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By all appearances, the movie adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov\u2019s cult favorite novel \u201cThe Master and Margarita,\u201d in Russian theaters this winter, shouldn\u2019t be thriving in President Vladimir Putin\u2019s wartime Russia.<\/p>\n
The director is American. One of the stars is German. The celebrated Stalin-era satire, unpublished in its time, is partly a subversive sendup of state tyranny and censorship \u2014 forces bedeviling Russia once again today.<\/p>\n
But the film was on its way to the box office long before Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine and imposed a level of repression on Russia unseen since Soviet times. The state had invested millions in the movie, which had already been shot. Banning a production of Russia\u2019s most famous literary paean to artistic freedom was perhaps too big an irony for even the Kremlin to bear.<\/p>\n
Its release \u2014 after many months of delay \u2014 has been one of the most dramatic and charged Russian film debuts in recent memory. The movie refashions the novel as a revenge tragedy about a writer\u2019s struggle under censorship, borrowing from the story of Bulgakov\u2019s own life. The emphasis, for many Russians, has hit close to home. And, for some defenders of Putin, too close.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cI had an internal belief that the movie would have to come out somehow,\u201d the director, Michael Lockshin, said in a video interview from his home in California. \u201cI still thought it was a miracle when it did come out. As for the response, it\u2019s hard to expect a response like this.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
More than 3.7 million people have flocked to see the film in Russian theaters since its Jan. 25 premiere, according to Russia\u2019s national film fund<\/a>.<\/p>\n Some moviegoing audiences in Moscow have erupted in applause at the end of screenings, recognizing echoes of Russia\u2019s 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 audacity in departing from the book\u2019s plot.<\/p>\n Putin\u2019s most bellicose defenders have been less than thrilled.<\/p>\n Pro-war propagandists mounted a broadside against Lockshin, who has publicly opposed Russia\u2019s invasion and supported Ukraine, calling for a criminal case against Putin and for his designation as a terrorist.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Fulminating on state television, one of Russia\u2019s most prominent propagandists, Vladimir Solovyov, demanded to know how Lockshin had been allowed to make the movie. He asked whether the release was a \u201cspecial operation,\u201d or if somebody had been \u201cduped.\u201d<\/p>\n State networks didn\u2019t promote the movie the way they normally would for a government-funded picture. And the state film fund, under pressure after the release, removed the movie\u2019s production company from its list of preferred vendors.<\/p>\n The antics spurred a new wave of moviegoers, who rushed to theaters fearing the film was about to be banned.<\/p>\n \u201cThe film amazingly coincided with the historical moment that Russia is experiencing, with the restoration of Stalinism, with the persecution of the intelligentsia,\u201d said the Russian film critic Anton Dolin, who has been branded a \u201cforeign agent\u201d and fled the country. \u201cAnd when the author of the film began to be subjected to this persecution, a completely magical rhyme arose.\u201d<\/p>\n Bulgakov\u2019s novel, written in the 1930s, is a phantasmagorical story exploring the capacity for good and evil in every individual. In it, the devil arrives with his retinue in Joseph Stalin\u2019s Moscow, where he meets an afflicted author, known as the Master, and his lover, Margarita. The novel also retells the story of Pontius Pilate ordering Jesus\u2019s crucifixion, which the reader finds out is the subject of a forbidden text the Master has written.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Bulgakov\u2019s own travails were reflected in the Master\u2019s torment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Stalin didn\u2019t order the novelist\u2019s execution or imprisonment, in contrast to the treatment of other Soviet writers of the time, but severely restricted Bulgakov\u2019s work and suffocated his artistic ambitions. Bulgakov poured much of that pain into \u201cThe Master and Margarita,\u201d which wasn\u2019t published until the late 1960s, more than a quarter century after his death.<\/p>\n \u201cThe movie is about the freedom of an artist in an unfree world,\u201d Lockshin said, \u201cand what that freedom entails \u2014 about not losing your belief in the power of art, even when everything around you is punishing you for making it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOf course,\u201d he added, \u201cthere is a love story in it as well.\u201d<\/p>\n Lockshin, who grew up both in the United States and Russia but is an American citizen, signed on to the project in 2019, choosing a Quentin Tarantino-style revenge plot as a frame for the adaptation before the war revived severe censorship<\/a> in Russia.<\/p>\n 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 put the movie\u2019s release at risk.<\/p>\n \u201cMy position was that I wouldn\u2019t censor myself in any way for the movie,\u201d he said. \u201cThe movie itself is about censorship.\u201d<\/p>\n Universal Pictures, which had signed on to distribute the film, pulled out of Russia after the war began and exited the project. (The movie currently has no distributor in the United States.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n And as repression in Russia expanded, life began to imitate art. \u201cAll of these things that were in the movie were kind of playing out,\u201d Lockshin said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Russia charged a theater director and a playwright<\/a> with allegations of justifying terrorism, echoing a show trial for the Master that the film\u2019s creators added to the script. An \u201calmost naked\u201d theme party in Moscow<\/a> led to a crackdown on its celebrity attendees, conjuring images of the novel\u2019s famous satanic ball. And Russians began denouncing one another<\/a> for harboring antiwar sympathies, much like when the Master\u2019s friend snitches on him.<\/p>\n \u201cNot everyone can afford to be so uncompromising,\u201d the friend tells the Master in the movie, before ratting him out. \u201cSome people have alimony to pay.\u201d<\/p>\n The film\u2019s verisimilitude was unmistakable for many moviegoers.<\/p>\n Yevgeny Gindilis, a Russian film producer, said that he had crowded into a Moscow theater near the Kremlin to watch it, and sensed some discomfort in the hall. At the end, he said, about a third of the audience erupted in applause.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the clapping,\u201d Gindilis said, \u201cis about the fact that people are happy they are able to experience and watch this film that has this clear, anti-totalitarian and anti-repressive state message, in a situation when the state is really trying to oppress everything that has an independent voice.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Gindilis recounted how one of the most uncomfortable scenes for people to watch in Moscow was the final revenge sequence, when the devil\u2019s mischievous talking cat repels a secret police squad that has come to apprehend the Master, leading to a fire that ultimately engulfs all of Moscow.<\/p>\n The Master and Margarita, alongside the devil, played by the German actor August Diehl, gaze out over the burning city, watching a system that ruined their lives go up in flames.<\/p>\n \u201cToday the whole country is unable to take revenge or even respond to the persecution, restrictions and censorship,\u201d Dolin, the film critic, said. But the protagonists of the film, having made a deal with the devil, manage to get even.<\/p>\n The film flashes to the Master and Margarita in the afterlife, reunited and free. \u201cListen,\u201d she says to him. \u201cListen and enjoy that which they never gave you in life \u2014 peace.\u201d<\/p>\n Alina Lobzina contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n