There are books that stand on their own and with complex, closed and well-finished universes that, however, cry out for an adaptation: the reader wants more, wants to see that microcosm materialized on the screen. It was the case of A gentleman in Moscowthe novel by Amor Towles (Salamandra) that now arrives on SkyShowtime with the same title and several successes to its credit.
Let’s start at the beginning: the year is 1922 and Count Rostov (a wonderful Ewan McGregor) escapes the death penalty in Bolshevik Russia thanks to an unusual twist of fate and in exchange for a strange punishment: house arrest for life in the Metropol hotel, an elegant example of everything that the new regime wants to eliminate.
The producer and showrunner Ben Vanstone (All creatures great and small) and his team made a risky decision: if the setting was important (and here it is still measured to the millimeter), it was much more important to adapt the intimate, melancholic, intense and not entirely pessimistic tone that permeated the novel. McGregor is very good in the always contained role of the man who sees his world disappear and resists within the walls of the hotel. “Why are you still joking?” a visiting friend asks. “Because if I take it seriously,” the count responds, “I will enter a darkness from which I will never be able to emerge.” Now, very serious things happen here, and the count suffers. It could not be otherwise.
The story is impossible (how is a nobleman going to survive in the middle of that carnage and in a place known and frequented by the Soviet elite?) but it can be plausible and that is what matters. The key lies in the quality of the story and in that enormous character who takes us by the hand. This is how Towles explained his inspiration in an interview with this newspaper in 2019. “I am hardly a specialist in Russian. I don’t speak the language, I didn’t study history in school and I’ve only been to the country a few times. But when I was young I fell in love with the Russian writers of the golden age: Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky…”
In any case, the story needed incentives not to become absorbed. That’s where Nina comes into play, a very young guest who becomes the source of the count’s adventures and inspiration and a reflection of the world out there, which changes even if the protagonist doesn’t see it. It is she who shows him the rooms that exist behind other rooms, the doors behind doors and the universe they open. At the end of the first chapter, the viewer’s perspective of the hotel, beyond the contained elegance of its lounge and bar, has changed. Fundamental will also be the actress Anna Urbanova (Mary Elisabeth Winstead), a point of tension in the count’s life, another figure who enters and leaves the Metropol and his life.
The first bars of the series (of which all three chapters are available and a new one will be released every week) also establish one of the central themes of the plot: friendship, the element that saves Rostov’s life. Friendship even with those who initially betrayed him or chose the opposite side, like his former bosom friend and now convinced revolutionary Mishka (Fehinti Balogun). With them he will establish bonds that can only be explained in a story about the darkest times.
The plot advances with the agility that the medium requires. Young Nina grows up and the others grow old. The third episode begins on day 1,667 of captivity. It is the year 1926 and Stalin strengthens his power every day. The small perks and privileges that the count kept in the hotel are being diluted: everyone is suspicious and no one is going to help him. Rostov receives very bad news from outside. He has been left alone, he is the last of his lineage. The series uses images taken from the novel (such as the wine labels of the winery, a symbolic subplot that should not be said more about) that serve as perfect images of what is happening in Moscow and by extension throughout the territory.
Rostov finds himself facing the abyss, but some bees somehow save his life. And, once again, we see the best of the novel and the series: the world may be collapsing, but at the Metropol hotel there will always be room for hope, love and friendship.
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