Russia Hour

A Gentleman In Moscow: Ewan McGregor Brings A Whimsical Character To Elegant Life

McGregor's new TV miniseries feels like a fleeting moment from a bygone era. It’s something you’ll enjoy reaching out for, writes Joshua Muyiwa.

MANY SUMMERS AGO, sprawled on a planter’s chair on a balcony in Goa, tearing through the 500-odd pages of Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow, I thought this novel would make the perfect period television drama. The kind that one slips into their night clothes and cosies up to on a Sunday evening, drifting into sleep after. And lo, and behold, it’s actually happened.

The icing on the cake: the wonderful Ewan McGregor stars in this series. McGregor plays Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, whom we meet in Moscow in 1921, four years after the Russian Revolution. Most of Rostov’s family and peers of the aristocracy have either fled Mother Russia, or been killed by firing squad. Despite being another one of those carefree men with fine palates that can distinguish between various vintages of wine, his life has been spared: a revolutionary poem Rostov penned in his student days is still popular among the Bolsheviks. So, instead of death, Rostov has been sentenced to house arrest for the rest of his living days, within Moscow’s fictional but magnificent Metropol Hotel. His food and board are free and his life will be spared as long as he never leaves the confines of the hotel.

Quickly, he’s made to renounce all of his possessions and money, and shunted from his decadent suite into a cold, cramped room in the attic, earmarked for hotel staff. On the first day of his life sentence, Rostov goes about his day, even showing up to be seated at his usual table in the hotel’s restaurant for dinner, causing quite a stir. As the head waiter puts it, “I believe he is refusing to be beaten”. This inextinguishable force is infectious, it’s the wind beneath the series’ wings. Furthermore, it infuses each scene of the first two episodes within the bubble of the hotel with joy, while the world outside of its grand doors is struggling to find a new rhythm. Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov seems to be able to find the pleasures secreted away even in his never-ending punishment.

However, Rostov’s arrest isn’t solitary. Rather, his world is peopled with other long-term residents of the hotels, the staff, the musicians… He also strikes up a particularly sweet, avuncular friendship with Nina (Alexa Goodall), a young girl obsessed with the protocols of princesses and also in possession of a passkey that opens every door in the hotel. Between tales of the glory days shared at his usual table at the hotel’s restaurant to traipsing through the hidden passageways of the grand hotel, the duo’s friendship grows. The constant wet blanket and frightening reminder of his life-long punishment is his menacing Bolshevik handler Osip (Johnny Harris), who visits unannounced and ransacks the Count’s room for contraband, or any excuse at all to see him executed. But the handler also seems to want to be educated in culture, to take on his bourgeois adversaries within the Revolutionary Party.

Within the lightness of these premiere episodes are peppered chilling reminders of the Count’s possible fate. One of more tragic deaths is of a former prince relegated to playing Rachmaninov on the violin for the hotel’s guests. The prince tries to convince Rostov to contribute to an escape plan that involves them taking a train and then walking to Minsk in disguise. He doesn’t even get to finish playing the Rachmaninov tune he loves before he is taken out and shot in the head, right outside the hotel’s front door.

Through these episodes, the charm and momentum never drop; McGregor’s Rostov, at the centre of it all, is simply superlative. He imbues his person and each scene with an air of elegance. When Rostov has small successes like pairing the perfect wine with his fish, we smile too. And when he finds his way to the rooftop to breathe the outside air, we’re entirely moved to tears. McGregor completely embodies the character: his every gesture is buoyant, his gait graceful, and his smile warm; so, when it is otherwise, we are sad too. Still, he manages to delightfully look forward to the next day, just to steal a pinch of this point of view. A Gentleman in Moscow might be light on the politics but this choice lends a gentleness to the series, something that feels like a fleeting moment from a bygone era. It’s something you’ll enjoy reaching out for.

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