... Then again, any critic would agree that th[e] film [My Joy] is far superior – in ethical intent – to the new film by Nikita Mikhalkov, Burnt by the Sun 2. Exodus, which – in deploring the violence in Russia during the war period – glorifies images of brutality with sumptuous delight, quite the opposite of Sergei Loznitsa's bleak cinematography. I walked out after a splendid scene in which a tank crushes a human head, in delicious gory detail, shortly after a crowd of people blows up into torsos on a bridge – all magnificently shot, to soaring music, with funding – in part – by the Russian state.

A fellow journalist who walked out explained she would have stayed – however, she had an appointment – as she found the violence "quite engaging".

I met Nikita – elegantly posed in a white brimmed hat (reminiscent of that of Aschenbach in Death in Venice, as in a century gone by) – as he pontificated before a group of journalists at poolside. A self-proclaimed Czarist (with perhaps himself envisioned as the Czar), Nikita was scoffing at what some journalists accused of as his collusion with Putin and the powers that be:

"Do I express this closeness to the power elite in my films? Name me a picture where you suspect this link. Tell me that one of my pictures is made for the Party. If I am friends with someone and he becomes President, do I just stop being friends with him because he is President and I am intellectual? I don't choose my friends because of their political views. Things should go in a natural way."

As for his film – this extravaganza reminiscent of a Hollywood blockbuster – Nikita explained:

"The inspiration was Saving Private Ryan by Spielberg. With due respect to the allies, I wanted to show another war. We have a different approach to the war in Russia than do Americans such as Tarrantino in his Inglorious Basterds. One thing is participating in a war far away, it's another thing when the war is going on in your country. All these things are participating in you, even today when the war is over. We are the generation who knew what it was like. Maybe this is why the country has been static, because the people who have power and those in the public have the same genetic memory of the war. Of course, people started forgetting about it with time. Back then, little problems were insignificant in comparison with war. But today, every problem becomes a big one. One of the messages of my movie is the girl who sees my film complaining about a red or blue Bentley realizes how lucky she is to get an ice cream."

He continued: "Russians have objected to my film, because they use it as an excuse to object to me, my family, my father. They accuse me of being authoritarian. Why? Because I manage to find funding for my films. The state can only give one million per film, and I have to find the rest of the money on my own. Never in my life have I asked Putin, our family friend, for money for myself. No prophet is loved in his own land."

I asked Nikita if he saw a danger in glorifying violence on a big screen, even for such a noble cause as putting war in evidence.

Nikita was quick to deflect the question. "There is a much bigger danger, the glamour on Russian television that one sees 24 hours a day. The only desire for spectators is to be rich, famous and in show-biz. The only thing anyone is thinking about is pleasure. The most used word today is comfort, and that becomes the main word in human life. People who are used to values like comfort, they don't feel very well when seeing my movies." ...