It is most likely that writers or filmmakers digging for material from the lives of powerful world leaders are most likely to train their eyes on that time period when they had the world at their feet. But for Russian auteur Alexander Sokurov, they are perfect material when they are at their most vulnerable, when their frailties tumble out.
In his series of meditations on power, which occupy a special place in his oeuvre, he looked at Hitler (1999), Lenin (2001) and Hirohito (2005) during their last days, holed up in country mansions, away from their seats of power.
“I don’t look at them as dictators or kings, but as I would look at normal people. It does not matter how big a country someone is ruling, he or she will wake up in the morning, brush their teeth, and have breakfast. My cinema represents them as common people who all would inevitably commit mistakes. I am not saying that they might or might not. I am stating that inevitably any politician will make much more mistakes than artists, scientists, or anyone else, because political activity is all about mistakes,” says Mr. Sokurov, in an interview to The Hindu.
But the current crop of world leaders, including US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom he has had a love-hate relationship, do not evoke any interest in him.
“Trump and Putin are very clear, obvious persons. Everything is on the surface, very shallow, and superficial. You can perfectly see what they are. It is interesting when there is some mystery or depth in a person,” he says.
His relationship with his country’s government has evolved over the years, from being interrogated during the Soviet Union days to getting funds from the Putin government.
“The funny thing is that even when I was being interrogated by the KGB , the government was funding my films, because there was no other funding source in Soviet Russia to create cinema and theatre. But the huge problem under Soviet Russia was that they were unable to understand or accept any other way of thinking or any other way of aesthetic expression than the common mainstream understanding of socialist art,” says Mr. Sokurov.
The filmmaker shared a special relationship with Russian master Andrei Tarkovsky, who considered Sokurov his true disciple, as evident from the documentary that he made on Tarkovsky’s life.
“I made my first film that defined my artistic understanding of cinema before I watched any of his films or met him. But meeting him did influence me a lot. He was a person who really knew himself. I have never met such people before. He did realise that he was a genius. He also had a big idealist streak in him,” says Mr. Sokurov.
If not for cinema, Sokurov could certainly have been one of those classic literary figures, considering how he always places literature a few pedestals above cinema, quite rare for a filmmaker. He has extensively drawn material from literature, adapting stories, making documentaries on writers, including that remarkable interview with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Even when asked about the future of cinema, he goes back to literature.
“The biggest event in cinema will be the coming of new personalities, new individuals. There will not be any new ideas or aesthetics, for everything has already happened. Art has already happened. Divine Comedy has happened. Everything that had to be done was done way back in the 14th, 15th, and even in the 19th century. That is why it is easier for us now. The new directions in cinema will depend on how the new people find themselves in these already existing parameters,” he says.
The filmmaker will be presented with the Lifetime Achievement award at the closing ceremony of the 22nd International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) on Friday.
