Television Review: Trotsky (2017)
In 2018 commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War has, in many ways, overshadowed previous year's marking of the 100th anniversary of an event often considered that conflict's most important consequence – the October Revolution, which established the communist order in Russia and marked the first practical application of an ideology that would profoundly shape the 20th century. While such occasions in the past have often been the pretext for lavish film and television spectacles, the event was largely ignored in the West, mainly for ideological reasons and due to the confusion caused among Western filmmakers by the fluid political parameters of Cold War 2.0. In Russia, however, this was not the case, which is understandable given that country was the most affected by the consequences of the October Revolution. Among the commemorative projects that sought to reconstruct those fateful events on large and small screens, the biographical miniseries Trotsky is now probably the best-known, dedicated to one of the most famous, controversial, and to some, most tragic figures of the October Revolution. This is largely due to it appearing on Netflix, a rare feat for a Russian TV series.
The protagonist, played by Konstantin Khabenskiy, is Lev Davidovich Trotsky, one of the leaders of the revolution and later one of the most prominent leaders of the Soviet Party and state until he lost in factional struggles with Stalin and went into exile, from where he would become one of the fiercest critics of the regime he helped create. The plot begins in 1940 in Mexico, where Trotsky, under the patronage of the local government and with the help of few but fanatical followers, has found a relatively safe refuge. Although age is catching up with him and he was the target of a failed assassination attempt, Trotsky is convinced that history will be on his side and is more than willing to give an interview to young Canadian journalist Frank Jackson (Maksim Matveyev) and recount his life, not at all bothered that Jackson is a self-declared Stalinist. Then, over eight episodes, the most important events of his life and revolutionary career are reconstructed in flashbacks: his first prison experiences gained from opposing the brutal Tsarist regime; his escape from a Siberian penal colony to Paris in 1902, where he would become a star among political émigrés and meet his second wife Natalia Sedova (Olga Sutulova); leading the Petrograd workers in the failed 1905 revolution and the key role he played in organising and leading the revolution that brought the Bolsheviks under Lenin (Yevgeny Stychkin) to power twelve years later; founding and successfully, but ruthlessly, leading the Red Army with which the Bolsheviks won the civil war; launching the Red Terror to mercilessly deal with all opponents; and finally, his attempts to succeed Lenin in the 1920s, where his main rival emerged as the charisma-lacking but far more skilled political schemer Stalin (Orkhan Abulov).
Trotsky was produced by Russian state television and premiered precisely on the 100th anniversary of the Revolution. While at first glance it might appear to be a "commemorative" project, one cannot detect, at least superficially, any particular "whitewashing" of Russian and Soviet history in line with the ideological and other parameters of Putin's regime. On the contrary, one might say that Trotsky is far more tailored to a Western audience, evident not only in the extremely "cool" and "hip" style of dynamic "music video" direction, underpinned by Ryan Otter's soundtrack, but also in content dominated by "exploitation" elements related to the explicit depiction of violence and sex. The latter even received some script justification, as Trotsky, who in one episode meets the famous psychiatrist Sigmund Freud (Igor Chernevich), explicitly links libido with revolutionary fervour. This, of course, provides an opportunity to reconstruct the love life of the famous revolutionary through a series of scenes in which Khabenskiy "consumes" his partners like Croatian actor Rade Šerbedžija used to do in his prime.
The series' creators clearly found it very convenient that the final chapter of his life took place in Mexico, which provided an opportunity to fill it with scenes referencing that culture's obsession with death, and an excuse for such symbolism to serve as the plot framework for most episodes, towards the end of which Trotsky encounters the ghosts of deceased characters whose deaths he, directly or indirectly, helped bring about. The Mexican scenes are also an opportunity to depict Trotsky's love affair with the famous Mexican painter Frida Kahlo in a rather explicit manner; Viktoriya Poltorak plays her so intensely that, for some viewers, Salma Hayek, who played the same role a decade and a half ago, will fade from memory relatively quickly.
The series' greatest asset is undoubtedly Khabenskiy, who is today considered the most popular actor in Russia, a popularity that once allowed him to briefly, albeit only in cameo roles, sneak into several Hollywood films. This is not Khabenskiy's first time playing Trotsky, having portrayed the same character in the 2005 biographical TV series Yesenin, and his most famous performance to date was in the biographical film Admiral, where, ironically, he played the counter-revolutionary Admiral Kolchak, who was Trotsky's main rival on the battlefield during the civil war. Khabenskiy gives a rather convincing and moving portrayal of Trotsky, whether as the clean-shaven young revolutionary, the ruthless wartime leader at the height of his power deciding the life and death of millions, or the aged émigré who cannot reconcile himself to the fact that his time is forever past. The script assists him considerably in this, striving to give a somewhat balanced perspective on the Soviet leader, whose relative popularity in the West stems primarily from being Stalin's most famous victim and from many salon leftists projecting their own romantic vision of "pure" Marxism-Leninism onto him, before it was compromised by famines, gulags, and great leaps forward. In the series, Trotsky is depicted as a capable politician and genuine revolutionary who believes he will create a better, more beautiful, and happier world, but who stops at nothing to achieve it, willing to betray and kill his closest collaborators and sacrifice the lives of millions, including his own family and himself. The screenwriters do not shy away from these contradictions, even making the somewhat heretical move of having a Stalinist character point them out and remind Trotsky of them.
As a rather ambitious and relatively expensive project, Trotsky set the bar quite high, and it is unsurprising that it did not manage to clear it in all aspects. This primarily relates to the common problem of biographical films and TV series – how to present someone's rather complex life, further complicated by economic, cultural, and political circumstances largely alien to most of today's audience, in a somewhat comprehensible way. The screenwriters make a serious mistake in the first few episodes by jumping from period to period – from 1940 to 1918, then to 1898, then back to 1918 – which will confuse viewers, especially those not well-versed in Russian history. The authors attempted to provide some context by having a caption appear with the name and a biographical note for each important historical character introduced; this procedure will undoubtedly reduce confusion but also bring some perhaps not entirely necessary spoilers. The script also largely ignored the drama in Petrograd preceding the October Revolution, as well as the context the First World War gave to that revolution; this seems unnecessary given that in some later episodes, there was room for German Kaiser Wilhelm II and Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, who appear in just one brief scene. On the other hand, the struggle for power between Trotsky and Stalin after Lenin's death, one of the most exciting, uncertain, and dramatic episodes in the political history of the modern world, is mostly ignored.
Yet, despite all this, Trotsky manages to maintain coherence and provide a fascinating portrayal of personalities and events which, despite their spectacular nature, we would like to believe are forever behind us.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
(Note: The text in the original Croatian version is available here.)
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