Who was Vladimir Arsenyev? And why would Mainers want to read his writings or see a movie based on them? I’ll tell you.
Arsenyev was born in Russia in 1872 and died there in 1930. That means he was born during the Russian Empire, was alive during the Russian Revolution in 1917, and lived 13 years into the era of the Soviet Union.
As a young man, he attended military school and then went on military expeditions of exploration. Today, he is best known for his clear, excellent writing about his travels through unexplored regions of Siberia. He describes the fauna, flora, and people that he and his small squad encounter as they survey vast regions of wild terrain.
If you love the outdoors, particularly Maine’s forests and mountains and rivers and lakes, you will enjoy Arsenyev’s travels through similar terrain in eastern Russia.
A book I recommend is called Across the Ussuri Kray: Travels in the Sikhote-Alin Mountains, by Vladimir K. Arsenyev, translated by Jonathan C. Slaght.
There is an incident in the book when the squad has camped for the night. Everyone is asleep except Arsenyev and a guy named Olentyev. They are chatting when suddenly Olentyev stands up and uses a hand to shade his eyes from the firelight.
“Something’s coming down the mountain,” Olentyev whispers.
There are bears and tigers in the area, so the two are suddenly on high alert. Olentyev picks up his rifle, but a voice out of the darkness says, “No need shoot! My is people!”
A man walks up to the fire. He is a member of the Goldi people (now called Nanai) and his name is Dersu Uzala. He becomes their guide. And thus begins one of the greatest platonic male friendships in recorded history. A bromance, if you will. Wikipedia describes a bromance as “a very close and non-sexual relationship between two or more men. It is an exceptionally tight, affectional, homosocial male bonding relationship exceeding that of usual friendship.”
And that perfectly describes Vladimir and Dersu.
I said there is a movie.
In 1971, Akira Kurosawa, who’d had a long and successful career as a film director, was 61 years old. In December of that year, he released his first color film. It was a failure. In fact, it was such a disaster that Kurosawa, forlorn, tried to kill himself by cutting his wrists. Fortunately for him, and for us, he survived.
Kurosawa’s film career, it seemed, was over. He was deeply in debt and no one was willing to invest a cent in any project that involved him.
Then an unlikely thing happened. Mosfilm, the Soviet Union’s film production company, asked if he’d be willing to work with them. Kurosawa said yes and even had a project in mind. He suggested they make a film based on the writings of Vladimir Arsenyev.
The movie, called Dersu Uzala, won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1976 and revitalized Kurosawa’s career. The film can be found online with English subtitles.
Read Arsenyev’s book. Watch Kurosawa’s movie.
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