ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 23, 1996 TAG: 9603270084
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: MICHAEL KILIAN CHICAGO TRIBUNE
It was a horror story that began with a child's terrible illness and ended in world chaos and the slaughter of millions.
At its center was a crude, filthy, uneducated and debauched Siberian peasant-monk named Gregory Rasputin. Possessed of demonic eyes and extraordinary hypnotic powers, he cast the last czar and czarina of the Russian Empire under his spell with his uncanny ability to arrest and treat the frightening hemophilia of their only son, Alexis. For this blessing, they and their nation paid a terrible price.
HBO has assembled a cast led by three of England's best actors - Alan Rickman as the monk Rasputin, Sir Ian McKellen as Czar Nicholas II and Greta Scacchi as Czarina Alexandra - to retell this spooky, passionate, heart-wrenching and ultimately gory tale in a made-for-TV movie quite unlike any other in the genre. ``Rasputin'' premieres on the cable network tonight at 9.
``You're playing someone who actually lived, so you feel an immediate piece of luggage,'' said Rickman in an interview. ``You have actual research, but I suppose the biggest piece of information you get is that he was almost illiterate, and he was a peasant from Siberia.
``Then you look at his history and you realize it's been written by other people because he couldn't write his own. And it's been written by people with a huge agenda; i.e., they hated him, because he took a lot of their influence away. Therefore, I was concerned to try to tell the story without any kind of preconceptions, and I hope people will try to watch it without any preconceptions.''
Born Gregory Efimovich - the name ``Rasputin,'' which he took later, means ``dissolute'' - the self-made monk was a farmer and the father of four children. Lacking any kind of religious training, he was inspired by a vision to go on a pilgrimage, drawn first to Greece and then on a later journey to the Imperial Russian capital at St. Petersburg.
As this otherwise painstakingly authentic film doesn't quite make clear, Rasputin was some years insinuating himself into the staid, Victorian royal family. He prospered first and foremost among the more decadent members of St. Petersburg society as a kind of forerunner to today's television preacher. As historian Robert Massie, author of ``Nicholas and Alexandra,'' put it: ``Women who found him disgusting discovered later that disgust was a new and thrilling sensation.''
With his fame spread word of his supposed healing powers, which were put to the test once he was admitted to the presence of the czar's family. ``It is undeniable that he was able to slow the blood [from hemophiliac Alexis],'' said Rickman. ``Rasputin came along and slowed his blood flow, and stopped it from coming out of his body.''
Massie, himself the father of a hemophiliac son, concurs that there is evidence supporting the healing effects of hypnosis. From that time on, the czarina, and later the czar himself, were in Rasputin's thrall, and he increasingly became the central figure of their lives at a time when the flames of popular anger and revolution were licking at everything the Romanovs held dear.
Prince Felix Yussoupov, a young cousin of the czarina, formed a conspiracy to murder him. Luring Rasputin to his house with the promise of a dalliance with his beautiful wife, the Princess Irina Yussoupov, the prince reputedly filled the monk with poisoned cakes and wine. When that failed, he shot him, clubbed him, wrapped him in chains and threw him into the River Neva.
Rasputin had written a prophetic letter to the Romanovs warning that, if he was killed by a noble, they, too, would perish within two years. So it came to pass. Unlike any previous film account of Rasputin and the Romanovs, the HBO film unflinchingly depicts the regicide that took place on July 16, 1918, when the czar, his entire family, their doctor and servants and even Alexis' little dog were brutally murdered in the basement of a ``house of special purpose'' in the Ural Mountains.
The movie was shot entirely in St. Petersburg and Budapest. Several of the czarist palaces were used as settings, as was the actual Yussoupov mansion where Rasputin was murdered.
``It was chilling,'' Rickman said. ``We actually shot in the house where Rasputin was shot. I actually went down into the room. They have wax figures of Rasputin and Yussoupov in the room and I went down the stairs in my costume. That's a pretty strange little moment. After that, you kind of got the feeling that somebody was watching what we were doing - and it wasn't the KGB.''
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Alan Rickman has the title role in ``Rasputin,'' airingby CNBtonight at 9 on HBO.