It's common for a documentary to be labelled as an intimate portrait; but rarely is it true. But 'Gorbachev. Heaven' is unquestionably intimate, following the last leader of the Soviet Union shortly before his recent death. The film's subject was ninety years old, far from senile but undoubtedly frail, and his physical weakness is no way hidden. Indeed, there's a tragic feeling to the story. Gorbachev was living in grace-and-favour accomodation when filming started (he later moved to a hospital, although he remained well enough to venture out on occasion), a grand house that nonetheless appears not to have been decorated in 30 years. The setting seems to emphasise his position in modern Russian society as a forgotten man. He's an interesting interviewee, in part because he is not accomodating to his interviewer or audience. Instead, he is thoughtful but defensive, and shows a surprising rigidity of thought: the man who dared to try to change the U. S. S. R. still seems grounded in the intellectual framings of his youth, proud of the fact he didn't commit mass murder to prop up the state, but still regretful of the fact that the state failed; and unwilling to speak directly of Putin, his eventual successor. For all his significance, it's easy to see why he fell into irrelevence long even when he remained physically vigourous. Nonetheless, the world owes him its thanks; dealt a losing hand, he played it the best way he could have done.
5 Reviews
Like a poem...
violetpillsinc12 February 2022
A documentary masterpiece, a 1h and 40m long Yesenin poem. A moving portrait of a man who changed the course of history. A history which by his own words is a restless lady. A man who says a lot by saying nothing at all. A man so lucid at 90 to know his time is yet to come.
Deeply touching portrait of a great man's end of life
TNSGVR3 September 2022
This is one of the most beautiful examinations of once the most powerful man in the world at the end of his life. Beauty in silence, the filmmakers let daily events shine light on President Gorbachev in this 'interview with a crank' as he describes it himself.
We enter Gorbachev's home, hear him recite childhood poems, listen to him sing of memories of his mother, clearly miss his beloved wife Raisa (the better of them in the relationship he allows), and watch as he struggles with mobility issues at the end of his life.
Illuminating, touching, poignant, revelatory, and somehow pitiful, it's a remarkable documentary. It is a true treasure.
We enter Gorbachev's home, hear him recite childhood poems, listen to him sing of memories of his mother, clearly miss his beloved wife Raisa (the better of them in the relationship he allows), and watch as he struggles with mobility issues at the end of his life.
Illuminating, touching, poignant, revelatory, and somehow pitiful, it's a remarkable documentary. It is a true treasure.
Made me cry
o-25601-745098 March 2023
It truly feels like you're there as he tells his life story, watching this after his death feels so surreal. This is incredibly heart wrenching and moving, I can't help but cry for this poor man, he did all he could. Gorbachev is a truly inspirational figure for me, and seeing this was an amazing experience, getting up-close and personal with this incredible man. In a way, this film is kind of awkward to watch because of how intimate it is, watching him articulate his heartbreak is in no way easy to watch. That's the only negative aspect I can think of when it comes to watching this, but it in no way hinders the quality of the movie.
Tottering Colossus
philip-davies3114 September 2022
Warning: Spoilers
P What struck me in Minsky's meditation on Gorbachev and his place in history, is the sense of Soviet leaders being, like Tolstoy's Olympian view of Napoleon, mere flotsam and jetsam, tossed aloft by the unpredictable moods of history's impersonal and oceanic forces. Gorbachev repeatedly finds himself, under the director's insistent probing, entirely unable to address his hero status outside Russia, which is the same foreign perception that was to deny him a State Funeral.
P An air of defeat and a sense of inescapable guilt hovers over his refusal to address the tragic dilemmas he failed in office to resolve. 'We all make mistakes' is his only concession to Minsky's disappointed hero-worship. He even tells an anecdote about Stalin that presents that monster as only fallible, when excesses were perpetrated in his name. He also takes a tolerant view of Yeltsin, despite his admitted alcoholic follies, saying, 'He was who he was.' The reminiscences of his impoverished youth during Stalin's Terror make light of the arbitrary cruelties of the time, as when telling of an Uncle's arrest and torture on charges eventually dismissed as groundless: Upon his Uncle's return to the family, it was seen that his hands had been smashed; the KGB had wantonly slammed a door on them. Gorbachev's dismissive comment on this relative's unjust fate emerges from the fatalistic heart of the Russian Serf, 'What did he want with Trotskyism?' he chuckles.
P Yet Gorbachev had, instilled in him from his mother, the sentimental poetry and song of the Russian and Ukranian people, and he frequently breaks out into recitation and song during the film. Such humane traits are equally revealing of the individual as his callous ones. The Russia that produced Gorbachev did not create a Gandhi, but an affable and cultured individual who was ultimately incapable of breaking the wild and dangerous steed of Soviet Power to his political Will, and who actually lived to regret that he had not been more ruthless when in power. He says, 'I failed'. He actually muses whether he should have cracked down more harshly on rebellions in the Soviet Empire or was unwise and weak in not destroying Yeltsin. It was in fact Yeltsin who turned decisively against Communism, while Gorbachev insists to Mansky that he himself wanted to rebuild a reformed Soviet Union. He is indeed a loyal Marxist-Leninist, chiding Mansky for asking why he has not bought the house he is being filmed in, saying that he was granted this state dacha only for his lifetime, '- - - and that is right'. Evidently, he still approved of the Marxist tenet that 'All property is theft'.
P Only in the individualist West can Gorbachev be seen as some kind of hero for his espousal of the moderate reforming doctrines of Glasnost and Perestroika; in Russia he is largely seen as a failure and a leader weak to the point of betraying his People because of those reforms, and this despite having also striven to be the capably ruthless dictator necessary to rule Soviet Russia and it's Empire: Under his rule, as we know, the Chernobyl nuclear facility exploded, after military experiments were approved, and this disaster was concealed; citizens demanding independence in the Baltic states died; soldiers wielding shovels brutally suppressed protesters in Tbilisi; Soviet tanks killed peaceful demonstrators in Baku. Yet the old Gorbachev fears he should have been even more implacable!
P I think this film reveals that Gorbachev himself shares that profoundly Russian and collective view of the necessities of power. He is seen here, in his powerless, sentimental and ironic old age, as the last representative of that totalitarian System he once Presided over, only to see its destruction, and his own fall from power. We watch this tottering colossus, overweight and with mobility problems, crumbling before our eyes, like his dreams, as he sedulously avoids addressing Mensky's attempt to confront Putin's ruthless irridentism and Tsarist pretensions.
P Gorbachev is that tragic and irreconcilable Chekhovian rift that exists between East and West, and that is a wound running deep into the Russian Soul. His life has little that can serve as a useful example to his deluded Western admirers. He remains just another chilly monument to Russian exceptionalism. The symbolism of the snow-capped monuments to forgotten Soviet apparatchiki, in the graveyard where he goes, near the film's end, to visit his beloved wife Raisa's resting place, is a powerful summation of the hermetic and alien spiritual world he was part of.
P A gnomic oracle of an alien and vanished world, Gorbachev is beyond any easy Western understanding. The lyrics he tenderly sings several times during this film, of the Russian river that, after freezing over, will thaw and see the Spring once more, while the life of man must freeze forever, and 'cannot come again', reveals his fatalistic acceptance of the oblivion he sees overtaking his memory. That humility, at least, is worthy of our respect and awe. But there remains only one, impersonal, monument here: The vast and unchanging face of Russia, blank and featureless as the snow.
P The Moon face of a sick old man gazes silently down on the shroud of memory, where all the bodies lie.
P An air of defeat and a sense of inescapable guilt hovers over his refusal to address the tragic dilemmas he failed in office to resolve. 'We all make mistakes' is his only concession to Minsky's disappointed hero-worship. He even tells an anecdote about Stalin that presents that monster as only fallible, when excesses were perpetrated in his name. He also takes a tolerant view of Yeltsin, despite his admitted alcoholic follies, saying, 'He was who he was.' The reminiscences of his impoverished youth during Stalin's Terror make light of the arbitrary cruelties of the time, as when telling of an Uncle's arrest and torture on charges eventually dismissed as groundless: Upon his Uncle's return to the family, it was seen that his hands had been smashed; the KGB had wantonly slammed a door on them. Gorbachev's dismissive comment on this relative's unjust fate emerges from the fatalistic heart of the Russian Serf, 'What did he want with Trotskyism?' he chuckles.
P Yet Gorbachev had, instilled in him from his mother, the sentimental poetry and song of the Russian and Ukranian people, and he frequently breaks out into recitation and song during the film. Such humane traits are equally revealing of the individual as his callous ones. The Russia that produced Gorbachev did not create a Gandhi, but an affable and cultured individual who was ultimately incapable of breaking the wild and dangerous steed of Soviet Power to his political Will, and who actually lived to regret that he had not been more ruthless when in power. He says, 'I failed'. He actually muses whether he should have cracked down more harshly on rebellions in the Soviet Empire or was unwise and weak in not destroying Yeltsin. It was in fact Yeltsin who turned decisively against Communism, while Gorbachev insists to Mansky that he himself wanted to rebuild a reformed Soviet Union. He is indeed a loyal Marxist-Leninist, chiding Mansky for asking why he has not bought the house he is being filmed in, saying that he was granted this state dacha only for his lifetime, '- - - and that is right'. Evidently, he still approved of the Marxist tenet that 'All property is theft'.
P Only in the individualist West can Gorbachev be seen as some kind of hero for his espousal of the moderate reforming doctrines of Glasnost and Perestroika; in Russia he is largely seen as a failure and a leader weak to the point of betraying his People because of those reforms, and this despite having also striven to be the capably ruthless dictator necessary to rule Soviet Russia and it's Empire: Under his rule, as we know, the Chernobyl nuclear facility exploded, after military experiments were approved, and this disaster was concealed; citizens demanding independence in the Baltic states died; soldiers wielding shovels brutally suppressed protesters in Tbilisi; Soviet tanks killed peaceful demonstrators in Baku. Yet the old Gorbachev fears he should have been even more implacable!
P I think this film reveals that Gorbachev himself shares that profoundly Russian and collective view of the necessities of power. He is seen here, in his powerless, sentimental and ironic old age, as the last representative of that totalitarian System he once Presided over, only to see its destruction, and his own fall from power. We watch this tottering colossus, overweight and with mobility problems, crumbling before our eyes, like his dreams, as he sedulously avoids addressing Mensky's attempt to confront Putin's ruthless irridentism and Tsarist pretensions.
P Gorbachev is that tragic and irreconcilable Chekhovian rift that exists between East and West, and that is a wound running deep into the Russian Soul. His life has little that can serve as a useful example to his deluded Western admirers. He remains just another chilly monument to Russian exceptionalism. The symbolism of the snow-capped monuments to forgotten Soviet apparatchiki, in the graveyard where he goes, near the film's end, to visit his beloved wife Raisa's resting place, is a powerful summation of the hermetic and alien spiritual world he was part of.
P A gnomic oracle of an alien and vanished world, Gorbachev is beyond any easy Western understanding. The lyrics he tenderly sings several times during this film, of the Russian river that, after freezing over, will thaw and see the Spring once more, while the life of man must freeze forever, and 'cannot come again', reveals his fatalistic acceptance of the oblivion he sees overtaking his memory. That humility, at least, is worthy of our respect and awe. But there remains only one, impersonal, monument here: The vast and unchanging face of Russia, blank and featureless as the snow.
P The Moon face of a sick old man gazes silently down on the shroud of memory, where all the bodies lie.
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