In addition to the respect received as actor, sexagenarian Helen Mirren enjoys the glow of being the grandest of Dames, thinking herself not only a fashion icon but, exuberant with assurance, a sexpot. These pluses, with some reservations, certify she’s ready and relishes the opportunity to play Catherine the Great, the last woman to rule Russia. Having wanted to follow up the successful 2005 Elizabeth I with another historical sweep, she and HBO set their sights on filming the story of the 18th Century empress’s reign, her numerous sexual affairs and the all-consuming love for and political machinations engaged with Jason Clarke’s Grigory Potemkin. Getting a prominent executive producer credit not received for Elizabeth I, she commands considerable sway over the project; no exaggeration, we feel her overseer presence beyond acting and accoutrements: there’s something gamy as well as uncanny at the heart of this four hour one-woman exhibition, who in real life became the most prolific and engrossing cougar chronologist in history. The freaky lure for viewers is this: at 73, Mirren plays the empress at the start of the series already 35 years older than the real Catherine. Complicating the hurdle is the real age difference between Catherine and Potemkin is only 10 years; in the series, the two actors are distanced by 24. Permitting exemptions and generosity, Mirren might be deemed to have succeeded by the sheer magnitude of gall. Another disadvantage—how abrasive she looks when the camera closes in on her and the Pinocchio-like nose, stealing scenes at inopportune moments. She wouldn’t impress quite so much without the presence of Clarke balancing with Grigory’s misfit magnetism. Her “hot stuff” demeanor sticky, she uses a Martha-like jocularity with a butch George to replace unconvincing sex—the empress and the educated ruffian general parade their infamous quarrels as love bouts. This compromise works, until it doesn’t.
Building a lot of her reputation on royalty, Mirren currently has few peers in establishing credence for haughty imperialism—she seems born to later blossom as powered-up bitches. She could just as easily play Russia’s Elizabeth, whose life and reign as empress parallel Catherine’s. Separated from The Crown’s first two Elizabeths, who “know” their standings are constitutional grants for figurehead unity, Mirren in The Queen doesn’t have any more authority, either—in fact, her Elizabeth II is perilously close to being toppled by her subjects’ emotional outpouring over Diana’s demise—but she “acts out” as if she has undoubted agency to claim (the very little) grieving for her son’s former wife is a private matter. As Catherine, she dares the threats of insurrection—history records at least a dozen attempts by male enemies galore—and survives by tenacious will. A German by birth, she intensely tutored herself in the Russian language; being tone-deaf, she overcompensated against the charge of usurpation by using the essentiality of rehearsed delivery of adamant linguistic expression as shield. And this empress flaunts what Elizabeth I was most afraid of—sexual intercourse. Both players in the art of flattery, Catherine wanted and got plenty of bed chamber action while England’s grand mam dodged the deed, allegedly related to vaginal deformity, though the repercussions of her mother’s fate by the axe and the court’s prolonged preoccupation for an heir far larger impediments. Mirren’s joy of sex and Catherine’s energy don’t fully entwine, as it becomes manifest the actor is guarding herself from the unease of scoff, which is her right, and though we’re relieved she doesn’t chance the explicit, the knottiness remaining is her belief she’s quite the inviting romper despite the lack of credible evidence. We understand why the studs, depressed by her facial passivity, can’t keep theirs up—heroic efforts the real empress consoled with payouts at their exits, reportedly costing a total of twice Russia’s annual monetary intake. In the delicate dance around Mirren’s ego as effort to suspend audience disbelief, some techniques of de-ageing needed early utilization—for example, the instant face lift of tape.
Contrary to many other presentations purporting to be based on historic record, this Catherine the Great is among the more accurate. Scripter Nigel Williams, who also wrote Elizabeth I, easily blows away the curios of Marlene Dietrich’s 1934 The Scarlet Empress, Tallulah Bankhead’s 1945 comedy A Royal Scandal and Gertrude Lawrence’s 1948 Great Catherine; Julia Ormond’s 1991 Young Catherine; and the 1995 Catherine the Great with Catherine Zeta-Jones and, reeking in ugly smoker’s teeth, Jeanne Moreau as Elizabeth. (There’s also Russia’s 2014 Ekaterina and the 2015 Catherine the Great, though unseen as they haven’t been made widely available.) Concentrating on the Potemkin period of her nearly three and a half decade rule, Williams furnishes Mirren with facts, factoid instances and juicy tidbits brandished to demonstrate leadership and vision and to be fought at every step—the constant worry of potential coup as aftermath of hers against ignorant husband Peter III, dethroned a mere six months into his sitting—and therefore the regularity of practiced display of preemptive belittling of suspected backstabbers, including despised son Paul who will succeed her only to fall five years into his incompetent rule. Never mentioning Elizabeth I, this Catherine has surely read histories of the English queen’s 45 years as guidance and, as witness to Russia’s Elizabeth’s two decades of power, adroitly machinated to wed the heir she held in contempt from the start.
As persistent danger to the court’s powder puffs out to remove or tame Catherine, Clarke’s Potemkin is at the beginning a bit repugnant—to our modern eye he’s the antithesis of handsome. He’s unfeigning in the general’s paradoxes: uncouthness and military barbarism equal to his political perceptiveness and savvy negotiating skills. He hasn’t any limits about chasing or being chased as a sexual dynamo—the numbers of conquests including nieces (rewarded with Ladies-in-Waiting status), court hangers-on and whores are countless. Demonstrably vainglorious as probable bipolar, he’s also a self-appointed arbiter in assigning Catherine some play mates, about whom he vacillates between approval and jealousy. So too the empress, making them a rousing power couple and only fools assume it to be a mismatch. This Potemkin isn’t as power-hungry as Catherine and her court fear from his outbursts of manic behavior; his basic design in helping expand the Russian empire is beyond self-satisfaction in accomplishment—gaining the Crimea without firing a shot, building quickly a naval force to control the Baltic—he is doing the bidding for both country and the woman he loves, for which she alternately bestows him riches and sharpened rebukes as reminders she owns him. Factually depicted, Potemkin’s death in 1791 from “fever” (or bronchial pneumonia) occurred on a steppe near Jassy, Moldavia while tending to perpetual state matters of war and peace. Maintaining a one-sided “obsession of monogamous” lovers till her death five years later, Catherine’s grief from having lost her greatest love and only avowed ally, on top of the stress of being ousted, are presumed catalysts to increasingly severe headaches she apparently ignored as signs of stroke. In contrast, aware of medical science and preventive care, she was one of the first to subscribe to vaccines and had all her lovers checked out for signs of disease. The series’ epilogue, without a determined timeline, shows Catherine and Potemkin sneaking off to get married. No proof they did, so let’s tease with legend.
Director Philip Martin isn’t as tidy in Catherine the Great as he is in the seven episodes he helmed in The Crown. This has to be due in part to the casual pace of Peter Morgan’s facile precision in scripts for The Crown, in part due to the demand of brevity vs the voluminous history Catherine left, and in part to budget concerns. Truth is, four episodes simply don’t render enough time to do her justice: when Mirren starts severe reproach mode, truncation of important events sets in as cue to switch to her next lay, hence the tiresome return to the unwelcomed concern over the actor’s age. (Russia understands scope: Ekaterina has 39 chapters.) Williams’s own weaknesses are exposed by Martin’s speed to avoid what’s confusing in the only major female supporting character—Gina McKee’s Countess Praskovya Bruce, the wife of the governor of St. Petersburg and Catherine’s most trusted Lady-in-Waiting. Unofficially recognized as l'éprouveuser of potential cocksmanship for Catherine, including Potemkin, the annals of gossip speculate Praskovya was dismissed and briefly exiled when Potemkin allegedly plotted to have her caught in flagrante with Catherine’s latest lover. This setup isn’t part of the teleplay, nor the gossip he never liked Praskovya, quite the opposite of what we see in their relationship, which has both in breach of loyalty protocol for fornicating with each other after he starts up with Catherine. Merrin’s empress does mildly dismiss Praskovya’s presence when overhearing her express concern of treachery for the current servicer of the bed chamber Ivan Nikolajevich Rimsky-Korsakov. In one personal memoir dedicated to her dearest chum, Catherine admits to discharging her for having had sex with him. In the fourth episode of the series, there’s one last scene between the two women starting off with the empress’s “What are you doing here?” as vague reference to the dismissal and then moves into remembrances of Potemkin and about the newly imposed ban on French books (including Voltaire, with whom Catherine had exchanged friendly letters throughout the years), ostensibly over the French printing trashy speculation she’s a fornicating murderess but more likely precipitated by the American and French revolutions foretelling the crumbling of royal governance. No specific mention of Praskovya being exiled from court and St. Petersburg, nor any mention of being granted a return in 1785 to be with her dying husband. Already suffering from an undisclosed life-threatening illness, she met with Catherine the same year. Received at length and with affection, the empress would say goodbye to Praskovya who died the following April. This delayed reconciliation is sorely missed to balance the empress’s pettiness and Mirren’s front & center id. Altho McKee provides the palsy-walsy prattle about sex as favorite pastime, it’s never clear if we’re supposed to like her.
Elizabeth I and Catherine the Great were filmed in Vilnius, Lithuania, with the latter also filmed at the Rundale Palace near Pilsrundale, Latvia and in St. Petersburg. The former used an abandoned sports stadium to house most of its sets under the production design of Eva Stewart and Leon McCarthy’s art direction, concentrating on the continuity of claustrophobia, suitable for London’s squeezed & diseased metropolis. In much of Catherine the Great we get to breathe in the expanses of the Peterhof, Gatchina and Yusupov Palaces in or near St. Petersburg. Various interiors—corridors, opulent halls & displays of baroque iconolatry, Catherine’s royal apartment and its deluxe private entrance—are real locales and shot by Stuart Howell (another seven-episode alum of The Crown), who catches an unusually luxurious, shimmering glow of lighting by candle. (The Arri Alexa digital camera system removes the labor felt in setups.) Maja Meschede’s costumes for Mirren are without the aggrandizement of royal hoop skirt portraiture; they’re reduced, rather like McKee’s bum rolls in Phantom Thread, and elegantly contoured to accentuate presence over height, though her size is offered up when, in masculine drag, Catherine is rendered shorter than most people realize and about which becomes the unavoidable default theme of the 2016-2019 PBS Masterpiece series Victoria.
In retaliation for years of Catherine’s constant scorn and expressed intent he not succeed her, son Paul pushed for and got the sexist change in law about succession—forbiding any woman to ever again preside over Russia. (He’d also try but fail to blot out his mother’s and Potemkin’s achievements.) Though Catherine unaccountably willed her writings to him, along with the royal decree they not be published until 50 years after her death, he decided, before locking them away in secret archives, to give permission to make one backup copy, but five years into ascendancy he was killed in a coup instigated by his son Alexander I who would grant four additional copies to be made. By then the memoirs, confabulated without knowing their contents, weren’t much of a secret. Not until czar Nicholas expired did an incomplete copy of Catherine’s writings find its way to Alexander Herzen, a Russian revolutionary and writer living in London, who used his periodical The Bell to publish it in 1859, sixty-three years after her death, resulting in enormous international interest. But Catherine already had a well-established reputation as a highly opinionated, witty and brutally honest writer, having penned editorials on politics and international affairs and articles on social and cultural issues eagerly published in periodicals throughout Russia and Europe. (She also authored operas and comedies, some of them performed at the Hermitage Theatre.) Her personally written histories of her time before and during her dominance are considered to be so accurately detailed as to be virtually unchallengeable, with the exception of who fathered her children. A copious correspondent to much of the renowned in Europe, she held in high esteem Voltaire, a champion of the Age of Enlightenment, whose advice she solicited and whose lacerating style made her laugh. Before dying in 1778, and before Catherine banned French publications, he admired her daring to advocate the popular movement’s tenets, which are addressed at the beginning of the series. They vanish in brief dialogue regrets after she couldn’t curtail the abuses of Serfdom or abolish slavery, and likewise vaporized is her positive influence to broaden science, medicine and the arts. Accepting the hindrances in Catherine the Great—the age differences, the sex as unintendedly skeptical hobbyhorse, the budgetary and episode circumscription—we reluctantly surrender to Mirren’s insistent derring-do as a sexpot in need of genuine love as substitutive essence of Voltaire’s discerning thumbnail of the empress as “enlightened despot.” (11/12/2021)
Text COPYRIGHT © Ralph Benner 2021 All Rights Reserved.