"Salus populi Lex Suprema Est" - "The people's salutation to the revolution is the supreme law"
Indeed, the words uttered by the pioneer of the revolution in Russia, Lenin, correspond to the plot of this episode, entirely emphasizing the rising ideas and secret schemes of a group of people who changed Russia and would have changed the world if the power of evil could have been powerful enough. The episode "Absolute Beginners" highlights the very essence of what it meant to follow the Marxist ideas and believe in them.
While the previous episodes dealt with falling eagles, this one deals with rising vultures...
We have Iskra newspaper and the schemes to win the public, destroy the monarchical thinking from within and the ideologists who created one of the most wicked and utopian visions of states: Trotsky, Zasulich, Plekhanov, Baumann, Martinov and, above all those seemingly equal comrades, Lenin with all his dictatorial ambitions for power. What I like about the episode is the fact that it is a depiction of a group of people with different ideas, perhaps some really believed in what they evoked and their conflicts. Alexandravna represents a voice of reason and strongly objects to Lenin's crazed lust for power by all means. Some of them, including Trotsky, perhaps do not see yet what it all leads to but open their eyes to some wretchedness that exists as an embryo of evil and sooner or later infects everything. The scenes are filled with emotion and enhance a drama of those who meet in different European capitals and share their subversive views on destroying the Russian monarchy (and, in time, other monarchies too)
But the character and the performance that truly deserves attention here is Lenin played wonderfully by Patrick Stewart. Well, the actor magnificent and versatile as he is, somehow fits to such roles of villains. Once Sejanus, one Lenin. He depicts a person of wicked views, ambitions, not interested in justice or helping any victims of violence, ready to follow one maxim: the end justifies the means and prepared to take all steps in order to gain success of the revolution. Friends may become enemies, enemies might be friends, everything might be a matter of convenience at certain moment for a certain time. Indeed, such personalities are truly plagues of history. He doesn't want to merely know the society and truly aims at knowing how to change it... Stewart's performance steals out attention and, as it was probably, in that historical moment, he dominates. His comrades' views are taken into account until some moment, until the moment when he does not need anyone to make his maxim come true: win the people with your ideas and make them salute you.
Someone hunts and someone is being hunted, someone aims at their goals and someone is being aimed at...someone thinks and plans the future and someone else resorts to mere sentiment of the past: that's the circle of history and the price they all had to pay...
Another interesting episode, not around the glamour of 'falling eagles' but amidst the network of rising vultures.
Indeed, the words uttered by the pioneer of the revolution in Russia, Lenin, correspond to the plot of this episode, entirely emphasizing the rising ideas and secret schemes of a group of people who changed Russia and would have changed the world if the power of evil could have been powerful enough. The episode "Absolute Beginners" highlights the very essence of what it meant to follow the Marxist ideas and believe in them.
While the previous episodes dealt with falling eagles, this one deals with rising vultures...
We have Iskra newspaper and the schemes to win the public, destroy the monarchical thinking from within and the ideologists who created one of the most wicked and utopian visions of states: Trotsky, Zasulich, Plekhanov, Baumann, Martinov and, above all those seemingly equal comrades, Lenin with all his dictatorial ambitions for power. What I like about the episode is the fact that it is a depiction of a group of people with different ideas, perhaps some really believed in what they evoked and their conflicts. Alexandravna represents a voice of reason and strongly objects to Lenin's crazed lust for power by all means. Some of them, including Trotsky, perhaps do not see yet what it all leads to but open their eyes to some wretchedness that exists as an embryo of evil and sooner or later infects everything. The scenes are filled with emotion and enhance a drama of those who meet in different European capitals and share their subversive views on destroying the Russian monarchy (and, in time, other monarchies too)
But the character and the performance that truly deserves attention here is Lenin played wonderfully by Patrick Stewart. Well, the actor magnificent and versatile as he is, somehow fits to such roles of villains. Once Sejanus, one Lenin. He depicts a person of wicked views, ambitions, not interested in justice or helping any victims of violence, ready to follow one maxim: the end justifies the means and prepared to take all steps in order to gain success of the revolution. Friends may become enemies, enemies might be friends, everything might be a matter of convenience at certain moment for a certain time. Indeed, such personalities are truly plagues of history. He doesn't want to merely know the society and truly aims at knowing how to change it... Stewart's performance steals out attention and, as it was probably, in that historical moment, he dominates. His comrades' views are taken into account until some moment, until the moment when he does not need anyone to make his maxim come true: win the people with your ideas and make them salute you.
Someone hunts and someone is being hunted, someone aims at their goals and someone is being aimed at...someone thinks and plans the future and someone else resorts to mere sentiment of the past: that's the circle of history and the price they all had to pay...
Another interesting episode, not around the glamour of 'falling eagles' but amidst the network of rising vultures.
