Schepisi’s ‘House’ Shelters a Kinder, Gentler Russia : Movies: The director says ‘Russia House,’ which recently wrapped in Moscow, will force people to ‘rethink their attitudes about this place.’

MOSCOW —  Western cinematic images of the Soviet Union, mostly the product of decades of spy movies and other films about the Cold War, are about to be challenged by a new film that its director says will show “a different Russia,” one that is gentler and more human, a country that today is deeply troubled but undergoing profound changes.

“People are going to see a different Russia, a Russia that has never been shown before in the West, and they are going to have to rethink their attitudes about this place,” Australian director Fred Schepisi said recently here as he finished filming segments of “The Russia House,” which is based on John le Carre’s latest spy novel.

“How willing they will be to discard the old images and stereotypes is hard to say, but they will definitely be challenged.”

Schepisi’s film, a $21-million Pathe International production with Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer in the principal roles, seems likely to amplify the “soft-on-communism” controversy around Le Carre’s novel.

The novel has been castigated by many conservative critics in the United States who have accused Le Carre, whom they took to be one of them, of forgetting who the bad guys are in East-West relations and for portraying Western intelligence agencies as clinging to the Cold War at a time when the Soviet Union appears to be abandoning the very policies that seemed to make it such a threat.

“The people who should know what is going on here, the import of these changes for the Soviet Union and the impact they will have on the world, seem to be the very ones who falling behind in their understanding, who can’t keep up with events here,” Schepisi said.

“They, to my mind, are more concerned about ‘staying in business,’ as it were, instead of promoting peace. That’s what the book is about, and why it has been unexpectedly controversial, and that’s what this film will be about. . . . In showing people a different Russia, this film will give them new insights into a lot of things.”

Schepisi’s “different Russia,” on one level, is intensely physical--Moscow, Leningrad and their environs, which serve as the backdrop for “The Russia House.” The film, scheduled for release next fall, is one of the first major Western productions to be shot here under the liberalized conditions that are part of glasnost .

“This is Russia, the real Russia, and not Finland masquerading as Russia that people will see,” he said. “We have tried to film as many actual locations as possible with the normal traffic, the normal crowds, life the way it is lived here.

“People will be surprised, I think, at the vast scale, the breadth of the streets, the huge apartment blocks, the incredible beauty of so much of Russia--none of which they have seen before. We get beyond Red Square, beyond St. Basil’s and its onion domes.”

But Schepisi, who spent 10 weeks here planning and then filming, also hopes to portray the sweeping changes under way here, to set the film against the present political and social background.

“The Moscow that people will see is a city of lost churches, of lost time, of lost grace,” he said, “but it is also a city that is struggling to come back, that is under reconstruction, that is going through a spiritual rebirth. . . .

“To portray perestroika , though, we also have to capture the run-down apartment buildings, the stores without food, the deep alienation people here feel and the changes that they want. But the trick is not to get too involved, to approach and pull back and then approach again.

“The humanity of Russians will come through--how touchingly generous they are when they get to know you--and many people will have to rethink their ideas about this place. In the film, Barley Blair (Connery, the hero, a London book publisher recruited by British intelligence) learns he really likes Russia because of that humanity. And for us that, too, will be a new image of Russia.”

And, although the film, like the book, falls in the espionage genre, Schepisi said he prefers to think of it as an “anti-spy” movie.

As in Le Carre’s novel, the Soviets are not the bad guys, the hero could be accused of treason for abandoning his mission and American and British intelligence officials emerge as heartless manipulators of people’s lives in the name of national security.

“What people think and do often, quite fortunately, has little to do with what government bodies think and do,” Schepisi said. “And that is an insight, which seems especially true here, that we want in the film.”

While this “different Russia” is in Le Carre’s novel, the result of the British author’s two trips to the Soviet Union, Schepisi’s ability to portray it stems from the cooperation he has received from Moscow Film Studio and a Soviet-West German joint venture, Corona, in his five weeks of filming here.

“A lot of people advised against filming here and told us to stick to Finland,” Schepisi said. “It would never work, they told us, and we would be weeks behind schedule and millions over budget. But we finished shooting only half a day behind schedule despite a lot of bad weather, probably a little bit under budget and very appreciative of the cooperation we got.

“True, something that is so different from what we know--and their system is very different--does make for difficulties. But once we got to know the system, surmounted the language barriers, got the crew settled down and began to work, things went very well. Our Soviet partners and crew showed great flexibility, and we had extraordinary cooperation on things that we would never be able to do in the United States. Again, that’s contrary to all the images we have of this place.”

The film has a powerful patron, however, in Elem Klimov, first secretary of the Soviet Union of Cinematographers and an influential member of the political avant-garde here.

“Elem Klimov sold this to the Soviet leadership as a real experiment in glasnost ,” Schepisi said. “Remember this, on the surface, is an espionage film, based on a Le Carre novel, starring Sean Connery once again as a British intelligence agent. But they read the script here and were willing to put aside their stereotypes of us and help.”

In return for Klimov’s cooperation, Schepisi will help the Soviet director film Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita” in the United States next year. “It’s not only the right thing to do after the help we have had here, but it will be a privilege to work with Klimov,” Schepisi said.

Schepisi’s time here and his contacts with Soviets made him, like Le Carre, a full supporter of perestroika .

“We in the West ought to think about what perestroika means not just for the Soviet Union but for us,” Schepisi said. “We ought to think what Gorbachev’s changes will mean for this country and what his success will mean for the world. . . .

“They are encountering difficulties right now. Perestroika is bringing harder times, less food, uncertainty about the future. They need our support at this moment, our encouragement so that an opportunity, a historic opportunity, does not slip away.”