Movies: The White Crow

Inspired by Nureyev: The Life by Julie Kavanagh

Have you heard the phrase “giving back”? This euphemism for altruism is repudiated in a recent film honoring a historic emancipation from slavery 60 years ago. Its use comes in a scene in which a powerful woman rejects a plea from a selfish young man who is at her mercy. The female’s a bureaucrat. The youngster is an artist pleading for the right to create for his own sake. The woman—representing the rise of the “new woman” in the world’s bloodiest dictatorship—orders the artist to obey, commanding the individual to “give back” to the Collective. The artist rises, standing before the bureaucrat controlling his life. He turns his head. He expresses the disgust which precedes and feeds his ultimate act of defiance.

The artist portrayed is Rudolf Nureyev. The dictatorship is Soviet Russia. The movie is The White Crow. Ralph Fiennes, who’s starred in many movies, including The English Patient, Schindler’s List and Robert Redford’s Quiz Show, has made an outstanding film about what happens …