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Compellingly humane story reveals terrors of Stalinism
By Marshall Fine
Gannett News Service
(June 16, 2000) -- From the vantage point of the present, in which no news seems to go unreported for more than five seconds thanks to satellite TV and the Internet, it's hard to imagine how easily and how long Joseph Stalin kept secret the brutal nature of his dictatorship from the rest of the world.
But that's the way it was. And, after World War II, Stalin used that blanket of silence and fear to lure back Russian emigres with promises of a new and better life helping to rebuild the homeland they had fled.
Regis Wargnier's new film, East-West, which was an Oscar nominee as best foreign film, shows the tragic consequences to one family that falls for Stalin's propaganda campaign. The war is over and Stalin has beckoned, offering amnesty and a Russian passport as a reward for repatriation.
Alexei Golovine (Oleg Menchikov) is one of those who respond to this invitation to go home. A doctor living in Paris, he has married a French woman, Marie (Sandrine Bonnaire). Together with their young son, they take a ship to Odessa, dreaming of the new life they will have.
They arrive to find that they've been suckered into a vindictive trap. Most of their fellow emigres are being killed or jailed as Western spies, as retribution for imagined wrongs against the state.
Alexei is spared because, as a physician, he has a certain propaganda value. He manages to leverage that value to save Marie's wife, despite KGB accusations that she is actually a spy.
They are billeted in a once-lavish mansion that has been chopped up for communal living. Marie wants to leave at once; Alexei, however, grasps just how tenuous their existence will be if she begins to agitate to go home. The difference in their acceptance of their new lives drives a wedge between them.
Alexei quickly learns the rules of Stalinism: that everyone you know is a potential informant and anything you say can and will be held against you. He preaches patience and acquiescence in order to survive until they can find a way to leave. But Marie sees it as capitulation and bridles at his insistence that she keep her unhappiness to herself.
She finds a soulmate in Sacha (Sergeui Bodrov Jr.), a teen who lives in the same apartment and who swims for the Russian national team. Together, they harbor dreams of escape that seem to face unending obstacles.
Marie hurts her own cause when she passes a note to a visiting French actress (Catherine Deneuve), begging for help to escape. Though the actress can't do anything at that moment, she becomes Marie's sole lifeline to the outside world.
Marie finds the weeks stretching to years, the years stretching to a decade, as she struggles to stay afloat in increasingly dangerous waters. Through her, Wargnier examines the nature of hope and despair, the crushing quality of life in a totalitarian society and the ways in which a human spirit clings to even a pinpoint of light at the end of a seemingly endless tunnel.
Wargnier draws a determined, heart-breaking performance from Sandrine Bonnaire as Marie, whose sheer will seems alternately impressive and self-destructive. Oleg Menchikov manages the trickier role of Alexei, a man who can't seem to convince his wife that cooperating in order to save one's life is not the same as collaborating in one's own imprisonment. Bodrov has a quietly sultry quality as the young swimmer, while Deneuve, as gorgeous as ever at 56, brings spark and compassion to the smaller role of the actress.
East-West tells a compellingly human story, even as it reminds us of the grossly inhumane nature of Stalinism. It is a testament to the resilience of the individual in a society that sought to stamp out all traces of individualism.