As basis for the extremely powerful images in this film, Oleg Kovalov used the text of the Autobiographical Notes that Eisenstein wrote in 1946 in the Kremlin hospital. In addition, Kovalov ‘quotes’ many famous fragments from Eisenstein’s films, that he even dares to edit afresh: only in very rare cases does he leave a classic scene almost entirely unscathed. So the film does not follow the intellectual logic of Eisenstein’s cutting, but neither has it become a conventional biographical narrative. The psychoanalytical undertone is born by the difficult relationship that Eisenstein had with his father, that resulted in an enormous destructive urge. Kovalov shows that Eisenstein as an artist took an interest in idols (also in the cases of Lenin and Stalin), but that as a convinced Communist he is also busy destroying these idols, like any other form of dictatorship and paternal authority.
