Vice Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak (Konstantin Khabensky) leads Russia's Black Sea Fleet during the First World War. Though married, he falls for Anna (Elizaveta Boyarskaya), the wife of a subordinate officer (Vladislav Vetrov). The two carry on an affair, with Anna abandoning her husband as the Revolution breaks out. After a brief exile abroad, Kolchak winds up in Siberia leading the Provisional All-Russian Government, a locus for anti-Bolshevik rebels. Kolchak's troops are quickly defeated, and the Admiral's betrayed by his allies of the Czechoslovak Legion.
Admiral is conceived loosely along the lines of That Hamilton Woman, a naval epic balancing flag-waving heroics with torrid romance. The love interest provides an easy hook, with appealing leads and thrilling battle scenes calculated to pull in mass audiences ignorant of Russian history. Kravchuk ensconces everything in careworn melodrama, even including hokey framing device evoking Titanic. This allows him to downplay his subject's rougher edges.
Admiral Kolchak was, in many ways, a remarkable man: a courageous polar explorer, a brilliant naval commander and personally honorable. Yet as "Supreme Ruler of Russia," Kolchak was at best incompetent, at worst a repressive despot who massacred socialists and Jews while quarreling with allies. The Czechslovak Legion didn't betray Kolchak out of craven greed, but because the Whites never fulfilled their promise to expatriate them. Nor does Kolchak's alliance with piratical Cossack Grigory Semyonov accrue him credit. One questions Admiral elevating such a shabby reactionary, yet many Americans still admire Robert E. Lee and Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Suffice it to say, Admiral avoids this troubling context. Kravchuk provides only a superficial sketch of Kolchak's regime, focusing on his military and romantic exploits. In their eagerness to beatify Kolchak, the filmmakers paint as crude a portrait of Russian politics as American Cold War propaganda: it's murderous Bolsheviks versus noble monarchists, the latter done in by French and Czech traitors. It recalls unsophisticated Hollywood shows like Nicholas and Alexandra, treating the Romanov's ancien regime as something to be mourned. It's hard to disabuse any culture from nostalgic mythography, least of all one still reeling from 74 years of Communist repression.
Kolchak himself becomes a flawless model of integrity. He's introduced leading his battleship through a Baltic minefield while exchanging fire with German warships, leading his sailors in prayer as shells crash around them. This battlefield bravado serves him perfectly as future dictator; his men even kneel to him as a surrogate tsar. His wife (Anna Kovalchuk), and Anna's husband, graciously step aside when the two fall for each other. He's noble and courageous to the end, calmly staring down a firing squad. It's easy to see Kolchak as a Putin surrogate, a fatherly leader whose harsh tactics are justified by treacherous enemies.
Like many epics, Admiral's spectacle overcomes its thematic shortcomings. Kravchuk stages remarkable battle scenes outpacing anything in recent American cinema. The curtain-raising naval battle is a remarkable mixture of computer effects and visceral violence, a thrilling period action recreation. A massed execution of Tsarist officers registers strongly, while the harrowing battle scene two-thirds through the movie provides impressive cast-of-thousands excitement. Admiral's remarkable scope and authenticity makes Hollywood treatments of the period (Doctor Zhivago, Reds) look anemic in comparison.
I respect Admiral as a well-intentioned throwback to old fashioned epic film-making, yet it contains the same fuzzy-headed politics and sentimentality as its American counterparts. Next, I eagerly await a laudatory biopic of Baron Ungern Von Sternberg! There's a White General worthy of film treatment.
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