Taras Bulba [ENGLISH SUBTITLES] [2009]
by Vladimir Bortko
![Taras Bulba [ENGLISH SUBTITLES] [2009]](/images/Taras-Bulba-ENGLISH-SUBTITLES-2009-B0028VCPMK-L.jpg)
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DVD details
Director: Vladimir BortkoPrimary Contributor: Bogdan Stupka
Primary Contributor: Vladimir Vdovichenkov
Primary Contributor: Igor Petrenko
Primary Contributor: Magdalena Melcarz
Primary Contributor: Mikhail Boyarsky
Primary Contributor: Daniel Olbrychski
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: Russian (Unknown); English (Subtitled)
Format: Color, Import, Subtitled
Product features:
- DVD
- IMPORT
- REGION 0
- COLOR
DVD Reviews of Taras Bulba [ENGLISH SUBTITLES] [2009]
DVD Review: Tedious Russian Propaganda
Summary: 1 Stars
Flood the living room with Red Army Chorus songs and hook yourself up to a slow IV-drip of 100 proof Blue Label Stolichnaya before viewing this uraaaaah-Russian-chauvinistic version of "Taras Bulba" directed by loyal Communist Vladimir Bortko.
Hemingway called "Taras Bulba" one of the ten best books of all time. Sadly, this film
hijacks a great adventure story and uses it as a vehicle to push aggressive Russian propaganda. Nicolai Gogol intended his "Taras Bulba" to enchant readers with the heroic and colorful legends of the Kozak defenders of the Ukrainian steppes and built his short story around the human tragedy of a father (Taras) who discovers his traitorous son is fighting against his own people.
Although he wrote in Russian, Gogol constantly asked his mother living in Ukraine to detail colorful Ukrainian customs, dress, songs, folklore and history to help authenticate a period that captured his imagination. Unfortunately, this proud and unique heritage of Ukrainians still sticks in the craw of today's chauvinist Russians.
Bear in mind this film's $25 million budget was completely footed by the Russian Ministry of Culture who have much bigger fish to fry... Poor Putin and the rest of the Russian skinheads who must resort to perpetual chest-thumping! (Just watch any of the myriad combat films being cranked out non-stop in the Motherland these days, glorifying their Spetsnaz warriors in violent wars in Chechnya, Afghanistan and any other place where "threatened" Russians "feel surrounded" and must "defend themselves".) But the other major thorn for the Russians is the existence of an independent Ukrainian state...
It doesn't matter to the Kremlin that the action of Taras Bulba took place long before Peter the Great dragged the resistant Muscovites kicking and screaming to rename themselves as "Russians", thus stealing the royal pedigree of the Kievan Empire ("Rus") from Ukraine. (Education and things like printing presses took even longer to break through to the Tsar's superstitious Muscovites because they were seen as "the work of the devil". Russian hate/envy of all things Western exists to this day.)
But Peter understood only too well that his Muscovites desperately needed a pedigree more presentable than their primitive origins in the northern swamps. In the past, Muscovites had vainly tried to manufacture an imposing lineage. The grandiose "Third Rome" idea sputtered before it could fly. (remnant: "Tsar" was derived from "Caesar")... so, presto-chango.... just snatch all the intellectuals away from enlightened Ukrainian universities and claim the Kievan Empire for their own. Now the Muscovites started to preen before the world as "Russ-ians"....
This is the real reason the Kremlin has produced this propaganda film, brazenly stealing the uniquely Ukrainian ethos of the steppes, Taras Bulba and the Kozaks. Purpose: to load it with disinformation.
How does this film compare with the 1962 Hollywood version? Well, filmed on location in Ukraine in 2007, this Bortko movie is more consistent in set design, costumes, and overall authenticity to the original novel than the romanticized Yul Brynner / Tony Curtis 1962 version which ludicrously displaced the endless wide Ukrainian steppes with Argentine mountains.
I was always convinced this title role was one of Yul Brynner's most powerful portrayals, and it is a credit to Bohdan Stupka that his unique assumption of Taras is equally valid... older and more contemplative, perhaps a bit wiser.... Both films featured several different scenes from the novel. The part of Yankel the Jew was completely omitted in TB 1962, while TB 2007 drops the brutal hazing of Taras' sons by Polish students. The storming of the Polish castle walls with ladders is extremely well done in 2007..... but yet there was a delightful chemistry between Tony Curtis and Christine Kaufmann in the more playful 1962 version... with help, of course, from Franz Waxman's magnificent score which is light years better than the 2007 pretentious slow-motion musical themes during climactic battle scenes and irritating Zamfir-like flute music.
But the biggest turn-off in the present movie occurs during the last brutal battle (blood spurting at every opportunity), when dying Kozak warriors indulge in countless melodramatic praises to the Holy Russian Motherland and even to the Tsar, as they draw their last breaths. (In what insane universe would these wild, proud, and independent Ukrainian Kozaks have ever died with the name of any ruler, much less their hated Russian enemy, the Tsar, on their lips?) Embarrassing to sit through, and more melodramatic than the worst potboiler Italian opera. But then, that was its purpose - propaganda for "Great" Russia, pure and simple: continue to rewrite history by confusing the very real distinctions between Ukrainians and Russians. The Kremlin's overriding aim is to bully Ukraine away from NATO and to punish Poland for supporting Ukrainians in their Orange Revolution. (BTW, this movie has been severely criticized in both Ukraine and Poland...)
Too bad this great story was twisted into cheap agit-prop. In Soviet ideology, the propaganda film was one of the most powerful agents of social change and control over the masses. Uraaaaaaah!....... As the current Kremlin continues leading Russians down this same path, Eisenstein is surely grinning in his proletarian grave.
Description of Taras Bulba [ENGLISH SUBTITLES] [2009]
Izuchaja istoriju kino, stalkivaesh'sja s potrjasajuwimi faktami. Okazyvaetsja, povest' Nikolaja Vasil'evicha Gogolja Taras Bul'ba, kotoraja vhodit v objazatel'no programmu po literature v srednej shkole, nikogda ne jekranizirovalas' v Sovetskom Sojuze!Bestsellers in DVD
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