I have to confess that I am no expert on the history of either Greek, Russia or the Ottoman Empire, so I actually watched this in the hope that I might learn a little something about any or all of these subjects. Varvakis seemed an interesting subject for a bio pic. First, it's hard to really classify what he was exactly. A sailor? A pirate? A merchant? A revolutionary? Or a somewhat chaotic combination thereof? Chaotic! That's actually a word I would apply to this movie. The flow was chaotic. The story was interesting - I never had the temptation to turn it off - but it was also very hard to follow. Varvakis leaves Greece while it's under Ottoman rule and ends up as a hero in Russia after fighting for the Russians against Turkey. He becomes friends with Catherine the Great and because of her generosity he ends up as a caviar magnate, but finds himself driven to return to Greece after the Ottomans are overthrown, and in reality he did in fact became a benefactor to the new Greek government - giving much of his wealth for the cause of education. But from what little I've been able to glean of Varvakis' life there are also liberties taken with his story. That's dramatic licence and it's fine - but if you're not really familiar with the subject matter it's pretty hard to sort out fact from fiction. There are also what seem to be some bizarre theological reflections scattered throughout, and I never quite grasped what point was being made from them, except that they seemed to suggest that Varvakis was a fatalist of some sort - God has a plan and we follow it, whatever may happen.
The performances here were very good. Sebastian Koch was superb as Varvakis. Aside from him, the actors I was most familiar with were Catherine Deneuve as Catherine the Great and John Cleese as a British official who was confused about what was happening with Varvakis and sought an explanation - although I'm not convinced of the reality of Cleese's character. That narrative (along with a story being told to children by an old friend of Varvakis) were the means of driving the film forward. There was a whole plethora of Greek actors and actresses with whom I'm not personally familiar although they're presumably well known to Greek audiences.
So, the movie was interesting - but in the end frustrating, because it didn't really give me a solid grasp of exactly what was happening from a historical perspective. So - not a bad movie, just a chaotic and frustrating one. (4/10)
