How much criticism of Russia is in this film? – Diepresse.com

« Because of his unmistakable contemporary reference, the master and Margarita ‘perhaps one of the bravest films »: This is how the filmically not -out, but visual and effective Russian remedy of the novelist becomes Michail Bulgakow Advertised in Austria on the occasion of their cinema. Is actually a sharp criticism in this film, which became a controversial cashier in Russia in 2024 Putin Repression?

In “Master and Margarita” the devil, here with relish Mephistophelic from the German August Diehl, drives his game in the Moscow of the 1920s. Bulgakow’s book is a religious argument on one level (a storyline is devoted to the confrontation between Pontius Pilate and Jesus) and a criticism of the Soviet atheism. On a second one is a great love story – between the master and Margarita. Finally, on a third party, « Master and Margarita » is a grotesque about conditions in the early Soviet Union, from arbitrariness bureaucracy to housing policy and surveillance to the forced and voluntary ideological synchronization in literature and theater. Bulgakow himself experienced this very painfully, he had major publication problems. So his novel “Master and Margarita”, which he started in 1928, on which he wrote until his death in 1940, could only be published in the 1960s. But then he became a subversive cult book there. He is considered to be the most important Russian novel of the 20th century.