Last spring, the Showtime original A Gentleman in Moscow, an 8-episode prestige miniseries based on the well regarded 2016 book by Amor Towles and featuring Ewan McGregor, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Fehinti Balogun, debuted on Paramount+. Like many series released on streaming, this one came and went without much fanfare, although it did garner a good Rotten Tomatoes score and a Golden Globe nomination for McGregor. But in light of recent political developments in the United States, this period piece about a Russian nobleman who survived the Bolshevik Revolution and weathered the Stalin regime in the comfort of Moscow’s finest internation hotel merits a closer look.
The series stars McGregor as Count Rostov, a fay member of Czarist Russia’s ruling class, who was living in comfort in his estates until the revolution of 1917 overthrew the old order. Facing revolutionary justice in 1922, Rostov was spared because he was thought to have authored a poem that helped inspire the revolution. His sentence was to live out his days at the Metropol hotel in Moscow, which the new regime was maintaining in its former glory to impress foreign visitors.
However, a gilded cage is still a cage. Rostov is exiled to the servants’ quarters in the attic, stripped of most of his possessions, and is kept under constant surveillance by a surly KGB operative (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson). He is subjected to constant humiliation by hotel management, particularly the waiter-turned-hotel director Osip, played to reptilian perfection by Johnny Harris. As the series progresses, we see Rostov make the best of his situation, forming close relationships with a star of 1920s Soviet cinema (Winstead, McEwan’s real-life partner), members of the hotel staff, and two generations of young girls whom he paternally shepherds into adulthood (Alexa Goodall and Billie Gadsdon).
Throughout the series, the turbulent and increasingly dark events the Communist Party’s consolidation of power and the tightening grip of Stalin once he assumes leadership following Lenin’s death, loom in the background. At the level of plot mechanics, the cloak-and-dagger intrigue of Stalinist Russia creates conflict, atmosphere and tension leading up to the dramatic finale, but it also fuels the tragic undercurrent beneath Rostov’s superficial charm and unflappable resilience.
We don’t get much about Rostov’s actual politics in the show except that he led a luxurious life far out of touch with the problems that pushed Russia into a violent rejection of its elites and its sclerotic institutions. Though he was probably perceptive enough to have seen some of the problems of his society and may been relatively liberal for his class, for him, revolution not only destroyed the things worth destroying, but also things worth preserving.
The first few episodes of the miniseries depict the steady assault on the standards and institutions he grew up with, replaced by ideology and a cult of personality meant to glorify the unerring leader. Rostov is smart enough to hold his tongue, knowing that his enemies are just waiting for him to slip up, but the sadness at seeing a world lost, and replaced by something worse, pervades his character.
In this way, A Gentleman in Moscow is a cautionary tale about revolutions. Even in cases where the elites get what’s coming to them, as was arguably the case with Czarist Russia, the consequences at a human level are often dire, and the ideals sooner or later give way to personal ambitions, petty score settling and violence for the sake of violence. Thoughtful and decent people learn to keep their thoughts and their decency to themselves, or limited to a very small circle of friends. Even people who can ride out the worst times in a bubble of luxury that artificially preserves some of the old ways have to live with the knowledge that their country has been wrecked by vandals, governed by criminals, and based on lies.
For Russia, the darkness did not lift for generations, because once revolutions take place, they have a way of cementing themselves into power no matter how odious and self-destructive the regime becomes. Rostov would be long dead and his adopted daughter Sofia would be an old woman by the time Gorbachev finally called it a day for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The fact that we the audience know this history while the characters don’t is part of the drama.
In the spring of 2024, A Gentleman in Moscow could be appreciated as a well-conceived period piece featuring great performances and enough story to keep its momentum over eight 50ish-minute episodes. In spring of 2025, it is all that and maybe a little bit more.
Read the full article here
