Movie Review： The Thief (1997) 1 of 3
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode, I discuss the differences between Russian cinema and Western storytelling, political allegory, and the low-trust society in the post-World War II Soviet era. I also talk about how to understand the film "The Thief" and why it's so different from what we're used to in the West.
Transcript
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Hey folks, this requested video comes from Alex from Australia, who asked me to review the 1997 film The Thief.
00:00:38.620
And just let me tell you that this film is absolutely amazing.
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If you like this channel, if you read blogs in the Manosphere, it's probably right up your alley.
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It was very well put together and tells a very poignant story of being a boy growing up in the post-World War II Soviet Russia era.
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This video won't have any spoilers, but parts two and three will.
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So I strongly recommend that you, after listening to this video, go check it out for yourselves.
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You'd be hurting yourselves to not watch this movie.
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Now, in this film, I'm going to try and give you the background for what you need to really understand this movie.
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Some useful information to inform your perspective.
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And I'll be covering, first of all, the nature of Russian cinema and Russian literature in general.
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Because it is a bit different from what we're used to here in the West.
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Next, we're going to talk about political allegory.
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And if you're thinking this might be related to my last video, it very much is.
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So, first of all, the nature of Russian writing of Russian cinema.
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You see, the Russians, the whole nature of their storytelling is very, it's very, it assumes that you understand the experience.
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That you have some information about what it's like to be a human being.
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See, with the Western storytelling, we tend to be more didactic.
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Whereas with the Russian style, it's more about the overall experience of the entire thing.
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For instance, right now I'm reading Roadside Picnic.
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And at one point, the protagonist, he had a bad day, so he's getting hammered in the bar.
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And as he gets drunker, people appear and disappear without saying where they are.
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And it's not a clear sequence of events lined up to explain why all of this craziness happens.
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He eventually throws an alien artifact into the middle of the bar that causes everybody to have an emotional freak-out and escapes through the window in the bathroom.
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It doesn't explain how all of this comes about.
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So with Russian cinema, it's very much pulling you into this experience.
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Pulling you into understanding the perspective of a character, rather than telling you what happened to them to give them this perspective.
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I wouldn't say it's better or worse than, you know, more Western styles of writing.
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But it is something that you need to be prepared for.
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Russian literature is not like that hack Margaret Atwood.
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It has a story that it's telling, that it's getting across.
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But it uses a slightly different methodology of doing it.
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So you kind of have to let yourself go and just experience it.
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The next point I want to talk about is political allegory.
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Now, some books are absolutely transparent political allegories.
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If you take Animal Farm, it's the most obvious.
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Unfortunately, there's this tendency in people to try and push an allegory on something.
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Or try and say there's an allegory where there isn't.
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Now, I'm somewhat of a believer in death of the author.
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Death of the author is a concept that the author doesn't always know what they're writing.
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That you need the critic to interpret what the author is writing.
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True literature, good literature with real humans in it, with real characters, requires interpretation.
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But oftentimes, what you'll find with the 101-level English student is trying to push some sort of narrative on it.
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Trying to say that it's about Jesus and purgatory.
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Or about how this is really about Barack Obama.
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Now, that said, The Thief does have an underlying political narrative to it.
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It's about the disappointment of the Russian people with those years.
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You know, the protagonist is a young boy, who does an amazing acting job, by the way, especially for a child.
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And so the young boy kind of represents the Russian people.
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And this is this film made in 1997 looking back 50 years, looking back upon childhood,
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looking at the USSR under Stalin, and being disappointed with all of it.
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And in fact, I really feel that this movie really speaks to us right now.
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Because at the end of the day, the whole issue with Soviet Russia,
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the issue illustrated by this movie, wasn't necessarily one of economics.
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It wasn't one of richness or poverty so much as it was the issue of living in a very low-trust society,
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In a low-trust society, trustworthy people are frowned upon.
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Whereas people that are untrustworthy tend to do quite well for themselves.
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You know, I mentioned in another video that right now,
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one of the few growth industries is multi-level marketing schemes.
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And the irony being that what this economy needs desperately is real production,
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real value being added, as opposed to value transference.
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And yet it's the people in the value transference industries,
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in the multi-level marketing scams or in the banking sector,
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these are the ones that can make a lot of money,
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I mean, realistically, most of these people are,
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like, technically speaking, they're poorer than your average waitress
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And we're not talking, like, beta, needy, pathetic.
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We're talking about if you try and genuinely talk to women
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And this goes for everything, really, nowadays.
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and can actually do something productive for them.
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part of it really feels like it's about the modern day.
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how are we supposed to survive in a low-trust society,
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And next time we're going to talk about the movie itself
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and a character analysis of everybody that appears.