16 years on, Finance minister Thomas Isaac says sorry' to Alexander Sokurov after

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Not just the Pope, even Communists apologise. At the closing ceremony of the IFFK here on Friday, finance minister T.M. Thomas Isaac turned to Russian legend Alexander Sokurov, this year’s lifetime achievement winner who was on the dais, and said: “We apologise for what happened in 2001.” Dr Isaac insisted that his words be translated to Sokurov. The filmmaker just nodded, and Dr Isaac went on with his speech without elaborating any further.

As it turned out, he was apologising for what happened at the Kolkata International Film Festival in 2001. Sokurov’s Taurus was one of the films screened. The second film in his ‘tetralogy of power’ series, based on the last days of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, was subjected to some vociferous criticism. Jyoti Basu, who by then had retired, and Biman Bose said the movie should not have been shown. “'From where has Sokurov found that Lenin was anti-Semitic? There is no such reference in the Russian archives,” Basu had then thundered.

Taurus is set in 1923, one year before Lenin's death and six years after the Bolshevik Revolution. At that time Lenin had undergone a debilitating operation to remove a bullet from his neck. He is also shown as being kept in a sort of house arrest by the Politburo. He is allowed no telephone calls, no post and no contact with the outside world. He contemplates suicide, rants against Jews, visits prostitutes and is treated as an insignificant figure by Stalin. Sokurov, who was then 50, was surprised. Here is how he reacted to the storm in Bengal over his film: “The film shows him struggling hard with his illness, struggling for his independence. Still, he is a strong, proud and clever man.

Only, perhaps, a not very kind one.” Leonid Mozgovi, the actor who plays Lenin, was blunt. “Lenin is not such a hero in Russia. He made errors too.” Dr Isaac’s apology seems to have been provoked by actor Prakash Raj’s speech at the opening ceremony of the IFFK. During his closing ceremony speech Isaac recalled what Prakash Raj had said. “I don’t come to Kerala with a prepared speech because there was no censorship in this place,” Mr Raj had said. As a kind of gratitude for these words, Isaac said: “We will sustain this right to dissent and defend it unmindful of the consequences.”