Who would have imagined that a Paramount+ limited series about the plight of an aristocrat in post-revolution Russia would be such a hit? Based on Amor Towles’s 2016 novel of the same name, A Gentleman in Moscow tells the story of an aristocrat confined to the Hotel Metropol across the turbulent decades that followed the Russian Revolution. Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, played by Ewan McGregor, in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917, is saved from death by the good fortune that he is the credited author of a seminal revolutionary poem.
Known as Sasha to his friends as “Your Excellency” to the minority of Russians who still recognized aristocratic titles, our protagonist, Rostov, faces head-on his struggle to live in post-revolutionary Moscow while his friends are disappeared by the Bolsheviks and the disfranchised aristocracy face summary trials and executions. Having been tried in 1922, the moderate Bolsheviks, not wanting Rostov executed invariably meet the demands of the hardliners who do, and the purgatory to which he is assigned is a “house arrest” where the authorities can surveil him. Rostov is summarily returned to the magnificent Metropol Hotel where he has recently been living and he is forced to renounce his possessions and money, he is obliged to swap his luxurious suite for a cold, draft-filled attic room formerly inhabited by hotel staff.
Rostov has free room and board, he eats nightly in the hotel's elegant restaurant whose cellar stocks his beloved Chateauneuf-du-Pape, and his future is secure—as long as he never exits the hotel’s front doors and does nothing to anger the authorities. If he ever sets foot outside the hotel, he is to be shot on sight.
And this is just the first episode.
The sets of A Gentleman in Moscow are stunning as are the costumes and cinematography that lend an eye to the period of luxurious aristocracy and unspeakable poverty. Johnny Harris plays Osip, a quite serious Bolshevik, who plays Rostov’s nemesis whose journey is set upon looking for any reason to have the count killed. Yet, later in the season, Osip offers a possibility of hope for saving Rostov’s life (no spoilers here).
Ewan McGregor’s Rostov is breathtaking as his character moves between sadness and hope, tragedy and triumph, where often all we see are McGregor’s eyes—his facial hair interrupting any clear interpretation of facial expression. McGregor not only makes his moustache work, but he uses our reliance on reading his eyes to depict the depth of his Rostov as he struggles to overcome adversity, find love, and find new meaning in his life.
In an era where the passing years unleash famine, propagandistic lies and Stalinist terror, most of it invisible inside the hotel, Rostov finds himself doing things he could never have before imagined. The magical realism of this story sets forth as he becomes a waiter in the hotel restaurant, he has a lover who is a stage actress and his life opens up before our eyes as we watch each episode with amazement. “What will happen now?” I wonder as I press play.
In an early episode, an inquisitive nine-year-old Nina played by Alexa Goodall is unhindered by any heedful parent—she knows all the hotel’s secret passages, its dusty locked rooms full of confiscated treasures, and its hidden staircases. Nina is fascinated by the majestic glamour of the world the count used to know, which despite the Bolshevik’s attempts to remove all traces of aristocracy, Rostov still carries with him in tiny details, from his gait to his manner of negotiating Osip. Nina also brings out the child in Rostov as she brings him through the secret places of the hotel, demonstrating the Count’s childlike sense of wonder and playfulness.
Nina returns to the story as an adult with her young daughter Sofia, whom she must leave with Rostov as she intends to follow her husband to Siberia where he was sentenced to five years of forced labor in the Gulag. This is the last time the count will see Nina. With his own family all dead, the childless aristocrat now has a ward he must inspire and protect and our protagonist ends up becoming Sofia’s de facto father.
A Gentleman in Moscow portrays an era of conflicts: of famine and riches, war and peace, and smoking and drinking in tandem with Communist repression and notions of communal sharing. This is not a television series for Millennials who are riding out the syndication of Game of Thrones episodes while attached to a CBD vape. Presenting a deeper message for today’s audiences, A Gentleman in Moscow offers thoughtful insights into the parallels of Bolshevik era repression and today’s growing censorship by governments of free speech, freedom of the press, and the ability to speak against the current in polite society. As much as many on the left might initially dislike the aristocracy that Rostov represents in the first episode, it becomes impossible to hate him as he transcends class, representing an oppressed figure despite his class.
A Gentleman in Moscow provides a timeless criticism of political machinery and man’s blind repetition of history, despite all the lessons learned. And learned many times over.