The title is from Pushkin, and unearned. Vladimir Motyl’s Soviet epic about the "Decembrists’" revolt of 1825 has a handsome physical production going for it, along with thousands of extras, grand palaces, gorgeous/glossy location work, Bolshoi-sized perfs, stunning costumes; the works. What it doesn’t have is a story you can follow. Perhaps this telling of a failed uprising against the Tsar & his policies by the upper military ranks is so well known by Ruskies that this Breznev era pic can’t be bothered to lay out the course of events or just what was at stake. The first half jumbles the men, their quick collapse & the punishments meted as Motyl time jumps & lays in fashionable tech work to no great purpose, obfuscating instead of illuminating. Part two centers on the wives who leave their sheltered lives to follow husbands to prison or exile, yet remain aristocratic even in rags & despair. Odd heroines, a botched hanging & some scenes at a far outpost near Siberia stand as a showcase for what might have been.
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