Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Helen Mirren, Jason Clarke, Rory Kinnear, Gina McKee, Richard Roxborough, Joseph Quinn, Clive Russell, Kevin McNally, Aiste Gramantaite, Georgina Beedle, Camilla Borghesani, Thomas Doherty, Andrew Rothney, Paul Kaye, Adam El Hagar, Antonia Clarke, Phil Dunster, Georgina Hale, James Northcote.
The problem with politics is that we all believe that what we proudly proclaim as dogma cannot be refuted, that Empires of the mind last forever, that we can control the outcome by the show of strength and take on the world; and when we are shown the error of our conviction, we cry foul, we accuse, we dismiss, we wage war. History is not a judge, how others lived is not for us to referee. However, we can learn, we can empathise, we must find ways to bring the stories of the great, the good, the everyman and woman to whom history has touched to the forefront of the audience, and to understand, whether as entertainment, or to witness the drive of the age, how exactly that history played out.
It is the politics of the modern age that has caught our attention but it is to a world long since re-written that strikes the viewer as the story of Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, Catherine The Great of Russia, is given full attention of television and the interpersonal relationships that held the soon to be Empire together.
It is perhaps with embarrassment that the British public are not more informed of Russian life, let alone its rich and vibrant past, if we did then maybe we would look upon that area of Europe and Asia with more fascination, we might understand what was built by Catherine and by her great love Grigory Potemkin with some clarity. It is the politics of the 18th Century that pushes the story along, and how Catherine helped, even dictated, it.
In many ways the story of Catherine, is the story of Russia as a world power, how the world was shaped in Russia’s wake as it sought conquests to rival of the three European superpowers of the time, England, France and Germany but it is to the allusion to the classical love embodied in another Empire’s race for strategic importance, that brings the viewer’s mind to that of Antony and Cleopatra. Whilst the love affair between the two protagonists, played with dignity and deftness by Helen Mirren and Jason Clarke, was of a different age, a seismic gulf in time, there still hangs the ghosts of conquest and power at the very heart of the matter.
A story that resonates in the age of the plastic and unconvincing politician, that there in past is the epitome of how to sear yourself in the pages of history; it might be unpleasant, it can be cruel but history will remember Catherine The Great for a lot longer than virtually all those who have come to power since in Russia, with the exception perhaps of Gorbachev and Stalin.
Ian D. Hall