Milos Stehlik

Listen to Milos Stehlik's Commentary

Somewhere underneath all of the exterior trappings of Russian life exists that elusive thing called “the Russian soul.” It’s hard to describe. Perhaps you hear the Russian soul when someone, usually a little drunk, breaks out into singing a soulful song like “Dark Eyes,” or when a Russian friend you haven’t seen for a long time grabs you, hugs you and kisses you on the cheeks. But you always know what is a real expression of the Russian soul when you encounter it.

Kolya Spiridonov’s performance in Andrei Kravchuk’s film, The Italian, is full of this Russian soul. Spiridonov plays Vanya, a six-year old boy. Vanya has been abandoned in an orphanage run by a corrupt administrator and a children’s gang that operates out of the boiler room. The only hope for the children in this seemingly impossible and bleak world is to get out through adoption.

Vanya—because he is an adorable six-year-old—gets a chance to escape the orphanage for a better life. Maria Kuznetsova is the adoption broker who is a shrewd operator and knows where and how to grease the palms to make the adoption system work, especially for foreigners. Everyone calls her “Madam.” She brings an Italian couple to the orphanage and the Italians single out Vanya. They promise to return for him in a couple of months when the paperwork has been completed. This leads to jealousy from the other kids of the life they imagine Vanya will have in Italy. They start calling him “the Italian.”

But Vanya’s heart belongs not to Italy, but to his birth mother. He longs for her and when another boy’s mother comes to pick him up from the orphanage only to find he has been adopted, Vanya decides to find her. He teaches himself to read so that he can sneak into the director’s office and find her address in his personal file. On the night of the escape, he steals the file and sneaks out of the orphanage.

Vanya’s Dickensian journey on a commuter train, with the authorities and Madame in hot pursuit is a picaresque view of modern-day Russia.

First-time feature filmmaker Andrei Kravchuk says that he first got the idea for the film by seeing the destitute and homeless children on the streets of Russia’s cities. They survived on the margins—washing cars, selling newspapers.

Kravchuk, who began by studying mathematics before switching to filmmaking, made a short documentary about an orphanage while still in school. The story of Vanya crystallized in a newspaper story about a boy who learned how to read just so that he could find his mother’s address in her file and run away from the orphanage in order to find her.

Kravchuk auditioned hundreds of kids for the role of Vanya. But he has a find in Kolya Spiridinov. He is emphathetic, yet a crafty survivor. Underneath all of the horrible stuff that life throws at him, usually by deceitful adults, his heart is innocent, simple, naïve, full of love. Even at the age of six, he can act the adult.

At the end of the film, when Vanya eventually finds his mother, she asks him, “What do I need you for, anyway?” In a moving moment, Vanya says, “From now on, you’ve got a man in your house.” The Italian joins a number of recent Russian films in which children represent the principle of uncorrupted goodness. The children define and contrast an adult world which is not only more complicated, but compromised and corrupt, filled with betrayal, anxiety and unhappiness. The Road to Koktebel and Andrei Zyaggintsev’s stunning debut feature, The Return, and now The Italian all share the plot device of a journey to establish a real emotional connection between the adult and child.

In The Italian, Andrei Kravchuk cast mostly real-life children from orphanages. It is these scenes in the orphanage where the film is at its strongest. Kravchuk is an acute observer of the web of children’s relationships. It is a world that exists separate from the life of the institution. It allows the children to survive as individuals, to preserve their dignity and sustain their independence.

Kravchuk’s positive view of Vanya as a true hero, whose quest for his mother succeeds despite seemingly insurmountable odds, makes The Italian a hopeful film.