My first time watching this film, I viewed Kotov's family's dacha as an Edenic paradise destroyed through human weakness and pettiness, with the dacha representing the pre-Stalin Soviet Union and Mitya representing the human flaws that ensured that Marxism-Leninism would never reach its goal of a fully communist society. My second time watching the film, my perspective shifted-- the dacha is not quite an Edenic idyll, only the illusion of such. Instead of symbolizing the promise and optimism of the Soviet regime pre-Stalin, Kotov embodies the hidden corruption that existed from the start. Rather than being the snake that causes the fall, Mitya merely reveals the corruption already present.
The movie's setting-- Kotov's family's dacha-- plays an important role in conveying the film's message. The main body of the movie takes place over the course of a single summer's day in the countryside. The family's day in the country has the sense of any lazy summer day-- nowhere to be, no obligations, just long, somnolent hours of sunlight and idleness. The family and their dacha are suspended in both time and space-- the hours flow past unmarked, their house sits in some indeterminate pocket of countryside, somehow near enough to civilization for visitors to drop by now and again without it being too out of the ordinary, but simultaneously so isolated that a lost driver can travel in circles all day and never go anywhere of consequence. This floaty suspension within time and space would come across as almost surreal were it not so sleepily pleasant. Its indeterminate isolation and seeming timelessness contribute to the sense of the dacha as a tucked-away Paradise. The family could stay there forever, it seems, untouched by any aspect of the outside world. But, this isn't quite true-- while going for a swim, the household and Mitya find themselves accosted by a gas-attack drill. They shrug it off as a mere inconvenience, but it shows that their protected bubble may not be as impermeable as it first appears, and that the outside world with all its imperfections and chemical weapons will always encroach, even though the family wishes it wouldn't. In fact, they pretend all is well, and no one spares a thought for anything further away than the bend in the road. This deliberate ignorance is illustrated by the game Nadya plays with Kotov and Mitya in which she covers her ears and hums so that she can't hear the adults' conversations. The game, she explains to Kotov, is to see who can keep it up the longest: who can block out unpleasant events (namely, the reality of Kotov's arrest) the longest? But, one cannot block out the truth forever, not even Nadya, who gets multiple tries "because [she's] little". Even Nadya, the one true innocent in the film, is not safe from reality's encroachments. Her innocence is doomed. The dacha is not Eden. It is as damaged as any other place in the world, and its idyll is nothing but illusion.
The first time through the movie, I saw Kotov as a noble figure whom Mikhalkov used as a symbol for the goodness and potential of the pre-Stalin Soviet regime. Probably this conception reflects Kotov's self-perception before his execution and his family's idea of him. But upon rewatching the film, the confrontation in the woods between Kotov and Mitya stood out to me. Where previously I had seen Kotov as a heroic figure and Mitya as an evildoer bent on ruining a good man, I saw complexity in the situation. Yes, Mitya desires revenge. But is Kotov the noble figure he appears? Perhaps not. Mitya accuses Kotov of complicity in the system that took away everything of his old life-- his family, his faith, his profession, and his love. He's right, too, and Kotov doesn't try to deny it. One side's war hero is the other side's avowed enemy, for justifiable reasons. Mitya commits evil by giving Kotov to the NKVD, but Kotov himself isn't pure, either, even though he and everyone around him see him as a hero. In light of this confrontation with Mitya, other aspects of Kotov's characterization take on a new light. He's leader of a group of Young Pioneers-- does this make him the equivalent of a wholesome Boy Scout leader, or complicit in the indoctrination of children into the system that so harmed Mitya and countless others like him? Or both? Does he have a happy marriage to Marussia, or did he aggressively pursue a grieving woman in no position to tell him no? Maybe both here, too. Even his mustache, giving him as it does his passing resemblance to Stalin, takes on a sinister cast. The family's situation is not so clear-cut as it may appear at first or as they would like to pretend. I am reminded of the father of somebody I used to know. He in the 1990s participated in the Bosnian genocide in Srebrenica. Later he married a Bosnian woman; they obtained refugee status and moved to the US. He has two children and lives an ordinary life now. Nobody would know from meeting him that he has killed people. Countless others like him have committed atrocious acts and now live ordinary lives. Even more ordinary people could do the same. Evil, it turns out, it depressingly banal. There is no Evil Fairy who sprinkles Magic Evil Pixie Dust on people's heads while they sleep. Kotov is not pure; but nor is he uniquely bad. He is morally average, with all the ambiguity that entails. Sometimes morally average people like Kotov commit awful acts. His association with the early utopian hopes of the Revolution still stands, but it is tempered by the knowledge that, as a creation of imperfect humans, the Revolution was not perfect either, but broken from the start. The system created by flawed humans would never create a utopia; the seeds of the later disasters of Stalinism were planted in the very beginning by men like Kotov.
In contrast to my perception of Kotov, the first time I saw the film, I saw Mitya as the only antagonist of the film, as a petty and self-centered man who cared only about satisfying his personal vendetta against Kotov. He symbolized state terror and the failures of the Stalinist regime, in contrast to Kotov, who represented the best and most promising aspects of the Revolution's utopian aspirations. In some respects, I still see Mitya in that way-- he still seems weak, self-centered, and too concerned with revenge. But, the exchange with Kotov mentioned above reveals different, and more sympathetic, motives for his actions. Moreover, rather than acting as the agent who tainted the dacha with the outside world's troubles, he merely reveals the corruption already present. The most obvious example of Mitya showing the fault lines within the family's seemingly perfect existence occurs when he tells Nadya the "fairy tale" recounting his love for Marussia-- the telling of this tale is the first time the audience realizes that Kotov and Marussia's marriage may not be quite as it seems. This revelation puts pressure on the hidden fault lines, as evidenced by Marussia's reaction to the story, but it did not create them. A second, equally illustrative instance of his role as revealer of the rot at the center of seeming perfection happens while the family enjoys an afternoon swim: while sitting on the blanket with Marussia, a broken glass bottle lies hidden in the grass, ready for an unsuspecting Kotov or Nadya to step on it. No one else sees the piece of glass, but Mitya spots it, even picking it up to look at and handle. The glass represents the flaws, both personal and institutional, that Mitya reveals and which come together in the family's tragedy and, on a larger scale, Stalin's purges as a whole. Later, Mitya himself steps on the piece of glass, foreshadowing his later death at the end of the film. He falls victim to the very systemic (NKVD and terror, political paranoia) and personal (vengefulness, selfishness) defects that he reveals and participates in. Ironically, the man who (as an NKVD agent) at first glance appears to represent the dark and duplicitous underbelly of the regime, in actuality brings to the dacha illusion-shattering truth.
So: the utopian dream was doomed from the start. From Kotov the decorated war hero to Mitya the vengeful NKVD agent, humans have flaws that plant the seeds of tragedy within the institutions they create. Sometimes people do evil, and sometimes promising hoped-for institutions fail to deliver on that promise. Sometimes a seeming Paradise is just another part of the mundane world, coated in illusion. The world is already fallen. We cannot build the kingdom of God on Earth. Soviet utopianism, any utopianism, is doomed from the start.
What are we to do with this understanding? The movie ends tragically, but with some small glint of hope-- though Kotov and Marussia are shot and Nadya orphaned, they are rehabilitated after Stalin's death. Rehabilitation cannot bring back the murdered, but Stalin's tyranny came to an end. Though the world is fallen and humans do evil, life is not hopeless.