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There are so many TV series out there, one can’t watch them all; not even just the ‘best’ ones (supposing ‘best’ makes any sense when it comes to tastes). Unlike films, series are very much time consuming, and often addictive (actually, for the consumerism cultures we’re totally immerse in, such addictiveness is the ultimate goal of producers, and it is much preferred over quality), and unless you’re as sickly overcritical as I am, or have thrice my free time, you’ll be simply overflowed with the offer and just pick whichever serial is made the easiest for you to watch, or the ones more aggressively distributed and publicized.
And this is how, hadn’t you come across this post, you would miss one of the most and true unforgettable TV series ever: 17 moments of spring (Semnadtsat mgnoveniy vesny); an excellent twelve-chapter Soviet production from the 70’s directed by Tatyana Lioznova that relates, in a historical background, the vicissitudes of fictional character Colonel Maksim Maksimovich Isayev, a Soviet undercover agent infiltrated as an officer into Hitler’s SS under the name of Max Stirlitz. The plot covers seventeen moments (thus its title) spread throughout February and March 1945 (not really spring, but well), narrating how Stirlitz struggles to carry out a difficult mission he’s got from Moscow: to ascertain whether some high-rank German officers are trying to secretly negotiate a separate peace deal with the allies in the West that would allow the Germans to concentrate their forces in the Eastern front, and, in case affirmative, to try to foil any such agreement.
Leaving aside some hardly noticed (and mostly irrelevant) anachronisms and historical inaccuracies, this production is almost a masterpiece in the gender of espionage, and one of the most devilish challenges a fan of chess and of police stories may find on video. The main plot is rather twisted, yet quite logical, and gets complicated by a number of side sub-plots, all of which, in turn, make a lot of sense. Despite this, the whole story is graciously and ‘honestly’ (from the viewer’s perspective) set forth and carried out: we are never tricked into believing what is not, nor fooled by the script or any other technique; on the contrary, we find ourselves always having at least as much information as Stirlitz and the other characters themselves. Then, it’s up to us -or to our wits- to understand what’s going on or not. And mind: it is required a good deal of anticipation and forward thinking skills (like in chess) for catching up and worting out the superabundant information we’re provided with. Which in my opinion only makes it more fun, because this is a series we can (and maybe must) watch more than once in order to understand it fully; and every time we’ll enjoy it as much.
Besides, and leaving aside the Soviet propaganda I’ll mention next, from a historical point of view this serial turns out to be quite objective and very didactic: by the end of the last chapter, we’ve learned quite a lot about many events that took place during the last months of WWII, about some of the real people who played the key roles by then, and a number of other details of the time. And even though -of course- the SS, SD and Gestapo officers are the ‘bad guys’, they are not depicted as excessively revolting. Some of them appear as even sympathetic. God forbid, here there are no your typical super-cruel, easy-to-defeat stupid bloke that the oversimplifying and beguiling Western film industry has got us used to. To top it all, the scriptwriter has had the good taste of leaving Hitler almost totally aside of the plot.
Naturally, there is also room in 17 moments of spring for a quasi love story that, slowly flowing, takes place in the background, but it is treated so elegantly and in such a ‘restrained’ way, that not only it doesn’t ‘pollute’ the main plot with tacky pink cloying, but actually glows of its own with a classy and heroic romanticism.
Lastly, I can’t but mention the beautiful soundtrack, with music and songs composed by Mikael Tariverdiev. Part of it is instrumental, but two of the themes, with lyrics, are repeated several times throughout the chapters, and even though I don’t understand the words, I find them very captivating. Particularly one, called Gde-to daleko (Somewhere far away), I don’t get tired of listening to.
By the way, this below is one of the most original, intense and meaningful ‘love’ scenes I’ve ever watched. Apparently, the producers objected to this six-minute long wordless scene, claiming it was monotonous; but the director insisted in retaining it and, actually, it later became one of the most memorable parts of the series.
Talking about which, on the critical side -though mainly for the sake of objecting something- I’ll mention two negative points of this serial: First, in some moments the action tends to be a tad bit slow, and (besides the propagandistic fragments above mentioned) every chapter is ‘loaded’ with a few minutes of ’empty shooting’ that could -and perhaps should- have been spared on behalf of dynamism. Second — and perhaps this is the main objection I can make, Stirlitz is a simply too perfect heroe, the quintessence of all virtues: moderate, calm, valiant, chivalrous, self-possessed, balanced, likeable, you-name-it, and waaaay too intelligent: even in the most critical and unpredictable circumstances, he outsmarts and manages to fool virtually everyone else. All of which makes him appear to the viewer as a too implausible character to possibly have ever occurred. But this is about the only concession we are asked to grant to the script and, even if only because the guy is so modest, we are happy to give our consent. In any case, this flaw doesn’t get in our way for fully enjoying the twelve chapters of this so very fine serial.
You can find them all on Youtube with English subtitles, or can download them to your computer, since torrents are easy to find. Watch them whichever way you want, but do watch them. I bet you won’t regret.
