camp doctor, but he was also a prisoner. When the authorities
discovered that Anton and Eugenia had fallen in love with each other, he was
transferred to another camp!
# 9. Throughout
the movie, Eugenia recites passages of Russian literature to herself and
sometimes to fellow prisoners in the camp. She does this to keep her sanity. To
remember the world outside the camp.
One reviewer (Berndt
Reinhardt) comments on this aspect:
“In the film the
continual literary recitations become boring. The theme of literature was
apparently seized upon in order to fill the ideological vacancy of the film.”
[Source: World Socialist
Website]
I think he has a
good point here. The literary recitations are connected with the fact that she
was a professor of Russian literature at the University of Kazan. But in the
real world she was not a professor of Russian literature. This position was merely
invented by the movie-makers. Why? Perhaps because they wanted the theme of
literature to run though the movie; perhaps because they thought that this
would make the main character more likeable.
Who wants to
like a teacher of Leninism? No, this will not do. Let us make her a professor
of Russian literature. This is so much better. Now she is likeable.
CONCLUSION
The topic is
interesting and important. Eugenia may have been naïve when she decided to join
the communist party. But when the party accused her of working with or for Leon
Trotsky, she refused to give in. Many other party members who were accused signed
a confession, but Eugenia never did this. She insisted she was innocent. In
this way she was unique.
It could have
been a great movie. Unfortunately, it is not. The movie about Eugenia’s
turbulent life in the USSR in the 1930s and the 1940s has a number of flaws; some
of them are fatal. This is why the poor ratings are justified. This movie is
not great; it is not even good. It is just average. And therefore it cannot get
more than three stars.
PS # 1. Eugenia
and Anton found each other again once they were both released from their prison
camps. Sadly, they did not have long time together. He passed away in 1959.
PS # 2. Antonina
Aksyonova was born in 1946. In 1949 she was adopted by Eugenia. In this way she
became Eugenia’s stepdaughter. She knew Eugenia well during the last part of
her life. She appears in a documentary film about her stepmother made by German
filmmaker Mario Damolin. On You Tube you can find a clip where she talks
about her stepmother.
PS # 3. Ivan
Panikarov has founded a small museum about the labour camps in Kolyma during
the time of Stalinism. For details, see the following article: Shaun Walker, “Russia’s
Gulag camps cast in a forgiving light of Putin nationalism,” The Guardian, 29
October 2015.
*****
Eugenia Ginzburg (1904-1977)
*****
The cover of Eugenia Ginzburg's autobiography
First published in 1967
*****
