Leaving Home to Find a Home: “Moscow on the Hudson”

There are émigrés from Soviet Russia in my extended family circle, so I’ve heard plenty of stories about the bad old days in the USSR. And this year’s Oscar-winning Anora gave me an indelible glimpse of today’s globe-trotting Russian oligarchs, as well as the pockets of old-school Russian culture in New York’s Brighton Beach. All of which made me eager to enjoy Robin Williams in Paul Mazursky’s gentle 1984 comedy about a defector from Moscow in the era of Ronald Reagan.

 The film is an extended flashback, following a glimpse of Wiliams’ Vladimir Ivanov showing a newer arrival to NYC the ropes. So we know from the start that nothing very terrible is going to happen to Vladimir after he impulsively decides to make New York City his new home. Vladimir, a saxophone player with a great love of American jazz, has traveled to the Big Apple as part of a Russian circus troupe. On the group’s last day, during a quickie group shopping spree at Bloomingdale’s, he suddenly eludes the grim-faced Soviet minders and declares his intention of staying on in this “decadent” new land. His impulsive decision of course has major consequences: the American public and America media briefly rally on his behalf, but he’s cut off forever from the close-knit Russian family he loves.

 Mazursky, always good with social details, researched life in 1980s Moscow and blended this with his own grandfather’s memories of emigrating from Ukraine to the U.S. at the turn of the twentieth century. For me (and for many critics) the film’s richest moments come in its first third, when we are introduced to Vladimir in the context of his Old World relatives. We spend time in their cramped apartment, and see their heartfelt joy when Vladimir comes home with gifts: he’s braved a very long line in order to successfully purchase armloads of toilet paper rolls. He’s saved one roll as a romantic offering to the curvaceous young woman he habitually beds in the flat borrowed from a friend, Anatoly, for this purpose. Anatoly, one of the clowns in Vladimir’s circus, brashly declares himself desperate to leave the Soviet Union in search of the freedoms promised by the U.S.A.  But though Anatoly speaks often about defecting, he ultimately can’t bring himself to take the risk. (He’s played by the Latvian-born Elya Baskin, whose tragicomic face I’ll long remember.) Anatoly’s ultimate fear of making a change is why Vladimir’s impulsive action is such a surprise to those around him. And the moment of  his defection—complete with security guards, the press, the FBI, a very gay Bloomie’s salesclerk, and a lot of others—is hilarious.

 From this point forward, the film loses some steam, spending much of its time on Vladimir’s on-again-off-again romantic relationship with a pretty Italian-born salesclerk played by Maria Conchita Alonso (who’s not exactly Italian, but you get the idea). Part of Mazursky’s point is that in America almost everyone (aside from some key African American characters) is a recent arrival from somewhere else. And immigration is portrayed in such a glowing light that I could only shake my head at how times have changed. There’s a touching little scene in which Alonso’s character and a host of others ceremonially take the oath to become U.S. citizens. And in a diner, after a worn-down Vladimir dares to briefly criticize his new country, the other patrons—from a host of cultures—take him to task, even movingly reciting from the Declaration of Independence about how all men are created equal. We certainly need some of that idealism today.