Maria’s Silence
Maria’s Silence
Maria’s Silence: Davis Simanis’ Marijas Klusums is a period drama about actress Mārī Leiko, a soviet era silent actress who was deceived to move to Moscow in 1937, presumably because she thought of herself as invincible. One year later this woman is dispatched to her death by Stalin’s secret police.
This Latvian film director also knows a secret or two about actors — he notes similarities between Leiko who played in Hollywood to pretend to be Russian and had friends like Vladimir Putin, a past actor himself. International stars cum high status bosom buddies until they became estranged from Mr Putin after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
“The acting is the basic tool for these people. They can do all the actions. They know how to switch different masks. Therefore, sometimes, it has to do with the possibility of being an actor, and if the regime assigns you an actor’s role, this role does tend to become you sometimes,” Simanis describes referring to those in Putin’s, MBS’ and every dictator’s inner circle who live inside a multicoloured puppet show.
Maria’s silence will be one of the films that will close the Berlin International Film Festival in its Forum section on Sunday. It explores a woman who had to sacrifice her fame and career for the sake of her granddaughter caught up in the repressive regime of Stalin.
“I think she (Leiko) was literally transformed into Germany’s political theatre mute star who was treated like a queen in this country while playing musical chairs in the top brass politics,” said Simanis.
This happened after Olga Shepitskaya’s character got scammed out of having to untangle the glamour of the Third Reich’s film industry and head for Stalin’s Soviet Union and the task of identifying her daughter in a morgue only to find the German expressionist cinema heiress died giving birth to her granddaughter there.
KGB agents sway persuaded Leiko that if she continues in the film industry and later adopts a child, there will be repercussions for that action in the future in an oppressive regime. After enjoying diva position while joining Skatuve, a Latvian State Theatre in Moscow, she is spotted by NKVD.
What’s more, it does not eliminate the fact that Nazi Germany was supposed to have pleasant images in Maria’s head, which is something she either did not know or, more likely, simply ignored. It was in 1938 when Latvians together with other minorities were heinously repressed, however the cnm authorities arrested Leiko for being a German spy who sought to undermine Red army’s war factories and sentenced her to death.
Simanis believes that the history is repeating itself where during the purge years Apparatchik Russia used Maria Leiko as its weapon abroad while at home, imposing purges on those disloyal domestically evoked the same situation, today, with Putin minimizing famous people turning them into “useful idiots” like Hollywood director Oliver Stone or French actor Gerard Depardieu, action American star Steven Seagal who have become useful to Russian authorities as they endorse its policies without fully grasping the issues at hand.
The director indicates that stars like Gerard Depardieu can finally be utilized against the Ukrainians only in case he is made a Russian and travels to russia with no ill-fall out of the french passport as France is an EU member, and most EU countries are not memberstates of Ukraine and thus could not prevent entry of people from countries like france over to Ukraine.
Hence, contemporary celebrities primarily from A-list, or the most famous, or other well-promoted stars as on a rent are applied as a source of state propaganda while their productive powers have been significantly deteriorated. Maria in the beginning of the story admired the splendour of Russian oligarchs and felt proud. ‘They used to praise her when today and very people like her used by the (Putin) regime know what they are doing,’ Simanis said.
Viewpoint of the director of the “Maria’s Silence” relates that actors have one problem always: they have ambition, self-drive and other qualities which helped them to become successful and well known in the profession.
It is these qualities that make show business associates of Putin such fools for dictators when they extend their empathy or sympathies to them, either intentionally or unwittingly ignoring the backstage oppression on political scabs. “You (an actor) are so wrapped up in your own being in their world that you cannot, and do not wish to, pay attention to whatever is going on.
Which actually is part of the job,” Simanis countered. He was a voice against the then Russian authority corruption, popularizing mass anti-Kremlin of the Putin’s regime in 2005 demonstrations and died in Colony No. 3 Yablonny dying in prison at the age of 47 years on a Friday—such an announcement Semanis was making over the phone with AP. He considers that the story of politically motivated murders in today’s Russia such as the one that killed Navalny, is similar to Leiko’s and many others during the era of Stalin.
It is easy to draw parallels with this campaign. Alexie Navalny who went into exile unable to endure persecution in Russia merely for speaking out against Putin is such a sad example, although he was one of very few voices with some power or influence even the possibility of leading to new democratic Russia, Semanis correctly predicted.
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- Genre: Drama, History
- Country: United States
- Director: Davis Simanis Jr.
- Cast: Olga Sepicka, Arturs Skrastins, Vilis Daudzins
