Michael Apted – Gorky Park (1983)
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Gorky Park, in both the original novel by Martin Cruz Smith and the movie adaptation scripted by the legendary Dennis Potter (Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective), introduced one of the most intriguing fictional detectives of the last half century: Chief Investigator Arkady Renko of the Moscow police force in the former Soviet Union. Like all great detectives, Renko is committed to truth and justice, but he has to pursue them in a system that owes its very existence to secrecy, lies and concealment. This fundamental conflict runs through all of Renko’s cases, along with a conflict-ridden family history, including a famous general of a father who disapproved of his son’s choice to pursue a career in law enforcement.
The first of eight Renko novels, Gorky Park, became an international bestseller in 1981. The film was released two years later by the now-defunct Orion Pictures. Director Michael Apted may have directed a Bond film (The World Is Not Enough), but, as he says in the 2014 interview included on this Blu-ray edition, he is a documentary filmmaker at heart, whose most enduring work may turn out to be the Up Series biographies begun in 1964, of which the most recent installment is 56 Up. When Apted was denied permission to film in the Soviet Union (which claimed that no crime existed in its perfect society), he and his production designer did their best to recreate Russia in Finland and Moscow in Helsinki, but Apted always felt frustrated that he wasn’t able to show the “real” Moscow.
Still, those limitations may have worked in Gorky Park’s favor over the long run. Later films from The Russia House (1990) to Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol have shown us such sights as the Kremlin and Red Square often enough that the cinematic novelty has worn off. Gorky Park is about the work of a meticulous, thoughtful cop, who pores over files and follows leads into parts of town that are not featured in the guidebook. The generic quality of the film’s locations suits both the subject matter and the film’s hero, who describes himself as “a plodding investigator, no style”. Of course, the same was true of Lieutenant Columbo, and criminals never got past him either.
Renko (William Hurt) and his reliable lieutenant, Pasha (Michael Elphick), have a case that they really don’t want. In fact, Renko’s friend, the chief pathologist (Henry Woolf) tells him so, while performing a post mortem the next morning. Three bodies have been found buried in the snow in Moscow’s Gorky Park with all identifying features removed, including their faces. Everything about the case reeks of professional intrigue, including the fact that the KGB arrive on the scene almost as quickly as the police, led by Renko’s personal nemesis, Major Pribluda (Rikki Fulton). It’s as if Pribluda knew the bodies were there, and Renko would be all too happy to let Pribluda and his goons have the case so they can bury it again.
But Renko’s boss and patron, Chief Prosecutor Iamskoy (Ian Bannen), urges him to continue investigating. Things are changing, says Iamskoy. The KGB is getting weaker, while the civilian authorities are gaining power. Iamskoy will back the Chief Investigator, wherever his inquiry may lead.
And Renko’s inquiry does indeed lead to unexpected and perilous places. One of the victims wore ice skates belonging to a Siberian university student, Irina Asanova (Joanna Pacula), who was expelled for radical activities and now works as a seamstress for the movies. Not surprisingly, she is unwilling to talk to the police. But Irina can also be found in the company of a wealthy American businessman, Jack Osborne (Lee Marvin, who was ailing at the time, but you’d never know it from his confidently focused performance). Osborne is involved in the fur trade for prized Russian sables, and he is so well connected that he seems to glide easily through the highest levels of Soviet society. He’s clearly a villain, but are his crimes purely economic? (He barely meets Renko before he’s offering the policeman a bribe.)
Other mysterious characters hover around the edges of the investigation. One furtive figure turns out to be an American of Russian extraction named Kirwill (Brian Dennehy), who tails Renko for reasons unknown. Another is a used car dealer named Golodkin (British comedian Alexei Sayle), who has a few other businesses on the side. And there’s the eccentric Prof. Andreev (Ian McDiarmid, best known as Emperor Palpatine in the Star Wars prequels), who is strictly an academic but has a gift for reconstructing the faces of historical figures from archaeological evidence. Despite the professor’s reluctance, Renko persuades him to undertake a painstaking facial reconstruction of two of the Gorky Park victims, with startling results. Meanwhile, shadowy assassins do their best to add to the body count, as someone tries to tie up loose ends. From the methods, Renko is certain the KGB is involved, but what are they covering up?
Apted effectively creates the paranoid atmosphere of a society in which anyone may be a spy or an informer. In groups of people, he will pick out someone who is staring at Renko, his men or anyone appearing to cooperate. Perhaps the person is curious; perhaps they are momentarily distracted; or perhaps they are preparing a report for a KGB handler. In this world, you never know, and much of the “plodding” investigator’s success results from his ability to size up people, to separate the dissemblers from the trustworthy. The latter include Pasha and Renko’s close friend, a lawyer named Anton (played by the late Richard Griffiths, best known as Harry Potter’s unpleasant Uncle Vernon). If Renko doesn’t always get it exactly right, it’s because he has learned the hard way that sometimes one must make deals with the devil in order to achieve as much justice as possible in a system that routinely deducts justice from the equation.
Gorky Park.1983.576p.BDRip-AVC.ZONE.mkv General Container: Matroska Runtime: 2 h 8 min Size: 2.91 GiB Video Codec: x264 Resolution: 1024x554 Aspect ratio: 1.85:1 Frame rate: 23.976 fps Bit rate: 3 000 kb/s BPP: 0.221 Audio #1: English 2.0ch AC-3 @ 224 kb/s
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Language(s):English
Subtitles:English