At Home Among Strangers, a Stranger at Home

The directorial debut of actor Nikita Mikhalkov arguably represents the most successful marriage of the traditional Soviet genre of the Red Western with its equally traditional American prototype. Mikhalkov took the most basic conventions of the Western and Red Western; he then combined and contrasted them. In At Home Among Strangers the ‘iron’ communists of the 1920s are remarkably similar to the lonesome heroes of classic Westerns. Then there are horseback chase sequences, train robberies, shoot-outs, issues of greed or violence, brooding silences and moments of comic relief. While it is true that the money is dutifully dispatched to Moscow – to help with famine relief – and all the main characters are staunch members of the Communist Party, there is talk here of both Marx and God – very daring for its time. A genre exercise is transformed into a bold parable and a striking credo that friendship trumps political alliances, personal needs and even the needs of the state.

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