The Barber of Siberia (1998)

beautiful landscapes. and seductive story. clever mixture of humor and drama. a bitter love story. and Russia in a splendid portrait about past, tradition, image about world, love and duty. Oleg Menshikov does one of that characters who are essence of a state of soul. the science to explore the emotions of young Tolstoy, the madness of gesture from profound love, the dialog with Jane, the search of sense in an absurd universe, all as embroidery of significant details. Julia Ormond gives a special aura to her character. and that is not a real surprise. the film is about evolution. the evolution of lead characters. the evolution of Russia itself. an admirable scene - the presence of Nikita Mikhalkov as Alexander II . a not great film. but, surely, a beautiful one.

The thing that I REALLY like about this film is the story and the poetic way in which it wants to develop. But I can't get past the bad thing, which is that it fails at making it convincing.. and both the comedy and the drama are extremely cheesy.I'm Russian and I don't like Mihalkov because of his vanity, it all seems like some sort of local thing between him and himself. For example, in this movie, there are several scenes that have nothing to do with the story and do not serve for comedic purpose (because were not in the least funny), and could have easily been left out. It is obvious he for some reason liked them and felt it was right to put them in the final cut. The comedy is BAD. The way comedy develops in a Mihalkov film, is usually by trying to have this sort of crazy mess at the beginning, lot of characters, goofy scenes that don't really have much to do with the main plot, etc. This has worked amazingly cool in many films because the trick is when it's done in an uninterested matter. But this film fails miserably at it, because it all seems SO extremely obvious and forced. The scenes last so long they become a desperate attempt at basically forcing you to laugh and have a good time. In the tragic aspect the film fails as well, not because of the story itself, but because it basically comes from nothing. Mostly because the 2 main characters, apart from having no chemistry between them, are both quite unlikable. I could not see anything appealing about Jane, she seemed totally ordinary and there was nothing beautiful or mysterious in her for which some young guy would fall. The scene where she meets Radlov is painful to watch, the script in that scene is idiotic. Andrei was simply too stupid. I love Menshikov but I kept feeling bad for him in this film, him playing a cadet at 38 it's ridiculous, all he did was constantly acting like a guy with some mental issues in order to appear younger. And his character becoming a mad man for Jane and feeling the most brutal adoration towards her makes no sense, not because he doesn't know her but because she isn't in the least interesting, and later she randomly jumps in his bed, right after telling him she was no good for him, managing to become even less interesting, plus skanky. On top of that, they both mess up with a character that was clearly there to make this sort of "villan" for the story. But actually, the Radlov character never did any harm to anyone and had no intentions of it, through the movie, Jane continued to make an idiot of him in order to use him for her business purposes, and Andrei egoistically puts him in an awkward position when he goes to propose to Jane. Then, Andrei publicly hits him with a stick and of course that ends badly for Andrei and Jane. Well, what did they expect?Bottomline, bad film, although it does have a romantic story even if it's not convincing.

The second time I saw this film I could see why people had said it was sentimental, overly staged. However I thought it was worth seeing a second time...Because the first time I saw it, one woman in the group of friends I went with was an international expert on Russian literature and Dostoyevsky in particular. She said she thought the film got to the nub of a Russian preoccupation... this woman wrestling with her identity. (OK she happens to be an American woman). If such an intellectual heavyweight thought it worth her 3 hours, it can't be that bad.The comments in other threads about the film not getting enough coverage don't tell us anything about the intrinsic value of the film. If anything they simply tell us that markets everywhere are different (a triumph of anti-globalism?) AND/OR that many many good films are made which we never hear about. Many good books are written and never published. Many beautiful people never make it to Hollywood...

Wonderful movie! This is one of the best love story movie I have ever seen.Story is very good made. The end of 19 century ant the beginning of the 20 century was very difficult for Russia - many people were poor and even very hungry. But Tzar and his "squad" were very rich and powerful. This was the main reason for the Revolution to begin. It was very sad to see a movie ending. But - thats life and this is not a type of Hollywood movie - this is something different and veeeeery special. Enjoy it !!!