You don’t have to be a fan of hockey to like the movie “Red
Army,” a captivating fill-in-the-blanks feature-length interview between filmmaker
Gabe Polsky of Chicago and Slava Fetisov of Moscow, Soviet Union.
Watch Slava sit and watch the critical play-by-play segments
of the astonishing Miracle on Ice triumph by the US men’s hockey team. The
outcome wasn’t so miraculous for the Soviets. Players were purged and those who
remained – Fetisov among them – were relegated to punishing training methods
(where did they get the footage!) that would bring low the sternest Spartan
warrior.
Watch how Slava snaps at Gabe, who chooses the word “power”
to describe the sudden ascension of Victor Tikhonov to the helm of the Red
Army, the Soviet men’s national ice hockey team, over beloved, fiercely
dedicated to the players, Anatoly Tarasov. It is “system,” Fetisov scolds.
Tikhonov was KGB. He is only an empty suit. A stooge. What power is in that?
Watch and marvel at the best top five that will ever – argue here if you will, but with
the advent of salary caps and front-loaded contracts, you will lose – play the
game. Kasatonov, Fetisov, Larionov, Makharov and Krutov.
Ah, Krutov. You will love him. If there is a man to limn the
soul of ice hockey, the glory of the team above all else, it is Krutov.
Sense the no small bit of Putin in our Slava. This man who
brandishes his cell phone like a gun, his easy arrogance, his withering glare
at the inferiors around him. No Esposito showman, Beliveau nobleman, Howe great
uncle. There is more than a little of the Russian dictator in this man who
after hours of being interviewed by Gabe doesn’t show him the courtesy of even
remembering where the filmmaker came from. As if a California boy, as Fetisov
calls him, could have come up with what northern boy Gabe of Chicago has managed
to do.
The Soviet Union may be dead, but it is very much alive here
in the story of the Red Army and Slava Fetisov, in fact it smolders in the
death-stare gaze of this amazing man who doesn’t stint in telling a story of
great drama, a story that seems so long ago and far away but that crackles in
the telling.
Next: Running for Your Life: The Big Outdoors
