I’ve been pondering a 1990 Russian film directed by Andrei Eshpai. Here is the copy-&-pasteable title of the link in YouTube. For movie buffs who like atmosphere and scene composition, it’s worth a look.

Униженные и оскорбленные (1990) драма

Google Translate renders this as “Humiliated and Insulted.” At first glance this looked like a translation of “Les Miserables,” but it turned out to be a dramatization of a Dostoevsky novel. Based on the Russian roots (Lowered + Offended/Hurt) it could also be “The Downtrodden and Aggrieved.” By any name, the whole plot is compressed like a bullion cube down into 90 minutes. Therefore it drifted right over my head despite the somewhat phonetically fractured Russian subtitles. It took me half a dozen plot summaries and film reviews to sort out which of the characters are downtrodden, which ones are aggrieved, and why in the world these people are so unhappy.

(Ivan at vigilant rest, between errands, chores, and imploring people to calm the heck down.)

Nikita Mikhalkov (not shown here) plays the wealthy socially dominant prince, all labile moods and polished insinuating monologues. He pops up uninvited in everybody’s personal living space, abjectly humble yet ignoring all boundaries, causing fracas right and left. Under his unctuous silliness he is clearly roaming for chances to cast down other people and then make off with their money and/or virtue. But since he feeds off the reactions of those around him, it could be prudent if his listeners could downpedal their reactions instead of falling into hysterics at his malicious sallies. The prince wants his indecisive hapless rich son to go marry a rich girl instead of the indecisive hapless poor heroine; if the two lovers would listen to him and break up, they would do themselves a lifelong favor and make the whole plot easier to follow. Nastassja Kinski as poor heroine Natasha looks beautiful and poignant; in all her scenes any available illumination in the room centers on her lovely features and fair hair.

The Russian film reviews, at least the half dozen that I checked, didn’t mention my two favorite characters.

The first character is St. Petersburg at the end of a long winter, cast as its astonishing evocative brooding self — the courtyards and gables and winding stairs and ironwork on the bridges and canals and thawing ice. A truly gifted team worked with the scene composition and props and interior lighting, scrimping and saving every candlepower in rich shades of shadow and gloom. Privileged characters (such as the prince, at a restaurant) are shown with facets of color and light, with brighter fabrics and extra candles and crystal glassware. The poorer people spend their lives frosted in to alley garrets with virtually no light at all, making one wonder how anyone could face the day and how the geranium on the heroine’s freezing windowsill stays all leafy and green.

Actor Sergey Perelygin makes the film with his beautiful portrayal of Ivan Petrovich (shown above and below). Ivan, also called by his diminutive name Vanya, is a poor honest writer. As a country orphan he was raised by Natasha’s family and keeps unswerving devotion to them. He occupies the darkest garret of all, illuminated at times only by his fine expressive eyes. Ivan and his eyes are the backdrop presence in every scene. His tastes are restrained and thrifty (he is mocked for abstaining from liquor, and for ordering the cheapest thing on the menu when the prince treats him to dinner.) He is also the only member of his social set who actually works for a living. His mercantile trade of selling written pieces for publication, and his lack of a noble name, cause the others to overlook him as a marriage prospect. (The prince though gleefully sneers at Ivan’s spartan lodgings and socio-economic celibacy, and offers Ivan a bribe to marry heroine Natasha and so get her away from his son.)

But usually Ivan is relegated to the farthest corner of the dim wallpaper while the other self-absorbed characters and their speeches drive each other to distraction. He is the one soul with a lick of sense, biding his time as an expert witness and keeping his own emotions in hand, then springing into action whenever anyone needs help or comfort. Heroine Natasha spends the film languishing from divan to bed to window lamenting to Ivan her passion for her vacillating suitor. Natasha also sends Ivan from pillar to post over ice and snow at all hours delivering messages and notes or arranging or chaperoning her meetings with her sweetheart or blaming him for her ill-starred love life. All the while, Ivan expresses his love for her by protecting Natasha while she tries to capture her intermittent swain. Once in a while Ivan gets to talk back (as, to the prince: “And what about your conscience, before God?”) or to offer ignored advice and kind gentle words.

But mostly, Ivan is busy. He’s comforting an old man and his old dog dying on the street or arranging an inter-generational reconciliation or rescuing an orphan from trafficking and nursing her until her death or sprinting to the apothecary or salvaging scraps of someone’s reputation-saving documents or handing over his only coat or lighting a candle for the deceased at church or blowing out a candle at home to save on wax or calling in the doctor or serving as a tireless confidant and probably watering that geranium. He manages a bite of apple before hand-feeding the rest of it to others, but he’s not about to get a second puff of that cigarette or a first sip of tea.

At the end of the story the characters, with no word of thanks or glimmer of appreciation for Ivan, have all moved away to greener pastures or died of tuberculosis or heart trouble or existential angst. He is left alone with his dark garret and quill pens, murmuring “If only I can capture this whole story, and write it all down.” He proceeds to do just that.

Maybe it’s not unheard of, for families in general to have an Ivan somewhere under the radar. Some kid who watches from the corner and keeps trying to fix and remember things. Maybe?