There
have been a lot of movies made about Stalin’s reign of terror, but far too many
of them have focused on the ‘terror’ side of the equation with all the subtlety
of a sledge hammer. They try to shock the audience without ever taking the time
to give them characters they can understand and identify with. For her movie,
writer/director Marleen Gorris (Mrs Dalloway), working from an autobiography by
Eugenia Ginzburg, takes a much different, and in a way much more successful
approach. In telling her story of the Stalin purges, she focus on the story of
one woman and lets what she goes through on a personal level speak for a
nation. It helps, of course, that she has an actress as talented as Emily
Watson to play the lead, and watching Watson navigate the emotional waters of
the role is an absolute treat. The story falters a bit along the way, with the
high level of tension that Gorris builds in the pre-arrest days of Ginzburg’s
life strangely missing from the scenes in the gulag. The journey ends on a
note, though, that makes the trip worthwhile.
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