Life imitates art like a 'Master and Margarita' movie that convulses Russia

It seems the film adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov's cult-favorite novel “The Master and Margarita,” which hits Russian theaters this winter, should not come to fruition in President Vladimir Putin's wartime Russia.

The director is American. One of the stars is German. The celebrated Stalin-era satire, which was not yet published at the time, is in part a subversive expression of state tyranny and censorship – forces that are again plaguing Russia today.

But the film was already on its way to the box office long before Putin launched his all-out invasion of Ukraine, imposing a level of repression on Russia unseen since Soviet times. The state had invested millions in the film, which had already been shot. Banning a production of Russia's most famous literary paean to artistic freedom was perhaps too great an irony that even the Kremlin could not stomach.

Its release – after many months of delay – was one of the most dramatic and charged Russian film debuts in recent history. The film reshapes the novel into a revenge tragedy about a writer's struggle under censorship, using the story of Bulgakov's own life. For many Russians, the emphasis is close to home. And for some Putin defenders, too close.

“I had an internal belief that the movie should come out one way or another,” director Michael Lockshin said in a video interview from his home in California. “I still thought it was a miracle when it came out. As for the response, it's hard to expect a response like this.”

Since its premiere on January 25, more than 3.7 million people have come to see the film in Russian theaters. This was reported by the Russian National Film Fund.

Some moviegoers in Moscow burst into applause at the end of screenings, recognizing the echoes of Russia's wartime reality and marveling that the adaptation made it to theaters at all. Other, less politically minded viewers have praised the adaptation for its special effects and daring to deviate from the book's plot.

Putin's most belligerent defenders were less than enthusiastic.

Pro-war propagandists broadly opposed Lockshin, who has publicly opposed Russia's invasion and supported Ukraine, calling for a criminal case against Putin and his designation as a terrorist.

On state television, one of Russia's most prominent propagandists, Vladimir Soloviev, demanded to know how Lockshin had been allowed to make the film. He asked if the release was a “special operation” or if anyone had been “duped.”

State networks did not promote the film as they normally would a government-funded film. And the state film fund, under pressure after its release, removed the film's production company from its list of preferred suppliers.

The antics created a new wave of moviegoers, who rushed to theaters out of fear that the film was about to be banned.

“The film amazingly coincided with the historical moment that Russia is going through, with the restoration of Stalinism, with the persecution of the intelligentsia,” said Russian film critic Anton Dolin, who was labeled a 'foreign agent' and fled the country . “And when the author of the film was subjected to this persecution, a completely magical rhyme was created.”

Bulgakov's novel, written in the 1930s, is a phantasmagoric story that explores the capacity for good and evil in every individual. In it, the devil and his entourage arrive in Joseph Stalin's Moscow, where he meets a stricken author known as the Master and his beloved Margarita. The novel also tells the story of Pontius Pilate ordering the crucifixion of Jesus, which the reader discovers is the subject of a forbidden text written by the Master.

Bulgakov's own trials were reflected in the Master's torment.

Stalin did not order the novelist's execution or imprisonment, contrary to the treatment of other Soviet writers of the time, but severely limited Bulgakov's work and stifled his artistic ambitions. Bulgakov processed a large part of that pain in 'The Master and Margarita', which was not published until the late 1960s, more than a quarter of a century after his death.

“The film is about the freedom of an artist in an unfree world,” said Lockshin, “and what that freedom means – about not losing your faith in the power of art, even when everything around you punishes you for doing it. makes.”

“Of course,” he added, “there's a love story in there too.”

Lockshin, who grew up in both the United States and Russia but is a U.S. citizen, signed on to the project in 2019 and chose a Quentin Tarantino-style revenge plot as the framework for the pre-war adaptation. has revived strict censorship in Russia.

When Putin launched his invasion two years ago, Lockshin opposed the war on social media from the United States and called on his friends to support Ukraine. Back in Russia, that jeopardized the film's release.

“My position was that I would not censor myself in any way for the film,” he said. “The film itself is about censorship.”

Universal Pictures, which had signed on to distribute the film, withdrew from Russia after the outbreak of war and abandoned the project. (The film currently has no distributor in the United States.)

And as repression in Russia spread, life began to imitate art. “All these things from the movie were playing out,” Lockshin said.

Russia charged a theater director and a playwright with accusations of justifying terrorism, following a show trial for the Master that the film's makers had added to the script. A “almost naked” theme party in Moscow led to a crackdown on the celebrity attendees, conjuring up images of the novel's famous Satanic Ball. And Russians started denouncing each other because he harbors anti-war sympathies, just as when the Master's friend rats him out.

“Not everyone can afford to be so uncompromising,” the friend says to the Master in the film, before betraying him. “Some people have to pay alimony.”

The film's veracity was undeniable to many moviegoers.

Yevgeny Gindilis, a Russian film producer, said he went to a theater in Moscow near the Kremlin to watch it and felt some discomfort in the audience. At the end, he said, about a third of the audience burst into applause.

“I think the applause,” Gindilis said, “is about the fact that people are happy to experience and watch this film, which has this clear, anti-totalitarian and anti-repressive state message, in a situation where the state I really try to suppress anything that has an independent voice.”

Gindilis told how one of the most uncomfortable scenes for people to watch in Moscow was the final revenge scene, in which the Devil's mischievous talking cat repels a secret police unit that has come to arrest the Master, leading to a fire that ultimately engulfed all of Moscow. .

The Master and Margarita, together with the devil, played by German actor August Diehl, stare out over the burning city and watch a system that destroyed their lives go up in flames.

“Today the entire country is unable to retaliate or even respond to the persecution, restrictions and censorship,” said film critic Dolin. But the film's protagonists, having made a deal with the devil, manage to get revenge.

The film flashes to the Master and Margarita in the afterlife, reunited and free. “Listen,” she tells him. “Listen and enjoy what they never gave you in your life: peace.”

Alina Lobzina contributed to the reporting.