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Top Ukrainian officials did not attend the opening in Kiev on April 2. But viewers who emerged from the first showing said they found Mr. Bortkoâs message of pan-Slavic unity deeply moving. Yulia Velichko, 20, a student, hesitated at the idea of rejoining the Russian fold, saying, âWe fought so hard for our independence.â But her companion, Valery Skuratov, was convinced.
âWe should join Russia,â he said. âWeâre closer to them than we are to the Amerikozy,â a mildly derogatory term for Americans.
Russians showed no such restraint. The premiere inspired viewers in Krasnodar to shave their heads into Cossack haircuts, and early this month Russian Fashion Week devoted an afternoon to a collection called Cossacks in the City.
At the film premiere in Moscowâs Kinoteatr Oktyabr, which seats 3,000, the audience applauded at Bulbaâs âRussian soulâ speech, and then again when the Cossacks thundered through western Ukraine, holding torches, to drive out the Poles. Among those who felt exaltation was an ultranationalist politician, Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
âItâs better than a hundred books and a hundred lessons,â he told Vesti-TV after the premiere. âEveryone who sees the film will understand that Russians and Ukrainians are one people â and that the enemy is from the West.â
Mr. Bortko, in an interview, said the state-owned Rossiya television channel had commissioned him to make âTaras Bulbaâ because the conflict with Kiev made it âpolitically topical.â He shrugged off the suggestion that Ukrainians might view the film as divisive, noting that he spent the first 30 years of his life in Ukraine.
âI have more right to speak about Ukraine than 99 percent of those who say otherwise,â he said. Ukrainians and Russians, he said, âare like two drops of mercury. When two drops of mercury are near each other, they will unite. Youâve seen this. Exactly in the same way, our two peoples are united.â
Anyway, he said: âI just filmed Gogol. I didnât make up a single phrase.â
But as his blockbuster opened at more than 600 theaters across Russia and Ukraine, that conversation was just beginning. In Nezavisimaya Gazeta, a newspaper in Moscow that is often critical of the government, Yekaterina Barabash noted small alterations that Mr. Bortko made to Gogolâs text, which she said served to transform a wild Cossack into a respectable patriot, suitable for wide distribution.
âWhat can we do: exaggeration is one of the tokens of our time,â she wrote. âThe cultivation of patriotism, which our government focuses on now, is a token and part of our filmmaking industry. One hope: history will show that such filmmaking does not live long. It will fall into irrelevance, when times change. And Gogol â hooray! â will remain.â