There were about 30 people at Savor Cinema Tuesday night to watch Mr Nobody Against Putin. The power of the Oscars. It is a depressing and fascinating look at the indoctrination taking place in Russia: The officer who tells his men that they will die, but they will live on in memory as heroes of the motherland, their graves will never lack for flowers. The history teacher who, when asked which figures from history he would most like to meet, mentions some of Stalin’s most ruthless henchmen. After the war in Ukraine starts, he tells his students that Europe is suffering without Russian oil and gas, though France is muddling through because its people eat “oysters and frogs.”
The narrator, Pavel Talankin, notes that this indoctrination and propaganda is not in service to an ideology, like communism, but to a man.
The one uplifting moment comes when you remember that Talankin – a former events coordinator and videographer at a primary school in a provincial Russian city – stood in a tuxedo Sunday night in front of Hollywood’s beau monde.
