Beards galore

In desperate search of something costume drama-ish to watch, I finally tried an old film called Nicholas and Alexandra which I'd bought on video way back. I bought it because Eric Porter was in it, according to the credits: I'm not sure whether it was Soames- Moriarty- or Fagin-related, but I was in an intense Porter phase right then. True enough, he's in it - for about seven minutes (on the plus side, he spends two of them in a 1910-style bathing suit) before he gets shot. Luckily, the rest of the film proved watchable too.

This is the kind of history film they don't make anymore, and I'm not sure I can blame the film execs for that. If I had had to watch this feature all in one go, I'd probably have been bored, but treating it more as a TV series and watching parts of it from time to time worked rather well. It's similar to historical TV dramas of the same time: rather like a play, with dramatic monologues where the different historical players eloquently get to state their case. You sense that the accuracy is pretty high - especially compared to what passes as historical drama nowadays. (There should be a prize for most dementedly history-falsifying film of the year named after Braveheart, and my guess - though I haven't seen it yet - is that Anonymous would win it hands down this year.) Wasn't "amuse and instruct" an old watchword for TV programmes at the some point at the dawn of time? Nicholas and Alexandra is made very much in that kind of vein.

The Nicholas and Alexandra concerned are the last tsar Nicholas II and his wife. Of course, as you would expect from a film named after them, they are sympathetically portrayed (at least he is: she's a bit on the neurotic side, but at least she's loyal). However, thanks to those dramatic monologues, the story is told in an even-handed manner, and it's made plain that Nicholas - though a lovely father and husband and all that - was no great hit as a ruler. There are plenty of poignant what-if moments of the kind appreciated by people like me, who believe individuals rather than "structures" shape history. The biggest what-if is undoubtedly "What if Tsar Nicholas had decided not to mobilise his troops, thus giving his erratic cousin Willy a perfect excuse to declare war?" However, I'm in some doubt about if the tsar could have stopped World War I single-handed, what with so many countries spoiling for a fight. On a far smaller scale, I was shocked to realise that at least a handful of lives - those of the tsar and his family - could have been saved if even one of Russia's allies would have accepted to receive them while there was still time. The Liberals who brought about the first Russian revolution were practically begging among others England to take them on - but no country would, for PR reasons.

I'm afraid, though, I learned few actual names of important Russian politicians while watching the film. It was easier to remember them as the Irascible but Sound Beard, the More or Less Sensible Beard, the Pragmatic Career-Minded Beard (who claimed that "there will always be room for another bureaucrat" or words to that effect - let's hope so, dear) and Eric Porter (with a beard). There are so many beards on display you almost wonder if the few clean-shaven men belong to a secret club where clean-shavenness has a special significance, but it seems unlikely as they have little else in common. The high-minded Liberal (in the classic sense of the word) politician Kerensky is probably clean-shaven in order to signal his enthusiasm for western values. Prince Pretty Boy and his giggling pal are clean-shaven because it's cuter. The colonel in Siberia is quite possibly clean-shaven because he's played by John Wood, and anything else would be a tragic waste of handsomely forbidding countenance. Why the token factory worker is clean-shaven is anyone's guess.