East is East

Plus, a few thoughts on a forgotten Cold War thriller.

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White Nights is a curious 1985 Cold War thriller starring Gregory Hines and Mikhail Baryshnikov that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. In the film, Baryshnikov is a world-famous dancer and a defector from the Soviet Union who is recaptured when the plane he’s traveling on is forced to make an emergency landing in Soviet territory. Authorities then place him with Hines, a once-famous tap dancer and defector to the Soviet Union from the United States who’s grown disillusioned with the decision he made to cross over the Iron Curtain as a young man. State authorities intend to make a show of them as examples of Soviet superiority in the art of dance, meanwhile the two work together on an elaborate escape plan. If what you’re really looking for is a Cold War thriller with some absolutely fantastic dance sequences, this is the film for you. Probably the only film for you.

Despite a solid plot, two leads at the height of their fame, and a fantastic supporting cast including John Glover, Isabella Rossellini, and Helen Mirren, the film didn't make much of a splash upon release and has gradually faded from memory. Part of this is that it was the film’s bad luck to arrive late on the scene. The Soviet Union of White Nights is a hyper-vigilant, all-controlling police state, the wrong idea to try to sell at a time when the rust on the Iron Curtain was already showing. Gorbachev had been in office for most of a year by the time the movie was released in November of 1985. Americans were learning the words Perestroika and Glasnost. The gap between what the film depicts and what the reality was is probably most obvious in a plot point (mild spoilers here) that revolves around a very 1980s boom box Baryshnikov brings with him. He and Hines use the tape deck on the box to distract some of the state agents listening in on everything they say while the pair make their break for the US embassy. Knowing what we do now of the late Soviet Union, a more realistic scenario would have been Baryshnikov just walking downstairs to the two guys watching him from the Lada constantly parked outside and handing over the boom box. The agents would then have more than happily driven them to the embassy in exchange for this fancy toy. Hell, if Baryshnikov had thrown in his jeans they probably would have given him the car, too.

Which is the reason that I’ve been thinking about the film so much lately. There’s a popular image of autocratic states as being highly efficient and ruthless. But historically, this has rarely been the case. Ruthlessness and efficiency are things that are very difficult to have at the same time. Efficiency would dictate you send two guys to arrest someone, ruthlessness dictates you send six guys to provide for a show of force. Ruthlessness is as much about the performance of force as it is the use of force, and like any good show, it’s expensive. It is, by its nature, inefficient. And when you make that display of inefficiency central to the operation of the state, it will eventually, and inevitably, drag down the rest of the economy with it.