‘A Gentleman in Moscow’, on SkyShowtime: from cult book to series with Ewan McGregor at the helmARCHIVE
The Bostonian Love Towles surprised in 2016 with a second novel, ‘A gentleman in Moscow’ (here in Salamandra), full of wit and humanism and written with the most graceful prose imaginable. Her hero was Count Aleksandr Ilyich Rostov, Russian aristocrat who survives the Bolshevik revolution thanks to the theoretically subversive poem which he wrote in 1913. The court commutes the maximum sentence to a singular house arrest: he must spend the rest of his days at the Metropol Hotel, where he had been residing for a few years, in addition to giving up his money and his possessions, or most of them. Furthermore, she will no longer live in her luxurious suite overlooking the Bolshoi Theater, but in much worse conditions, in one of the small bedrooms in the attic where one day the butlers and maids of the hotel guests stayed.
It was clear that Aleksandr’s life in that decadent microcosm and, at the same time, full of life, exultant life, made for a great series, and in fact the project was already underway in 2017, at first with Kenneth Branagh as protagonist. In August 2022, a significant replacement was announced: it would be Ewan McGregor who would grow an imposing mustache to embody that nobleman is also not inconsiderable, educated, friendly, thinker, reader, conversationalist, but also capable of dealing a good blow if the situation leaves no other solution. That, in theory, he has seen more than most people, but he still has reserves of innocence that allow him to marvel at everything.
Laughter and melancholy
McGregor’s work alone is reason enough to approach ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’ (SkyShowtime, from Thursday, the 18th), a series almost as refined as its protagonist, in which information is dispensed without haste and emotion is allowed to filter between the joints, without haste, without exaggerations. The actor of ‘Trainspotting’ and ‘Moulin Rouge!’ He knows how to make people laugh every time he sets his mind to it, but he is no less skilled at capturing the melancholy of a man who has lost his family and his class, the life he knew.
What awaits him now, whatever it may be, is not so bad either. He becomes good friends, curiously, with a nine-year-old girl, Nina (Alexa Goodall), who knows all the secret passages in the place and wants to know everything about the princesses and the duels from the count’s past life. He doesn’t get along so well, at least in principle, with the secret police agent Osip (Johnny Harris), obsessed with our hero passing away.
Rostov’s love interest is actress Anna Urbanova (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), whose films, the wise Nina assures, are not good at all. Anna becomes greatly intrigued by the mystery surrounding the count; the mystery of “will they or won’t they?” It lasts very little. But love… love is another matter, a true mystery.
McGregor and Winstead have had a harder time faking the initial unfamiliarity than the subsequent chemistry. After dating for five years, they married in 2022, a year after welcoming their first child. Although They are both part of the ‘Star Wars’ galaxy, he as Obi-Wan Kenobi and she as the Twi’lek Hera Syndulla, have never shared scenes in the saga, nor did they do in ‘Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of Harley Quinn)’. Yes, they were really together in the project that also united them on a sentimental level: the third season of ‘Fargo’, from 2017, in which McGregor was a decadent probation officer (and his slightly older brother), and Winstead, his dangerous girlfriend Nikki Swango; a strange but adorable couple.
With Spanish production design
This is a world where, despite Osip and the lack of freedom, you want to stay and live. The screenwriter Ben Vanstone (‘All Creatures Great and Small), also creator of the series, has great and intimate dialogues, in some cases quite similar to those of the literary original, it should be said. The main director, Sam Miller, has the modern classic ‘I Could Destroy You’ on his resume, as does cinematographer Adam Gillham. And the wonderful rooms of the Metropol are the responsibility of the production designer Victor Molero, a Spanish talent recently also used in the highly recommended ‘Criminals’. It remains to be seen how many days we will be able to spend here; whether the series will enhance an infinite premise or will not dare to blur such a respected book.
