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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Visual images as they record, influence, and remake history., 28 Feb 2003
Kolya Gribshin, a young cameraman working for the Pathe Freres Cinematography Company, arrives at the railway station in Astapovo in 1910 to cover the last days of Count Leo Tolstoy, who is dying in the stationmaster's house. Reporters from all over the world have gathered to record his final moments, but only Gribshin is recording the events on film, a new medium. Gribshin knows that the printed word is inaccessible to the illiterate masses, but that film can provide immediate "truth" and is capable of "ripping away the veil of lies thrown up by language." As we see Gribshin travel between the darkness of the unlit countryside, where he is staying with an illiterate peasant family, and the artificial, arc-lit brightness of the media-mad town, the author uses vivid imagery from black and white photography to show the contrasts between the lives of illiterate peasants living in darkness and concentrating on their next meal, and the lives of an "enlightened" media conveying news to the outside world. Like Gribshin, revolutionaries such as Josef Stalin also recognize the power of the visual image to "educate" illiterate people and shape and control public opinion. Part II takes place nine war-filled years later, after Russia has faced the horrors of The Great War, the Bolshevik revolution, and the civil war, and Stalin is putting some of these principles into effect through the Commissariat of of Enlightenment. Gribshin, now known as Comrade Astapov, is working with him as they attempt to control the masses by controlling visual images--governing theater productions, film projects, and even city planning. Here the imagery of darkness and light, introduced in Part I, becomes a constant motif, as the Commissariat plans to "extend the enlightenment to every remote...village in the tundra," destroying churches and the images (icons) within, if necessary. In 1924, the Commissariat's ultimate image-control occurs when the body of Lenin is preserved "uncorrupted," allowing the state to display publicly a man who never "dies." Kalfus has dared to think big in his debut novel, and his talents are legion. His parallels between black and white photography and his symbols of darkness and light keep the reader constantly aware of the darkness of illiteracy and the light of truth which film can provide. But this is also a cautionary tale about the ability of images to be manipulated and controlled, and all Kalfus's plot elements are subordinated to this single, overwhelming theme. Gribshin, the "lens" through whom the reader views events, never really comes alive, and we do not know his motivations or see him wrestling with inner conflicts. He is, ultimately, a cog in the apparatus of the Commissariat of Enlightenment, a vehicle through whom the author advances his theme, not a thinking human. The novel is very tight, however, with no loose ends, and when Kalfus observes that the West, too, is creating an image-ruled empire by presenting so much imagery and meaning that "the sum [becomes] unintelligible," the reader will pause and ponder. Mary Whipple
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by KALFUS
