Be careful what you wish for
by Niki Flynn, acting Nikolaja Laudonova
When I made the comment, “If Lupus ever makes a film set in a madhouse, I can guess who they’ll call,” I never imagined they would write such a scenario just for me! The most bizarre of gifts.
Years ago I saw a movie with Alan Rickman called “Closet Land,” about
torture, interrogation, brainwashing and the strength of the mind to
resist.
It mirrored some of my edgiest fantasies. Lupus gave me the chance to
live out some of those fantasies in Stalin 2. It was a fascinating
psychological experience for me. The more the StB tried to break me, the
more defiant I became. You never feel more alive than when you've been
close to death, even if it's only in your mind. It was a strange,
exhilarating high.
Stalin 3 took it much further. This time I WAS broken. It wasn't a high, but it was... comforting. It was one of the most intense Scene experiences of my life. I was solidly rooted in Nikolaja’s head for days throughout the filming. I had to be on edge all the time, so I didn’t have the luxury of relaxing between takes. I stayed just on the verge of madness and despair for days. I even dreamed I was in the madhouse.
When shooting was over, I felt lost. I missed it desperately. I wanted to be back in that dingy, cold, scary place, in the hated orange pajamas with no elastic in the bottoms, where the sadistic guards tormented us all the time. There was a strange sense of calmness and serenity in that kind of total helplessness. I had got used to it and at first I didn’t know how to function back in the real world. It was a taste of Stockholm Syndrome.
To think that such places existed in reality, that people actually endured what I only roleplayed... It’s horrifying. And while the psychological experience was very real for me, it was still only a taste. It doesn’t come close to the real terror and isolation experienced by those for whom this was a reality. While I’ve never had any personal experience of Communism, the plights of political prisoners have always been close to my heart. I have a need to understand and share the suffering of others. It’s a way of connecting. In suffering we are united; we are not alone.
It’s easy to highlight the cruelty of tyrants by satirizing them and making them figures of ridicule. But eroticizing their corrupt regime makes an even more potent statement. Perhaps in forcing them to play the villains in our darkest fantasies we reclaim some of the power they stripped from their victims.