A Gentleman in Moscow

An original point of view on the events after the Russian Revolution

© Paramount Plus

Today I’m suggesting you the miniseries (8 episodes) “A Gentleman in Moscow” available on Paramount Plus and based on the historical novel of the same name by Amor Towles.

I watched this series over a fairly long period of time (one episode a week or even less) and I realised that such a pace was particularly suited to the story, which takes place over a period of 30 years.

The protagonist, Count Alexander Rostov, after the Russian Revolution, is placed under house arrest at the Hotel Metropol in Moscow. Forced to abandon his suite and (almost) all of his personal belongings, he will be moved to a small, dark and cold attic, but will be able to use all the hotel’s services.

Ewan McGregor is perfect in the role of the nobleman who has suddenly lost all his privileges, but who tries to adapt and, also thanks to the relationship with the characters who work or often stay at the hotel, to shape the environment around him to build a satisfying, at times even happy, life.
Out there, Russia is going through a difficult period of change and an evolution with uncertain outcomes, the echo of which partly reaches the golden universe of the Metropol, where Alexander has to juggle between the threats of a Cheka agent (Soviet secret police) to end his imprisonment with death, the more or less romantic interest in the actress Anna Urbanova, the interest in him of the little Nina Kulikova, daughter of one of the employees, who will become a sort of god-daughter for him, and the pangs of sadness, which at a certain point bring him very close to giving in to the desire to end it all.

This series offers an original point of view on the historical events of Russia between 1917 and 1947 and, mixing drama and irony, it can be watched with pleasure and with a certain involvement.
I found the almost open ending (even though, unfortunately, we know very well that this is not the case) particularly fitting, which makes you smile but with a tear always lurking there.

But there is something that occasionally manages to break the magic, namely the choice to make colour-blind casting, without taking into account the ethnicity of the actors.
It’s something I understand and it makes sense in the theatrical field, where the imaginative effort of the viewer has always been part of the experience, but in a historical television series, which in many ways faithfully reproduces the Russia of that period, finding yourself with approximately a quarter or more of the characters of colour (including a Bolshevik with dreadlocks!) is quite alienating.

I have no doubt that the actors chosen are very good. They certainly are, but often the characters they play are so poorly developed that any skill is completely irrelevant, thus giving rise to the “doubt” that it is a purely rhetorical choice.
But the real problem is that, even if the casting is “blind”, the viewer is not at all. The appearance of these characters is, in fact, a distraction that constantly brings the latter back to reality, breaking the involvement I was talking about before.

And that’s not good at all.