Russia: Twelve Angry Men

  

                                

 

As President Trump attempts to negotiate an end to war between Russia and Ukraine, politicians and pundits are flooding him with advice as if he had no competent advisors on his team. It is interesting to note that Trump has set a priority on ending the killing, while former President Biden did little to bring the fighting to an end. 

To my mind Biden's greatest failure as President was his inability or unwillingness to act as an agent of peace. Indeed, in his interview with Tucker Carlsen last year, Vladimir Putin claimed that then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had quashed a peace settlement hammered out between Russia and Ukraine at a meeting in Turkey. It is hard to believe that the British P.M. would have acted without the support of the Biden administration.

In any event, I suspect that many people offering unsolicited advice to President Trump are not really aware of the situation in Russia today. Their repeated references to Hitler and Stalin indicate that they are living in the past. They do not understand that a second Russian revolution occurred after the break up of the Soviet Empire. The ineptness of our media makes it difficult for Americans to understand what is going on in Russia.

I have had an almost lifelong fascination with Russia. I suppose it started with literature during my high school and college years. I never took a formal course on Russian literature, but I read War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, the Brothers Karamazov and others with fascination although perhaps little understanding. A few years later I discovered the novels and histories of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, one of the greatest and most influential authors of the twentieth century. No one ever explained the nature of Communism in Russia netter than he did. Just a couple of years ago I waded through The Icon and the Axe, James Billington’s magisterial study of Russian history and culture.

Today, I doubt if any of my college educated grandchildren have ever read or will read any of these great authors. I doubt that they have even heard their names. I suppose that their knowledge of Russia, like that of our own politicians, is likely superficial and unhistorical. Since books are too time consuming, and seemingly irrelevant in our age, film may be the only way to provide insights into a country like Russia, especially after the revolutionary events that followed upon the collapse of the Soviet empire. Here is a brief review of a film that sheds much light on this extremely diverse country that extends over nine time zones. 

In 2007 Russian filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov produced, directed, wrote, and acted in “12”, a film based on the American drama and film “Twelve Angry Men.” Mikhalkov won a special award at the Venice film festival that year, and his film also received an Academy Award nomination for best foreign film. The film is a masterpiece that far exceeds the earlier American version in power and intensity. 

The film also opens a window, actually twelve windows, into post-Soviet Russia. "12" refers to the twelve jurors who are hearing a case involving a young man accused of murdering his stepfather. Complicating matters is the fact that the young man is a Chechen, a member of that ethnic group that has never been fully assimilated into Russian society. Chechens are, at the same time, hated and feared by most Russians. Alexander Solzhenitsyn claimed that even Gulag prison guards feared the Chechen prisoners who often terrorized the other prisoners.

The film, however, is not about the prisoner but about the jurors. These twelve men, each represents an aspect of Russian life after the fall of Communism. They are a diverse group that includes, among others, a successful post-communist businessman, a doctor educated in Moscow but originally from the provinces, a Russian TV executive with a degree from Harvard, a former Soviet bureaucrat who fondly remembers the good old days of Communism, and even a bigoted cab driver.

The case against the young man seems open and shut but doubts arise. Inevitably, each juror reveals himself in dealing with what turns out to be a very complicated case. In revealing their own stories, they tell us more about modern Russia than we will ever find in our own media.

As mentioned above the film is powerful and intense, and filled with often mysterious flashbacks that eventually come together like pieces in a puzzle. But most of the power and intensity takes place in the makeshift jury room where twelve fine actors strut their stuff.

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