The Thief

National Review, Sept 1, 1998 by John Simon

Thieves of Hearts

ONE of the better films out of the new Russia is Pavel Chukhrai's The Thief. It has a Chekhovian atmosphere verging on Gorkian as it unblinkingly surveys conditions at the close of the Stalin era. Katya, a young war widow, and her six-year-old son, Sanya, are aimlessly riding a train in search of security. A dashing young officer, Tolyan, enters their compartment and promptly takes control of their lives.

Sanya, who fantasizes about the father he never knew, resents this stranger who whisks his mother off to the dining car, but is thrilled to be left in charge of his handgun. Wasting no time, Tolyan has rough intercourse with Katya on the platform between cars. The smitten Katya, who sees in Tolyan her future husband, quickly overcomes her initial resistance. Sanya, looking for her, unsettlingly experiences the primal scene.

Tolyan is firmly in command. Getting off in a small town, the threesome passes for a fine young family hopefully headed for a better tomorrow. Katya is bursting with love, and even the ambivalent Sanya is impressed. In the communal flat where the "family" finds lodgings, Tolyan orders the boy to call him father. The kid refuses but otherwise acquiesces, save when again confronted with Tolyan and Katya's lovemaking. Put outside the door like a cat, he leaves the faucet on and starts a flood.

Tolyan, though, finds solutions for everything, as, for instance, teaching Sanya self-defense against a bunch of harassing boys, and personally wreaking exemplary vengeance on the chief tormentor. So Tolyan becomes a hard but efficacious paterfamilias, even if Sanya still has visions of his real father lovingly moving toward him.

Things progress nicely, and Tolyan, at a droll communal meal, invites the motley crew of oddball neighbors to be his guests at the circus. But Katya's rude awakening comes when Tolyan has the "family" leave the circus on a pretext, and wraps up all the apartment's silver and other valuables to make off with. Heartsick, Katya realizes that her handsome captain is a thief.

Her protests that she doesn't want her son to grow up a criminal are overridden as the "family" goes from domicile to domicile in different towns plying similar mischief. The unhappy but loving woman seeks comfort in the bottle and becomes addicted. Sanya, conversely, sees it all as a huge adventure, and warms to Tolyan as he learns how to steal. But this life can come to no good end; neither, as released, does the film.

When The Thief was submitted for last year's foreign Oscar, it was 10 or 15 minutes longer, which explains why, around the 75th minute, the continuity becomes jagged, with big jumps in time and place, and situations become puzzling if not inexplicable. There is a hugger-mugger to get to the conclusion, shaky though it be.

Originally, the movie took Sanya to his 48th year. But the writer -director himself, it seems, recut it to a mere 90 minutes for America, although the full version would still have been rather short by current standards. As summarized for me by those who saw it, the uncut version makes much better sense.

Still, Pavel Chukhrai, the son of the famous director Grigori Chukhrai (Ballad of a Soldier), has come up with an admirable movie most of the way. There is fine cinematography and background music, and a strong supporting cast. The portrayal is unsentimental, even when a crippled little girl falls in love with Sanya; there are arresting but unforced narrative and psychological twists, and an earthy sense of humor. Vladimir Mashkov is a compelling yet unglamorized Tolyan, and even the cuteness of the child actor Misha Filipchuk as Sanya is mitigated by wry realism. Nothing short of sensational, though, is the Katya of Ekaterina Rednikova, lovely in face, body, voice, and demeanor, and immensely moving in her performance. Best of all is that The Thief unemphatically glimpses the extraordinary in little things, and unattitudinizingly accepts the inevitability of the extraordinary. Despite alien circumstances, you get to see real people; you know them, and care about them.