[The Great shares a broadly similar style and subject with The
Favorite, though it is neither as dark nor as committed to factual
accuracy. The series shows the grotesque royal court life of Empress
Catherine II of Russia, aka Catherine the Great.]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

THE HALF-TRUE STORY OF CATHERINE THE GREAT  
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Eileen Jones
June 13, 2020
Jacobin
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_ The Great shares a broadly similar style and subject with The
Favorite, though it is neither as dark nor as committed to factual
accuracy. The series shows the grotesque royal court life of Empress
Catherine II of Russia, aka Catherine the Great. _

A scene from Hulu's The Great miniseries.,

 

I love _The Great_. This new ten-part Hulu series was written by Tony
McNamara, the screenwriter who gave us the excellent film _The
Favorite
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directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. A darkly hilarious “period
comedy,” _The Favorite _showed the grotesque eighteenth-century
court life of a late-age Queen Anne of England. Ailing and
incompetent, she was vulnerable to her ruthlessly ambitious
“favorites,” each vying to be the power behind the throne. A
surprisingly factual account of the court, _The
Favorite’s _depictions of cruelty, decadence, and vice turned the
pious genre of aristocracy-worshipping “heritage films” and TV
shows — _Downtown Abbey, The Crown,_ and _The Young
Victoria_ — on its head.

_The Great_ shares a broadly similar style and subject with _The
Favorite, _though it is neither as dark nor as committed to factual
accuracy. The series shows the grotesque royal court life of Empress
Catherine II of Russia, aka Catherine the Great (played by a terrific
Elle Fanning), whose marriage to Emperor Peter III is necessarily
truncated when she deposes him and takes his throne. Peter is played
by Nicholas Hoult (also in _The Favorite_) who gives a sublime
performance, dominating every scene he’s in.

A gorgeous, sunny-looking show dominated by glowing yellows and
greens, Catherine’s signature colors as she gathers power, _The
Great_ is manifestly McNamara’s work. As in _The
Favorite, _irreverent “chapter titles” announce the major
sequences. _The Favorite _gave us “This Mud Stinks” and “What
an Outfit”; _The Great_ features episode titles such as “And
You, Sir, Are No Peter the Great,” “War and Vomit,” and
“Meatballs at the Dacha.”

Stranger than Fiction

Too often, period pieces are characterized by slavish attempts at
historical accuracy, which merely distract without being enlightening.
In _The Great, _a riotous interpretive mode brings us into the mad
heart of history. McNamara’s wizardry for using fresh anachronisms
and fantastical touches convey the bizarre aspects of an unfamiliar
historical world.

Often, what you assume is fiction in the show, did in fact happen. For
example, in the shockingly topical Episode 7: “A Pox on Hope,”
Catherine demonstrates her superior education and judgment in
advocating for the experimental use of a vaccine to combat a smallpox
outbreak, which she uses herself to demonstrate its efficacy to the
horrified and grossed-out court. It turns out Catherine the Great
actually did advocate
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vaccine and dosed herself.

And then there’s McNamara’s sophisticated skill in revealing how
characters develop and new facets emerge under immense pressure. Just
when Peter’s stupid behavior seems absolutely set and irredeemable,
for example, we’re hit with his immense charm, or his admirable
bravery. There’s a tremendous scene in Episode 8, “Love Hurts,”
involving an unexpected attempt to assassinate Peter — by someone
other than Catherine. Clamoring to defend the Emperor, seemingly jaded
court revelers are suddenly revealed to be ferocious and physically
fearless. An emotionally messy menage-a-trois made up of Peter,
Peter’s best friend Grigor (Gwilym Lee) and Peter’s best
friend’s wife and also Peter’s mistress Georgina (Charity
Wakefield) all leap into the fray to murder the would-be assassin,
while Catherine stands dumbfounded.

Becoming Great

Uneasily contemplating her own assassination plans, Catherine wonders
aloud how they’re all so capable of fighting on a moment’s notice
while her own reflexes are paralyzed, and the answer is simple:
“You’re not Russian.”

And indeed, the real Catherine — originally Prussian — had to work
assiduously to make herself seem as Russian as possible in order to
gain acceptance in her new role, though she focused on language
fluency, religious conversion, and other more conventional
approaches._ The Great_ gets certain basic facts right before taking
off like a rocket into glorious, insightful invention.

Catherine really was an impoverished Prussian princess of high ideals,
eager intellectual pursuits, and lofty Enlightenment ambitions who got
married off to the hapless Peter III—though he was actually not
handsome, not brave, and not charming in any way. Six months into his
disastrous reign, Catherine took his throne
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him so efficiently it astonished the world. As Frederick the Great of
Prussia sneered, Peter “allowed himself to be dethroned like a child
being sent to bed.”

Here’s a funny historical detail that illustrates how McNamara’s
uproarious approach to history is a good one: the real Peter III died
in mysterious circumstances a few months after the coup, supposedly of
“’hemorrhoidal colic’—an ‘absurd diagnosis’ that soon
became a popular euphemism for assassination.”

It’s worth noting that the real Catherine had to wait many weary
years before her husband’s aunt, Empress Elizabeth III, died, thus
allowing Peter III his brief reign. Unlike the fresh young ingenue
that is Catherine in _The Great_, the Empress was actually
thirty-three in 1762 when she kicked Peter to the curb and took over,
and she’d had a lot of time to size up the situation. The series
dispenses with Elizabeth’s reign altogether, transforming her into
the lovably daffy court character Aunt Elizabeth (Belinda Bromilow)
who trains butterflies as pets and uses “madness” as both a refuge
and a ploy to stave off the machinations of court intriguers.

Catherine’s remarkable ability to seize and wield power gave rise to
vicious smears about her sexuality as a way of diminishing her
achievements and attempting to undermine her authority. The most
famous of these concerns her supposedly wild promiscuity, so
insatiable that her death was rumored to have been caused by her
attempt to have intercourse with a horse. This lurid tale has it that,
in mounting her, Catherine’s stallion swain dropped its full weight,
crushing her to death. It never happened, of course—Catherine died
of a stroke in her royal bed at age sixty-seven, having ruled for
thirty-four years.

Tales of Catherine’s wild promiscuity are easily countered with a
little research. A surprisingly thorough historical record on the
subject tells us she had twelve lovers over the course of a lifetime,
most of whom she kept as friends who were generously pensioned off
with nice estates.

The series engages in a tamer narrative of Catherine’s promiscuous
reputation. In the show, it’s viperish court ladies who start the
rumor about Catherine’s equine lover, and until she learns how to
command respect, subversive neighs follow her down every grand hallway
in court. Plus an adorable note is struck when Peter hears the rumor
and doesn’t mind: “That’s fucking, and I approve of fucking!”

Though McNamara deplores the way Catherine’s life and
accomplishments have been “reduced to a salacious headline about
having sex with a horse,” we must admit, the smear remains
well-known because we love it. Imagine the feverish and cowed
imaginations that conjured it up! The lies about Catherine’s epic
sexuality attest to her daunting power make her live on in people’s
imaginations better than any list of her accomplishments could.

The best film portrayals of Catherine show her as a figure of
marvelous excess, too much for the room, the palace, the nation, the
world!  They feature stars playing Catherine who were known for their
glamorous bisexuality and fearless, carnal freedom: Tallulah Bankhead
in Ernst Lubitsch and Otto Preminger’s co-directed camp classic _A
Royal Scandal_, (1945) and, best of all, Marlene Dietrich in Josef von
Sternberg’s magnificent erotomaniac fever dream, _The Scarlet
Empress_ (1934).  In a mink-hatted regimental-themed outfit,
Dietrich’s Catherine greets her troops with an arched eyebrow and a
familiar “Hello, boys,” suggesting she’s enjoyed sex with every
single one of them and rules through sexual dominance.

_The Great_ is milder than those classics because it deals only with
young Catherine’s early trials by fire that take her to power. The
first two episodes are a little slow-moving because as yet she’s an
idealistic Prussian naïf out of her depth in the Russian court, so
not yet a worthy opponent for her pretty but hopelessly addled
narcissist of a husband, Peter. By the third episode, she is gathering
the savvy to take him on and a host of other rivals for power,
including the religious freak Archie the Archbishop (Adam Godley) and
the gross drunkard General Velementov (Douglas Hodge). All the while,
she is building tricky alliances with wary bureaucrat Orlo (Sacha
Dhawan) and ex-lady of the court who is now her embittered servant
Marial (Phoebe Fox).

The love story with Leo Voronsky (Sebastian de Souza) is my least
favorite part of the series. It starts well when Peter, sick of seeing
unhappy Catherine casting a pall on everyone else’s raucously good
time at court, assigns Leo to be her lover. Leo’s way of handling
life in the white heat of proximity to power is to resign himself to
fate and try to enjoy every moment. This is great for loosening up
Catherine, but as their love become more intense and serious, it has
nowhere to go but…well, shall I spoil it for you? I’ll give you a
hint — if you haven’t seen any old 1950s movie about a woman with
a high-powered career, guess what she has to sacrifice to keep it?
Yeah, it’s that plotline. And that’s a shame, because in this
area, the real Catherine the Great was tougher and more resourceful,
and she managed her romantic life very well, thanks.

But what’s a minor flaw among so much that is glorious? I only wish
there could be a ten more great seasons of _The Great_, which thus
far isn’t even confirmed for a second season
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Let’s all watch and make it happen!

Our spring issue, “Pandemic Politics
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features over 120 pages of beautiful illustrations and quality writing
and analysis. 

Get a discounted subscription today
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eileen Jones is a film critic at _Jacobin_ and author of _Filmsuck,
USA_. She also hosts a podcast called Filmsuck
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