TV REVIEW : Rostropovich Goes Home in Triumph

It could have been just another one of those cozy, high-minded PBS cliches. Famed musician conquers political adversity and goes home again in triumph.

A portentous narrator would regurgitate endless voice-over platitudes. The cameras would record the inevitable cheers and sweat in glaring close-ups. A lot of important people would talk self-consciously to the folks out there in videoland. The rosy fade-out would focus, of course, on a wonderful concert.

“Soldiers of Music”--which follows Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife, Galina Vishnevskaya, as they return to the Soviet Union after 17 years of exile and disgrace--isn’t like that. It isn’t simple, and it certainly isn’t simple-minded.

The post- perestroika documentary, to be aired tonight on KVCR Channel 24 and KPBS Channel 15 at 9:30 p.m., and Friday on KCET Channel 28 at 9:30 p.m., tries a little harder. It digs a little deeper.

The Rostropoviches used to be cultural icons in their homeland. They were treated well. He was a celebrated cellist--one of the best in the world--and a conductor of considerable promise. As prima donna of the Bolshoi Opera, she enjoyed even greater renown.

Then they committed what turned out to be an unpardonable crime in the Brezhnev era. They offered overt support for a dangerous dissident: Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Eventually they were labeled enemies of the people. Their citizenship was revoked. Their names disappeared from official rosters and histories.

Rostropovich’s career thrived in the States, where he became music director of the National Symphony in Washington. Sadly, Vishnevskaya’s career declined. Sopranos do not last as long as cellists and conductors.

Last February, all was forgiven at the Kremlin. Gorbachev invited Rostropovich to return to Moscow and Leningrad. His entourage included his still-proud and temperamental wife, his doting daughter, his puppy, an army of aides and newspersons, and--oh, yes--the National Symphony Orchestra. To say that it was a sentimental occasion would lend new meaning to the concept of understatement.

Peter Gelb and a contingent of resourceful experts from Maysles Films went along too. Maysles, not incidentally, had been the illuminating force behind such diverse documentaries as “Salesman,” a seedy portrait of door-to-door Bible hawkers; “Gimme Shelter,” a rocky odyssey involving the Rolling Stones, and “Sports Illustrated: The Making of the Swimsuit Issue,” plus two major showpieces for Vladimir Horowitz.

In “Soldiers of Music,” Gelb, Albert Maysles and their associates do their considerable best to stay out of their subjects’ way. It can’t be easy.

The protagonists talk candidly for themselves, to each other and to their friends. There is no script, no plot. The drama unfolds by itself. Much, no doubt, is lost in the imperative subtitles.

There is much laughing, much weeping, much embracing, much poeticizing, much toasting, much apostrophizing, much fretting, much gushing, much agonizing, much brooding. The cast, after all, is Russian. The film is very strenuous.

It captures the incredible chaos that greeted Rostropovich at the Moscow airport. It observes the returning hero in performance and rehearsal. Most revealing, it documents press conferences where both Rostropoviches continue to plead Solzhenitsyn’s cause, and it finds them weeping at the snow-covered grave of Andrei Sakharov.

The details are telling. Vishnevskaya returns to the stage door of the Bolshoi Theater, but cannot bring herself to enter. Someone in the over-packed audience all but ruins a concert by yelling that Rostropovich is “Zeus.” The maestro angrily disdains the accolade, calling the zealous fan a “nut-head.”

Compatriots stop a not-too-patient Rostropovich in the street to declare undying devotion. In some instances, his cool response suggests that they may protest too much.

The new, presumably enlightened minister of culture labels his predecessors “killers of art.” A lavish party in an apartment that belongs to Rostropovich’s chronically proud, chronically nervous sister finds Vladimir Vasiliev, dissident danseur noble of the Bolshoi Ballet, among the unidentified guests.

Rostropovich visits his old dacha, argues with Galina about which facade is the most photogenic, assures his admirers that “we never said what wasn’t true.” He jokes with the conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky while pretending to practice the cello.

Before a concert he paces nervously as a duenna fusses over him. Afterwards he hugs everyone in sight, including Mike Wallace of “60 Minutes,” who contributes some pompous bromides on behalf of CBS.

The film includes some decent chunks of music. Rostropovich pays passionate attention to Tchaikovsky and Dvorak, not to mention his old friends Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Vishnevskaya’s limpid spinto is heard in an old recording of the Russian equivalent of Butterfly’s “Un bel di.”

Ultimately, however, “Soldiers of Music” isn’t about music or musicians. It is about bravery and morality. It is a film about pain.