Eisen
In minute detail, this novel portrays the life of the Stalin-era filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, director of Battleship Potemkin, Alexander Nevsky, and Ivan the Terrible, among others. Working from a huge trove of material, Yakhina borrows Eisenstein’s celebrated technique—montage—to tell her story, splicing disparate images together in rapid succession to produce striking effects. When she describes his moviemaking, you feel as if you’re on the set.
Montage creates its own logic, offering the power to manipulate, the novel’s central metaphor. Eisenstein edits his life, splicing together what little he wishes people to know about him and hiding the rest. Stalin edits Soviet history, expunging whatever—or whoever—displeases him. No artist can feel safe, not even the favored Eisenstein, a terror that Yakhina conveys with chilling power.
Unfortunately, though, Eisen makes for heavy going, especially the second half, which repeats familiar patterns rather than break new ground. What a disappointment, for I liked Yakhina’s debut novel, Zuleikha, a story with a sympathetic protagonist who grows and changes in small yet significant ways. That’s not the case here.
Eisen’s self-absorbed star loves no one and nothing except art. His artistic theories change, but he remains the same, alive only within others’ praise. When he’s working, he jokes incessantly to mask his feelings and fend off friends and colleagues; when depressed, he holes up in a dark bedroom, stirring only after someone reads him adulatory press clippings. I pity the poor genius, but that wears thin pretty quickly. I wanted a more meaningful connection, one thing Eisenstein never allowed.
Some scenes leap off the page, particularly those involving the arrest and persecution of honored artists. But overall, I felt I was reading a thorough, weighty treatise that often failed to compel me, despite the author’s considerable gifts.
