The Russian Spirit

If there's one thing I love about my courses here, it's how interdisciplinary they are. Half the stuff I learn in one class ends up being relevant in another one. It gets redundant and frustrating some times, but overall, it makes it more interesting.

Like last year. So much of the stuff my crazy liberal Social Issues professor brought up was explored (more rationally and less extremely) in my Intro to International Studies the next semester. Some random topics from my Intro to American Studies class came back in my Immigration to America class, and things from there are coming back in my 20th Century American Foreign Policy class now. As are bits about Russian culture from my Literature and Film class. And in that class, stories from my freshman seminar last year (though we didn't do much of anything there) are being used again, and we're also watching a film that relates to my Technology and Culture in America class. And stuff I learned from the Smiths comes back in everything.

Anyway, in Literature and Film the other day, we watched this Russian film called The Barber of Siberia. It was fantastic, mostly. There was one specific part about the ending that I hated, but other than that, it was great. Compelling plot, good acting, sufficient cinematography and technical stuff. 3 hours long, but you don't even notice. It's the story of this American woman, Jane, who goes to Russia in 1885 to help her father, an inventor who's created a machine called "The Barber of Siberia" that will chop down trees at an amazing rate. He needs the Tsar's help to get the funding to complete it, and Jane is to help him get a meeting with the Tsar by going through one of the generals, Radlov, who happens to be the head of the military academy in Moscow. While there, one of the young cadets, Tolstoy (no relation to the writer) falls in love with her. Most of the movie is about the destructive nature of his love for and relationship with Jane, highlighting the cultural differences between the American woman and all the Russians she meets. It balances comedy, drama, and romance, with a bit of tragedy thrown in. It's really great. Definitely see it if you can ever get your hands on a copy; it's kind of hard to find it with English subtitles, apparently.

We talked about it in class today. I mentioned how the film rather subtly comments upon the cultural differences all throughout the film. At one point, the week before Lent begins, Jane is at a carnival celebrating; at the week's end, it will be a day of forgiveness - everyone, full of good will, shall beg everyone else's pardon. She notes how extreme the Russians are: at the carnival, she witnesses a giant fistfight, where dozens of men are beating each other up, knowing that at the end of the week they will all forgive each other. She says how they can't do anything in a small way: it's always one extreme or another; all or nothing. Though she observes this in retrospect, (spoiler alert! haha) it's her lack of understanding just how much this notion pervades the Russian spirit that leads to her downfall - as well as everyone else's.

A lot of the other people in class hated her for ruining other people's lives - for not giving up her business transaction. I didn't like her for it, but I understood why she did it - or, I suppose, the writer had her do it. My Russian professor said the same thing - that she understands her, and therefore doesn't hate her. We also talked, though, about how Jane is intended to be a symbol of Western culture, and a criticism of it, too. I found it really interesting that everyone hated the person that symbolized the American state of mind, and everyone loved the young, naive Russian cadet.

When I noted Jane's observation of the Russian tendency to go to extremes, Professor Ivushkina told us that this is very true, that that's how things in her country are. She pointed out, every time there's a revolution, their government is completely eradicated and they start over from scratch - they can't do anything partially, or half-heartedly. This idea is also common throughout Russian literature, she told us.

She also said, but not condescendingly, that there's no way that we can fully understand the Russian spirit - that passion, the intensity that drives them, or the camaraderie that is still incredibly important to them in a way that has gone out of vogue in America. There, still, friends put everyone else before themselves; and they're just very warm people in general. My other professor, who visited Russia for the first time in 25 years last summer, told us how she experienced this first hand - she would meet people on the streets, and start talking to them, and after only a few minutes, they would be asking her what she's passionate about, what is important to her, and other questions that people here rarely ask those close to them, let alone people they've just met. Here, she said, people will ask you what you do - not what you love, what's important to you.

Not everyone there is like that, of course, but it was still interesting. It's a shame people here aren't more like that. At least, in that they talk about that stuff. I think I'd go crazy if everyone I knew always went to extremes like the people in that movie did. In a way, though, it was beautiful. In a way, it was right.

I'll get to my other point later.