#michael lockshin

[august-diehl]

AUGUST DIEHL as Woland in The Master and Margarita (2024) | dir. Michael Lockshin

[screenshotingmonstercinema]

[cantsayidont]

THE MASTER AND MARGARITA (2024): I don't feel any more qualified to analyze Mikhail Bulgakov's monumental Soviet novel than I do Goethe's FAUST (of which it is to some extent a satirical inversion), but this impressive new Russian feature adaptation, directed by Michael Lockshin and co-written by Lockshin and Roman Kantor, makes the rather bold decision to restructure the story rather than simply dramatizing it (as did Vladimir Bortko's more literal 10-part Russian TV version from 2005). Much has been pared down, sometimes severely, including a lot of the novel-within-a-novel about Pontius Pilate (Claes Bang). Lockshin and Kantor opt instead to focus more tightly on the title characters: the Master (Yevgeny Tsyganov), a writer whose work has abruptly fallen out of political favor, eventually landing him in an asylum, and his fiercely loyal mistress Margarita (Yuliya Snigir, dizzingly attractive), who will literally go to the Devil to save him.

It took me a while to warm to this approach, since "burned-out middle-aged male author pulls improbably beautiful younger woman based entirely on his unappreciated literary genius" is one of my least-favorite tropes; it is certainly an element of the novel (leavened a bit by the awareness that Margarita was based on Bulgakov's wife, Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova, who not only preserved his jumbled manuscripts for the novel, but also later edited them into a final version and arranged for it to finally be published more than 25 years after his death), but there's also a lot more besides that in the book than this film includes. Fortunately, Lockshin and Kantor are not so foolish as to deprive the audience for too long of the sinister delights of Professor Woland (August Diehl) and his diabolical retinue, and their rather belated arrival offers welcome reassurance that the filmmakers have not completely lost their heads like the unfortunate Berlioz (Yevgeny Knyazev).

What the restructuring most achieves is establishing a more palpable sense of peril for the main characters (underlined by Anna Drubich's strong score), something that the novel carefully veils. Tonally, Lockshin's take on Woland's midnight ball and the fate of the two lovers invites comparison with PAN'S LABYRINTH, and the ending, although not really that different from the book, feels darker. It's not quite as dazzling as it wants to be, some special effects are still subpar (although much better than the Bortko version), and it's never as funny or approachable as the the novel, but it's satisfying overall. One minor distracting point: While some characters' dialogue is in languages other than Russian (Woland speaks German, and what's left of the Pilate storyline is in Latin and Aramaic), it's always overdubbed in Russian, so in those scenes, you hear the same dialogue in two languages from two speakers at once; subtitles would be preferrable. CONTAINS LESBIANS? No. VERDICT: A worthwhile and generally compelling cover version, although probably not the best introduction to the story if you've not read the book.

[spacecrew]

The Master and Margarita (2023)

Director: Michael Lockshin

Writing credits: Mikhail Bulgakov, Roman Kantor, Michael Lockshin

Cinematography: Maxim Zhukov

[meri-l]

Michael Lockshin on Russian backlash to 'The Master and Margarita' | AP ...

My thoughts are in many ways similar to those of Mikhail Lokshin. As I sat in the audience I was surprised at how accurately the movie describes the present time. The movie "The Master and Margarita" really could not have been made in the present time, it is a breath from the past. A past where Russian movies were released on Western streaming services, where foreign actors and musicians came to Russia and did great things together with Russian creative people. I hope that in the near future the horrible, unnecessary war will end and the power in my beloved country will change

[lonelycoquettishcat]

LoneCoCat "Тень от Маргариты"

По мотивам творчества Михаила Афанасьевича Булгакова и Иоганна Вольфганга фон Гёте, а также фильма "Мастер и Маргарита" Михаила Арнольдовича Локшина

Я - часть той силы, что желает зла и вечно ждёт, но совершает благо. Я муза для поэта ремесла и пальцы режу больно как бумага.

Я мелкий дождь на висельном пути, я сердца стук у пленниц эшафота. Не пей вина с фарфоровой груди и не проси обнять тебя гарротой.

Но если ты прольёшь свою же кровь и скажешь мне, что двери не закрыты - орёл - всем смерть, а решка - всем любовь, я не горю, я тень от Маргариты!

[rayhaber]

Michael Lockshin'ın Usta ile Margarita Uyarlaması: Politika, Sanat ve Sansür

Michael Lockshin’ın Usta ile Margarita Uyarlaması Yazar Mikhail Bulgakov’un rejim karşıtı başyapıtı Usta ile Margarita, Michael Lockshin tarafından sinemaya uyarlandı. Film, günümüz Rusya’sının Putin yönetiminde yeniden karanlık çağlara dönüşümünü çarpıcı bir şekilde vurguluyor. Usta ile Margarita, Rusya’da şimdiye kadar yapılmış en yüksek bütçeli film olma unvanını taşıyor. 1.2 milyar ruble…

[wh0reforcoriolanussnow]

Imagine if Y/n and tom blyth played Anya and Dimitri from Anastasia. 😍⁉️

Anastasia || Tom Blyth x actress!reader

A/n: IM SO INLOVE W UR IDEA. also, if u haven’t already seen Anastasia? wtf r u doing? WATCH IT RN. guys you’re gonna have to imagine a lot bc of the pics 😭 but dw I wrote whos supposed to be who so it’ll make more sense!!! p.s should I do a fic where tom x actress!reader is in bridgerton?? 👀 send requests if u have any ideas.

Divider by @pommecita

~

y/n_y/l/n_fp

Liked by y/n_y/l/n, y/l/nupdates, and 297,484 others

Y/n and Tom spotted out in London today!! CAN WE TALK ABT HER HAIR OMG??? ITS RED?! AHHHHH

view more comments

user49: OMG SHE LIKED! CONGRATS

↘️ y/n_y/l/n_fp: IM STILL IN SHOCK 😮

user16: RED HAIR Y/N YESS

user037: what hair colour can she not pull off. lets be real here 🤷🏻‍♀️

user88: they’re still together? even after the rumours of her cheating on Tom w her co-star? 💀

↘️ y/n_y/l/n_fp: they’re called rumours for a reason babes x

user20: EVERYONE GO WATCH ‘HER’ RN

↘️ user643: y/n ate in that movie

↘️ user017: it’s so good 😭

↘️ user03: she was so cringe in that movie 😐

↘️ user94: if it was so cringe, why should she be nominated for an Emmy then? 😃

user55: maybe it’s for her upcoming film that she talked about in an interview?

~

mtv

Liked by madelyncline, rachelzegler, y/n_y/l/n, tomblyth and 14,307,583 others

it’s been announced that ‘it couple’ Y/n Y/l/n and Tom Blyth will be playing Anya and Dimitri in Lockshin’s upcoming live action adaptation of Anastasia! Lockshin says to expect release dates soon.

view all comments

y/n_y/l/n: yayayyayayaa

madelyncline: I’m so excited @y/n_y/l/n 😆

↘️ y/n_y/l/n: ME TOO!

user927: ya’ll I’ve been waiting for them to do a live action movie of Anastasia. Just can’t believe y/n and Tom will be in it 😭

user05: OMG OMG OMG OMG

user2: THEY’RE PERFECT FOR ANYA AND DIMITRI

user73: finally they’re in a movie together, can’t wait to see their chemistry even more on screen!

user84: with Michael Lockshin directing and Y/n and Tom as the main characters, I just KNOW this movie is gonna be so good.

user10: SO HER RED HAIR WAS FOR THIS MOVIE?!

user42: y/n and tom are so anya and dimitri coded 🥹

~

More instagram posts (click here)

[chwduplemon]

manuscripts don't burn

THE MASTER AND MARGARITA — 2024, dir. Michael Lockshin

[walterkov]

"Я — часть той силы, что вечно хочет зла и вечно совершает благо." Мастер и Маргарита / Master and Margarita (2024) dir. Michael Lockshin ►

[ruedit]

Мастер и Маргарита / Master and Margarita (2024) dir. Michael Lockshin ►

[its-sweet-like-cinnamon]

The Master and Margarita dir. by Michael Lockshin

[screenshotingmonstercinema]

[agentnico]

Master and Margarita (2024) review

Oh when in Soviet Russia…

Plot: Based on Mikhail Bulgakov's novel "Master and Margarita". 1930's, Moscow. A famous writer is censored by the Soviet state: his novel is banned, and the theatrical premier of his new play about Pontius Pilate - canceled. In just a few days he becomes an outcast. Inspired by these misfortunes the writer conceives a new novel in which the devil, named Woland, satirically revenges all those responsible for the writer's downfall. He knows this novel can never be published in the USSR, but Margarita - his muse pushes him to write it no matter what.

I truly believe Master and Margarita is one of the most powerful pieces of literature to come out from Russia. Yes I am aware War & Peace is more talked about, but look, I read all of its 1000+ pages and though it is an epic in every sense of the word, it does drag quite about. As for Master and Margarita, Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov created a satirical, quasi-biblical allegory that represents themes that are crucial to the human experience, such as struggle between good and evil, corruption in government and high society, human fragility, religion and prophecy, and the endurance of love over all. It’s a masterfully written piece of work, and one that is truly hard to adapt to screen, due to how much happens through its pages. However I’m all for directors giving it a go, with Michael Lockshin taking the challenge with a motion picture that was originally a co-production between Russian studios and Universal Pictures, though the latter pulled out following the Russo-Ukrainian War, even though most of the filming was already complete. Nevertheless after multiple delays the final product is here, so let’s digest.

Let’s talk through the positives first. It’s nice to see a Russian production of such grand scale, that even gives Hollywood a run for its money. There are some truly spectacular set pieces, and also interesting visuals, especially of a futuristic post-modern take of the Soviet Union, that reminded me a little of the recent Atomic Heart video game. Also the inclusion of August Diehl who plays the central Satanic figure Voland. This casting choice was a truly inspired one, as Diehl both looks and feels as if he came out straight from the pages of Bulgakov’s novel. There’s just this presence to him, as you can tell the power behind his eyes, yet he can also be really charming and witty. Whenever he was on-screen, the movie fully came to life, as he managed to perfectly balance the damning mocking tone with a deep inner understanding of things beyond the human mind. Look, there’s a great reason why they casted an actor outside of Russia for this part, as Diehl honestly was incredible. Funny how this is the same guy who got his testicles shot off in that WW2 Tarantino flick. Evgeniy Tsyganov as the titular Master too felt perfectly apt for the role, in some ways personifying Mikhail Bulgakov himself. The Master is a character that can so easily come off as dull, as he’s generally very stoic and constantly deep in his own thoughts, so it was a nice interpretation with Tsyganov breathing more life into him.

Unfortunately this is where the positives end. Look, I think it is truly impressive for the entire novel to be transferred into a 2hr 30min film, and of course I expected certain parts to be rushed. However the movie shoots itself in the foot by trying to approach the source material in a different way. Messing with various realities and reorganising the events of the novel in a completely different order, the result is messy and all over the place. I can say with full certainty that if I haven’t read the book before that I’d be so confused as to what the hell was going on in this movie. From the way it jumps from one place to the other in non linear fashion made it so difficult to be engaged and feel connected with the characters. There was a lot of extra narrative elements added to an already overstuffed plot (with a lot of creative choices being outright baffling) as such causing the movie to need to rush even more certain other key plot points that again, it was really disorganised and jarring.

Also, I know that ever since Batman it’s now cool to go dark with everything, but The Master and Margarita is a novel that doesn’t shy away from raising a few eyebrows. In fact it goes out of its way to be as weird and ridiculous as possible, with the inherent horror and tragedy that befalls each of its characters being felt only later, after the laughs have died down. The humour in the book, especially the dark stuff - that’s sort of famously the Russian novelists’ coping mechanism against, uh, being a Russian novelist. Yet this new 2024 film hardly allows a single joke, and instead tries to cover everything with a dark dramatic tone, and I feel that really takes away from the charm of Master and Margarita. Heck there are even sequences in the film that are supposed to be played for laughs, like the Behemoth cat’s shootout with the KGB cops that screams for physical comedy potential, yet the movie kind of glosses over it in a very monotonous way.

Aside from August Diehl and Evgeniy Tsyganov, the casting left a lot to be desired. Yulia Snigir made for a really bland Margarita. Voland’s entourage of demons, who in the book are a cause for some truly entertaining if silly shenanigans, here are completely wasted, and in fact are borderline annoying. Yuri Kolokolnikov as Korovev, the main member of his entourage, was actually horrendous. In the source material Korovev is a trickster, yet there was still wiseness within his madness. Here however Kolokolnikov plays him as if he were some kind of deranged clown, screaming every single line and maniacally laughing for absolutely no reason. The talking cat, who is one of the book’s best characters, in here is just a CGI cat who says maybe only two lines of dialogue in the whole film, and even then it’s a lazy mumble courtesy of actor Yura Borisov. Claes Bang as Pontius Pilate looked bored out of his mind. To be fair, the whole biblical side plot of Pilot and Jesus suffers the most here by being downgraded to maybe 5 minutes, which at this rate I feel like they should have cut the whole thing out entirely as the 5 minutes added nothing to the overall film. But yes, Claes Bang was evidently there to collect a pay check, and part of me wishes that instead we just had James McAvoy reprise his comedic take of Pilate from The Book of Clarence that came out earlier in the year.

It was never going to be an easy feat adapting Bulgakov’s epic into a movie. The narrative lends itself so much better to a TV series format, and in fact there is a wonderful 2005 limited series adaptation from Vladimir Bortko, and now that right there is how you make Master and Margarita work! That series featured great music, amazing performances, and plenty of breathing room to give every nook and cranny detail of the book its proper time. 2024’s Master and Margarita doesn’t come anywhere close to it, and though I do admire Lockshin’s ambitions, in the end it all falls flat on its face. August Diehl however is truly phenomenal in this, and honestly I really need to watch more of his acting work. I hear A Hidden Life with him is supposed to be good. Adding that to my watchlist as we speak.

Overall score: 4/10

[mariacallous]

One of Russia’s most famous 20th-century novels has returned to the Silver Screen. Infamously difficult to capture as a motion picture (more mystical observers even speak of a curse), Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” is back, reinterpreted by American-Russian filmmaker Michael Lockshin. The new movie stars Evgeny Tsyganov and Yulia Snigir in the titular roles and features German actor August Diehl (Gestapo major Dieter Hellstrom in Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds”) as the story’s demonic character Woland. Meduza reviews the controversy surrounding the film’s director and funding, the book’s cinematic history, and Lockshin’s adaptation.

The political controversy

Michael Lockshin’s “The Master and Margarita” averages an impressive 7.9/10 rating with more than 43,000 reviews at KinoPoisk and leads Russia’s box office in its opening week after earning 57.3 million rubles ($640,000) on its first day in theaters, but the director was making enemies before his film ever sold a single ticket. Self-described patriots denounce Lockshin as a Russophobe, a traitor, and a neoliberal besmircher of the intrepid Soviet secret police. They call him a hypocrite, too, in light of the fact that this new adaptation of Bulgakov’s classic was made (in 2021, before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine) with 800 million rubles ($8.9 million) from Russia’s Cinema Foundation, the state’s key funding agency for the domestic film industry. 

Lockshin, who now resides in the United States, declined to answer Meduza’s questions about the backlash in Russia, saying he’s not yet ready to comment on the situation. On Telegram, pro-war channels have circulated screenshots of Facebook posts that are now hidden from non-friends where Lockshin shared independent reporting about the war in Ukraine, wrote that he’s donated to Ukrainian organizations, warned that future generations of Russians will be paying reparations for the “tragedy they brought to Ukraine,” and compared the Putin regime to Nazism in Germany.

State propagandist Tigran Keosayan has advocated criminal charges against Lockshin, while Trofim Tatarenkov, a host on Russia’s state-run Sputnik radio (who admits that he hasn’t even seen Lockshin’s movie), called the filmmaker “scum” and fondly remembered how such “enemies of the people” were shot during the Stalinist era.

Previous adaptations

In May 2016, poet and literary critic Lev Oborin wrote an essay for Meduza answering several “questions you’re too embarrassed to ask” about Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita,” including the most shameful of all: Can I just skip the book and watch a movie version instead? The short answer is, yes, you can always skip the book. In fact, unless you’re a student or some other kind of hostage, you can skip the movies, too. But since you asked, there are at least two previous screen adaptations of “The Master and Margarita” worth knowing about.

The better-liked version, at least until now, has been Yuri Kara’s 207-minute film, made in the mid-1990s but not released until August 2011. Meanwhile, in 2005, Vladimir Bortko created a miniseries for Russian television that was criticized for uneven casting and even worse special effects. Unfortunately for Bortko, the 10 episodes drew deeply unfavorable comparisons to his beloved 1988 adaptation of Bulgakov’s “Heart of a Dog.” 

It’s also tempting to contrast Bortko’s miniseries with Kara’s adaptation — particularly how the two portrayed one of the novel’s most visually scandalous scenes: Satan’s Grand Ball. Filmed almost a decade later and made for TV, the sequence in Bortko’s series “looks almost puritanical” compared to Kara’s film, noted Lev Oborin. In raw terms of nudity and violence, this assessment is hard to contest:

So, is Lockshin’s adaptation any good?

Anton Dolin (a prominent Russian film critic who might be best known to casual Internet users as the interviewer who provoked Ridley Scott into saying, “Sir, fuck you. Fuck you. Thank you very much. Fuck you, go fuck yourself.”) liked Lockshin’s adaptation quite a bit. In a review published by Meduza, Dolin writes that the film “manages to retain the sharpness of the original source, which mocks Soviet power, and at the same time offers the viewer an innovative perspective on a classic text.”

Dolin praises Lockshin’s “Hollywood flourishes” and his capacity to juggle the book’s “genre and intonation incompatibility,” which has plagued past interpretations. The new adaptation brings a “circus element” to the story without sacrificing the script’s “rigidity,” says Dolin, while also “condensing the vastness of Bulgakov's novel into a coherent and clear narrative.” (You’ve been warned, formalists.)

Lockshin’s film takes some liberties with Bulgakov’s classic. For example, in the novel, the Master character doesn’t emerge until the middle of the book, leaving the reader to wonder about the title. In the new film, however, the main plotline belongs to the love story between Margarita Nikolaevna (the unhappily married wife of a Soviet functionary) and a writer she calls the Master. According to Lockshin’s script (which he co-wrote with Roman Kantor), the secondary narrative involving Pontius Pilate’s trial of Yeshua Ha-Notsri (Jesus of Nazareth) is a play within the story written by the Master and pulled from production by Soviet censors after its opening performance. (In a feat of authenticity unprecedented in modern Russian cinema, the Jerusalem scenes, which comprise roughly 10 minutes of the film, are performed in Aramaic and Latin.) Meanwhile, all the adventures across Moscow involving Woland and his entourage are presented as figments of the Master’s imagination as he slowly loses his mind under state persecution.

As Lockshin has argued in comments promoting the movie, Dolin says Bulgakov’s novel enjoys heightened relevance in contemporary Russia, and the new film makes menacing villains of NKVD executioners while presenting even more revolting characters in the Soviet elites whose conformity and hypocrisy enabled the Stalinist regime.

Dolin praises the decision to cast August Diehl as Woland, the mysterious foreigner whose visit to Moscow sets the plot rolling in the novel. Diehl’s Woland “is a real find,” Dolin writes. The German actor plays the character as “an infernally sarcastic gentleman in black” who resembles Satan “more than the thoughtful, sad wisemen from various Russian interpretations of the same character.”

A cartoonishly scary foreigner, complete with a spooky German accent, Woland turns out to be the creation of the writer’s wounded mind, his alter ego, writes Dolin. The censorship and persecution the character faces in the film are a “chilling reproduction” of mechanisms that resonate more in Putinist than Stalinist Russia, Dolin argues, highlighting some lines that wink boldly at modern-day realities, including nods to Crimea, oil production, and military parades.

Lockshin’s adaptation also features a fantastical version of Moscow that recalls the visionary designs of artists in the Higher Art and Technical Studios, which flourished in the 1920s before crumbling under Stalinism. In this universe, Moscow completed the Palace of the Soviets, altering the skyline in a delirious finale that depicts the city ablaze. This scene, in particular, has upset several state propagandists.

Dolin notes that Margarita is absent from the story for much of the film, but she reappears in the final act as a heroine on her own narrative arc. In the character’s scenes as a witch and then a queen, Lockshin’s intentions and the meaning of the novel’s title finally become clear, says Dolin: 

It’s not the imagination of the writer that transforms the grim reality but exclusively the emotion that is capable of elevating you to the heavens, of burning cities, and punishing or pardoning with the mere force of thought. In the end, Lockshin’s film is not about Satan, not about Moscow, not about Pilate, and not about totalitarianism, censorship, or creativity, but about love. It alone makes a person invisible and free.

[doitinanotherlanguage]

January 2023: 1900s (+ pre-1900s)

It’s January 1st, which means that I’m kicking off my 2023 reading challenge, Reading Through the Decades! You can read more about the challenge on my previous post. Basically, it’s a year-long reading challenge where we read books (and explore other media) from the 1900s to the 2020s, decade-by-decade.

In January, we’re starting off with the 1900s (1900-1909). I’m also looking at things from the late 1800s and just generally around the turn of the century.

Here are my recommendations for January (all I’ve greatly enjoyed previously!):

📺 Granada Sherlock Holmes (1984-1994) 📖 The Turn of the Screw (1898), Henry James 🎬 Colette (2018), dir. Wash Westmoreland 📖 Три сестры (1901; Three Sisters), Anton Chekhov 📖 A Room with a View (1908), E.M. Forster 📖 Le Fantôme de l'Opéra (1909-1910; The Phantom of the Opera), Gaston Leroux

And here is what I myself am planning to spend time with this month:

📖 The Complete Sherlock Holmes (1887-1927), by Arthur Conan Doyle 🎬 Journal d'une femme de chambre (2015; Diary of a Chambermaid), dir. Benoît Jacquot 🎬 Miss Marx (2020), dir. Susanna Nicchiarelli 📖 Gloriana; or, The Revolution of 1900 (1890), Florence Dixie 🎬 Tesla (2020), dir. Michael Almereyda 📖 Heart of Darkness (1899), Joseph Conrad 🎬 Сере́бряные коньки́ (2020; Silver Skates), dir. Michael Lockshin 📺 The Nevers (2021-) 📺 Picnic at Hanging Rock (2018) 📖 Imre: A Memorandum (1906), Edward Prime-Stevenson 📖 ‏גאט פון נקמה (1907; The God of Vengeance), Sholem Asch 📖 The Longest Journey (1907), E.M. Forster 📖 Рассказ о семи повешенных (1908; The Seven Who Were Hanged), Leonid Andreyev 📖 Emily of New Moon series (1923-1927), L.M. Montgomery (the series is set in the late 1800s/early 1900s)