From cult book to luxury series
The Bostonian Amor Towles surprised in 2016 with a second novel, A Gentleman in Moscow (Salamandra publishing house), full of wit and humanism and written with the most graceful prose imaginable. His hero was Count Aleksandr Ilyich Rostov, a Russian aristocrat who survived the Bolshevik Revolution thanks to the theoretically subversive poem he wrote in 1913. The court commuted the maximum sentence to a unique house arrest: he must spend the rest of his days in the Metropol Hotel. , where he had been residing for a few years, in addition to giving up his money and possessions. Furthermore, he will no longer live in his 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 with life, made for a great series, and in fact the project was already underway in 2017, initially with Kenneth Branagh as protagonist. In August 2022, a not inconsiderable replacement was announced: it would be Ewan McGregor who would grow an imposing mustache to embody that nobleman who was also not inconsiderable, educated, friendly, thinker, reader, conversationalist, but also capable of dealing a good blow if The situation leaves no other solution.
McGregor’s work alone is reason enough to approach A Gentleman in Moscow (SkyShowtime and Movistar Plus+), a series almost as refined as its protagonist, in which information is dosed and emotion is allowed to seep leisurely between the meetings. . The Moulin Rouge actor knows how to make people laugh every time he wants to, 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 of the place and wants to know everything about the princesses and the duels of the count’s past life. 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.
This is a world where, despite the lack of freedom, you want to stay and live. 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. Lead director Sam Miller has the modern classic I Could Destroy You on his resume. And the wonderful rooms of the Metropol are the responsibility of production designer Víctor Molero, a Spanish talent recently also employed in the highly recommended Criminals.
