The Master and Margarita - Vladimir Bortko

Master i Margarita - Vladimir Bortko

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This TV-series directed by Vladimir Bortko and broadcast at the end of 2005 on the Russian Telekanal Rossiya, scored unprecedented ratings.

It was the second attempt of director Vladimir Bortko to film Bulgakov's masterpiece. In 2000 he had already been sollicited by the Kino-Most film studio, associated with the competing channel NTV, but at the last moment the company did not succeed to come to an agreement with Sergei Shilovsky, grandson of Bulgakov's third wife, and owner of the copyrights. This time, with Rossiiya, it worked. And it did not pass unnoted.

This TV-epopee of more than 8 hours was heavily criticized, or at least regarded with much scepticism, before it was shown on screen. Sometimes it was sincere and well-grounded concern about the authenticity, but sometimes it seemed as if the Bulgakov die-hards behaved like modern Latunsky's by reproaching a movie they hadn't seen yet with sacrilege. Or maybe it was because of the gigantic publicity campaign that was launched to promote the series, and that could give reasons to fear an ambitious, but superficial Hollywood-ish production. But fortunately it wasn't the case.

Other than some well-known earlier screen adaptations, director Vladimir Bortko (°1946) followed the book meticulously. If you have 10 times 52 minutes available for it, it is of course, easier than when you're supposed to deliver a 90 minutes movie picture. The setting of a TV-series appeared to be an ideal format to elaborate the complicated, multidimensional work with many different characters. Bortko had already shown his talent with his TV-adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Idiot in 2003. Besides, he already filmed another novel of Bulgakov before: Heart of a Dog, in 1988. He followed the dialogues almost word for word because, so he said, Bulgakov wrote the novel almost like a screenplay.

I was kind of sceptical too when I saw the dvd at дом книги (Dom Knigi) or House of Books in Moscow. But curiosity was stronger than scepticism and, frankly speaking, I was pleasantly surprised from the first images. Woland's meeting with Ivan and Berlioz, and the first confrontation of Pilate and Yeshua Ha-Nozri are not only beautifully portrayed and well performed, but in addition they matched remarkably well with the images that I had in mind when I first read the book.

The three layers of the novel are reflected more than adequately, with a well manipulated alternation of colour and black-and-white. The actors are cast accurately and they play the characters faithfully to the novel's intentions so that even the most convinced sceptics shut their mouths, despite the huge popular success - on December 29, 2005 more than 80 million people were watching.

Must I find demerits? Well... I missed some characters who lent colour to the novel, like doctor Kuzmin and the demonic Abaddon. The depiction of Behemoth was a little disappointing too. With the existing technologies it could have been done better, but after all I can only conclude that, even though it is «only» TV, this series doesn't disenchant and its main merit is probably the fact that Bulgakov now found a much bigger audience than he ever could have had with his books.

Trivia

Director Vladimir Bortko did not like the voice of actor Aleksandr Galibin, who played the role of the master. Galibin's voice is not heard in the film. His lines were dubbed using the voice of Sergey Bezrukov, the actor who played the role of Yeshua. But there were more voices dubbed by other actors. To mention only the most important ones: the role of Aloisy Mogarych was played by actor Gennady Bogachov, but we hear the voice of actor Andrey Tolubeev. And Aphranius, played by Lithuanian actor Liubomiras Laucevičius, got the voice of Oleg Basilashvili, the actor who played Woland.

A main theme of The Master and Margarita, death under mysterious circumstances, remains topical. Several deaths that have occurred since the filming of the series, among actors who played roles in it feed the idea for many Russians that a curse rests upon those who participate in a film adaptation of The Master and Margarita. Some actors died at a young age, others in mysterious or even suspicious circumstances.

Click here for an overview of all sudden and suspected deaths

Despite the fact that the city of Moscow plays an important role in the novel, director Vladimir Bortko opted to shoot the 1930s scenes in Saint Petersburg. «Saint Petersburg today is much more like Moscow in the Stalin period than Moscow today», Bortko said. The biblical scenes were shot in Bulgaria and in the Crimea, Ukraine.

In the series, the dialogue from chapter 5 between the characters «near the cast-iron fence of Griboedov's» about the quality of the restaurant at the writer's house is not conducted by the characters Amvrosy and Foka. Vladimir Bortko replaced them with the characters of Grigory Rimsky and Styopa Likhodeev.

An important element of the novel is the fact that the master has no name. But when, in episode 8 of this series, Behemoth returns the manuscript of the novel to the master, we see the title page of the manuscript with the name of the author - Maksudov Nikolay Afanasievich. That is the name of the main character from Bulgakov's Theatrical Novel, which was translated in English as Black Snow, and which was also given to the master by director Aleksandar Petrović in 1972.

Just ike the famous British film director Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980), Vladimir Bortko used to play a so-called cameo or minor role in his films. In this series he can be seen for 40 seconds in the second episode as the postman in Kyiv who delivers a telegram to Maksimilian Andreevich Poplavsky, the uncle of Berlioz, about the death of his cousin.