I have not enough words to describe how criminally underrated Andrey Konchalovskiy "Inner Circle" is. Truly one of the greatest 90's movies, that should have grabbed more awards, had it the proper budget and the publicity it deserved.
There's a crucial moment halfway the film, between Ivan, Tom Hulce as a naive and idealistic man who's just been promoted projectionist of the Kremlin, and Anastasia, Lolita Davidovich as his pragmatic and disillusioned wife. He just learned that she spent years visiting the daughter of their former neighbors, recognized traitors to the motherland, hence, threatening the high lifestyle he kept maintaining with a low profile.
Ivan asks: "Who do you love better, me or Katya Gubelman?" "Who do you love better, me or Comrade Stalin?" She answers.
And that perfectly encapsulates the tragedy of "The Inner Circle". It's about a love triangle. Ivan is a loving husband but like all the USSR citizens in the 30's, he has an unshakable faith on the Soviet regime and its great leader Stalin. He answers Stalin without blinking an eye, a comical answer if not so tragic. And Anastasia loves him too, but she's obsessed with Katya, put in an orphanage after the arrest of her parents, victims of one of these purges that the Soviet regime used to eliminate or intimidate eventual 'plotters'. But Anastasia's love isn't just something made of maternal instinct.
Obviously, Katya would be better living with Ivan and Anastasia. Obviously, Katya is innocent in every meaning of the word. Obviously, she can be adopted although her Jewishness might be an issue (but the film doesn't clear that point). Yet, because of the untimely circumstances of Ivan's promotion, and the way it might undermine his opportunity to live the 'Soviet Dream', it becomes an unfeasible thing at the expenses of reason. And many events in the film happen at the expenses of reason, and this is why the inner circle gets more and more vicious as the plot progresses.
But there's something defining in Ivan's personality, his promotion occurs on the same day of his neighbors' arrest, so that he gets a glimpse of the worst and the best, that can ever happen to a man in these days. When lives hung on a thread, suspicion could become as deadly as accusation. The power of the film, based on the memories of real life projectionist Ivan Ganchin is to make us follow the show and the sideshow of the Soviet system from the perspective of a husband and a wife. And as we understand Anastasia's quest, the closer to the 'inner circle' we get, the more paranoid we feel.
There's an extraordinary sequence when Ivan gets ready for Stalin's arrival, with his 'inner circle' including Foreign Affaires Molotov and Security Chief Beria (Bob Hoskins) and you can read the nervousness in the eyes of all the officers. One inspects the corridors and discovers ashes on a jar, and gives a female subordinate a ruthless warning, but later, the roles are reversed when a General finds a bottle with an opened cap. We know this is a very serious fault when he just saw operators checking if air isn't poisoned with vacuum cleaners. That's another of these powerful ironies, the higher you climb the social ladder, the more fragile is your position, and the harder you might fall.
Every thing goes fine that night, whose emotional peak is reached when Ivan makes his first eye contact with Stalin (Tom Hulce's performance is grotesquely phenomenal, now here's an actor severely underused in movies). After Stalin leaves, everyone can finally take a break and savor what's left from food (which can neither be taken from the Kremlin or served again). But in another evening, Ivan understands the precariousness of any position, when a default in a projection machine puts the Ministry two inches away from the Gulag, and he understands that maybe his predecessor didn't really die of tuberculosis. And we know that there'll be a payback despite Ivan's cautiousness. And it does happen, but not because of Anastasia, although she'll be part of Ivan's moral downfall.
The tragedy of Anastasia reveals also the horrific side of all the members of the 'inner circle', on the top of them, Beria. After having tacitly renounced to his wife, who becomes a KGB agent carrying a child, Ivan can only weep over the ugliness of the world he's been immersed into. His heart disappears with Anastasia's suicide so that the only connection to such things as love and reality will come back ten years later, as Katya, a brainwashed teenager, now calling her own parents traitors.
"The Inner Circle" is a movie about Cinema and projectionist, so it deals very much with images; the most prevalent being the face of Stalin and its immediate contradiction once you get inside his circle. Images that lie are only matters of perception, but some are indelible, like the blood stain Katya's father left on the wallpaper when he crushed his head during his arrest. The stain remained in the house ever since Ivan and Anastasia moved in, and even Katya would discover it. The haunting stain is an image that speak thousands world about the cruelty and absurdity of a totalitarian system that was so destructive it even killed people at the death of Stalin. Anastasia didn't need the stain to understand life, yet she let herself being destroyed, proving that she indeed loved Ivan more than anything.
And Ivan would think back of his foolish answer on the day of Stalin's funeral after he prevented Katya from being trampled, and realized that the most important things in life should never be affected or left to any political power. He gave his wife as a pimp to the KGB executives as he left Katya to the orphanage, but he wouldn't let her go again, closing his flawed character's arc the perfect way, humanly speaking.
There's a crucial moment halfway the film, between Ivan, Tom Hulce as a naive and idealistic man who's just been promoted projectionist of the Kremlin, and Anastasia, Lolita Davidovich as his pragmatic and disillusioned wife. He just learned that she spent years visiting the daughter of their former neighbors, recognized traitors to the motherland, hence, threatening the high lifestyle he kept maintaining with a low profile.
Ivan asks: "Who do you love better, me or Katya Gubelman?" "Who do you love better, me or Comrade Stalin?" She answers.
And that perfectly encapsulates the tragedy of "The Inner Circle". It's about a love triangle. Ivan is a loving husband but like all the USSR citizens in the 30's, he has an unshakable faith on the Soviet regime and its great leader Stalin. He answers Stalin without blinking an eye, a comical answer if not so tragic. And Anastasia loves him too, but she's obsessed with Katya, put in an orphanage after the arrest of her parents, victims of one of these purges that the Soviet regime used to eliminate or intimidate eventual 'plotters'. But Anastasia's love isn't just something made of maternal instinct.
Obviously, Katya would be better living with Ivan and Anastasia. Obviously, Katya is innocent in every meaning of the word. Obviously, she can be adopted although her Jewishness might be an issue (but the film doesn't clear that point). Yet, because of the untimely circumstances of Ivan's promotion, and the way it might undermine his opportunity to live the 'Soviet Dream', it becomes an unfeasible thing at the expenses of reason. And many events in the film happen at the expenses of reason, and this is why the inner circle gets more and more vicious as the plot progresses.
But there's something defining in Ivan's personality, his promotion occurs on the same day of his neighbors' arrest, so that he gets a glimpse of the worst and the best, that can ever happen to a man in these days. When lives hung on a thread, suspicion could become as deadly as accusation. The power of the film, based on the memories of real life projectionist Ivan Ganchin is to make us follow the show and the sideshow of the Soviet system from the perspective of a husband and a wife. And as we understand Anastasia's quest, the closer to the 'inner circle' we get, the more paranoid we feel.
There's an extraordinary sequence when Ivan gets ready for Stalin's arrival, with his 'inner circle' including Foreign Affaires Molotov and Security Chief Beria (Bob Hoskins) and you can read the nervousness in the eyes of all the officers. One inspects the corridors and discovers ashes on a jar, and gives a female subordinate a ruthless warning, but later, the roles are reversed when a General finds a bottle with an opened cap. We know this is a very serious fault when he just saw operators checking if air isn't poisoned with vacuum cleaners. That's another of these powerful ironies, the higher you climb the social ladder, the more fragile is your position, and the harder you might fall.
Every thing goes fine that night, whose emotional peak is reached when Ivan makes his first eye contact with Stalin (Tom Hulce's performance is grotesquely phenomenal, now here's an actor severely underused in movies). After Stalin leaves, everyone can finally take a break and savor what's left from food (which can neither be taken from the Kremlin or served again). But in another evening, Ivan understands the precariousness of any position, when a default in a projection machine puts the Ministry two inches away from the Gulag, and he understands that maybe his predecessor didn't really die of tuberculosis. And we know that there'll be a payback despite Ivan's cautiousness. And it does happen, but not because of Anastasia, although she'll be part of Ivan's moral downfall.
The tragedy of Anastasia reveals also the horrific side of all the members of the 'inner circle', on the top of them, Beria. After having tacitly renounced to his wife, who becomes a KGB agent carrying a child, Ivan can only weep over the ugliness of the world he's been immersed into. His heart disappears with Anastasia's suicide so that the only connection to such things as love and reality will come back ten years later, as Katya, a brainwashed teenager, now calling her own parents traitors.
"The Inner Circle" is a movie about Cinema and projectionist, so it deals very much with images; the most prevalent being the face of Stalin and its immediate contradiction once you get inside his circle. Images that lie are only matters of perception, but some are indelible, like the blood stain Katya's father left on the wallpaper when he crushed his head during his arrest. The stain remained in the house ever since Ivan and Anastasia moved in, and even Katya would discover it. The haunting stain is an image that speak thousands world about the cruelty and absurdity of a totalitarian system that was so destructive it even killed people at the death of Stalin. Anastasia didn't need the stain to understand life, yet she let herself being destroyed, proving that she indeed loved Ivan more than anything.
And Ivan would think back of his foolish answer on the day of Stalin's funeral after he prevented Katya from being trampled, and realized that the most important things in life should never be affected or left to any political power. He gave his wife as a pimp to the KGB executives as he left Katya to the orphanage, but he wouldn't let her go again, closing his flawed character's arc the perfect way, humanly speaking.