The Russian Embassy on Tuesday evening hosted friends of the embassy, dignitaries, diplomats and media for a screening of the Russian film, ‘The Silver Skates’, officially released in 2020.
Prior to the screening, the Ambassador Mr Vsevolod Tkachenko said that the film showcased the growth of Russia’s movie production industry and its adoption of modern technologies.
The gathering was also one of a few events that the embassy is hosting as the festive season begins in earnest around the country.
In case you’re interested in a Russian Christmas film for a change, here’s what you need to know.
The film is very loosely based on the book by Dutch-American writer Mary Mapes Dodge of the same name and is directed by Michael Lockshin.
Sadly, even though Netflix bought the international rights to the movie following its Russian Box Office success during the pandemic, it isn’t available to stream on Netflix Kenya.
Its successful release also ensured that ‘The Silver Skates’ was the opening film of the 42nd Moscow International Film Festival in October 2020.
Synopsis
Set during Christmas at the turn of the century in the city of St. Petersburg, the movie follows the budding love story of an aristocrat’s daughter, Alisa Vyazemskaya, and a petty thief and the son of a lamplighter, Matvey Polyakov.
After being fired from his job, Matvey joins a group of Marxist skating pickpockets who steal to survive in a state divided into the haves and the have-nots. To make Matvey sympathetic to the audience despite his thieving ways, the film leans heavily on Marxism through its thieving characters, led by the charming Alexey Tarasov, to explain Matvey’s descent into criminality as a necessity.
Despite the heavy themes the movie explores through its pickpockets’ lives, the beautiful winter scenes and amazingly choreographed skating sequences are used to mask the very real desperation that rules the proletariat’s lives, keeping the film light.
Running parallel is Alisa’s story. An intelligent, curious and stubbornly independent woman, she rebels against the narrow expectations placed on women of her class, dreaming of studying science in a society that would rather see her obedient and silent.
After a chance meeting, Matvey and Alisa later fall in love and have to fight for it, quite literally in the end, as Alisa’s betrothed, Arkady, a powerful and possessive man who embodies the system, finds the group of thieves and thwarts their escape.
But don’t worry, without spoiling the ending, as it is with all Christmas stories, this, too, has a happy ending.
