(**Warning: Spoilers for the first episode of “Litvinenko” below. Read at your own discretion.**)
I had the opportunity to watch the first episode of Litvinenko this week (and as far as I know, the only one that David is actually in) and wanted to share my thoughts.
For the past few years, I have loved and admired David’s fictional characters, the ones he throws himself into with aplomb. With every one, there has been a sparkle, a twinge--even for the briefest moment--of David himself, of that cheeky Scottish charm we all know and adore so well.
But there’s something genuinely different about playing real people. Playing a real person requires not only talent, but a sense of discernment--of knowing what to emphasize and what to downplay, especially when the subject matter is still so recent. When I think of some of the most nuanced and skillful portrayals of actual humans--living or deceased--I immediately think of Michael Sheen (whom David has also praised for his remarkable talents).
Yet twice now in recent memory, David has given us two unforgettable portrayals of two vastly different real people. With Dennis Nilsen in Des, it was that absence of humanity that David depicted to chilling effect. A blank emptiness that served to elucidate the indifference Des seemed to feel toward his own depraved deeds.
With Alexander Litvinenko (Sasha), it’s exactly the opposite. David portrayed Sasha with an abundance of humanity, and made us care so deeply about this man whose life was cut so tragically short. It was David’s eyes that particularly drew me into the story and into who Sasha was. The intensity of his gaze belied an incredible dignity, the dignity of a man who deeply loved his family and adopted country, and who was robbed of the opportunity to face his killers and the system that enabled them to perpetrate this crime.
I found myself so enraptured by David’s performance that when the police announced Sasha’s death, I actually gasped. It somehow felt like losing both Sasha and David at once, like losing someone you genuinely cared for, and the horrific nature of the death made it even more wrenching. This wasn’t just a man who died, this was a man who was assassinated--brutally, systematically, senselessly--all because he stood up to a murderous despot running an autocratic regime.
David made sure to show us that Sasha’s life mattered, and even more importantly, so did his death. It was, without question, an indelible performance, a transformation so astonishing that there was not a trace of David himself to be found. And as far as the criticisms of his accent that I’ve read go, I would say there is no validity to them whatsoever. Not only was he playing a character with a different accent, he was playing a dying man whose ability to speak became greatly compromised as his body failed. I can think of few things more challenging for any actor, and yet David pulled it off remarkably.
My only criticisms of this episode/the show overall is that everything that didn’t involve David felt very middling--a by-the-numbers British police procedural. We were most connected to Sasha and his humanity, and when he wasn’t on screen, it acutely felt as though something was missing, as if all the color drained out of the show, and the process of investigating what happened felt too “ordinary” for the extraordinary nature of the crime.
There were also numerous missed opportunities that made David/Sasha’s disappearance feel even more abrupt. The story literally goes from Sasha at home, poisoned, to him in the hospital sixteen days later on the verge of death, with nothing in between. I would’ve loved to have seen more of Sasha’s decline--how he put the pieces together, whom he suspected, or even the scene in the sushi restaurant. There could’ve also been flashback scenes in subsequent episodes of Sasha meeting with the Italian man, or other characters, or having conversations with Marina as he grew sicker. So it’s just a shame that that didn’t happen.
Overall, though, I was and am deeply moved by what David did, and by the end of the episode, I found myself in tears. Tears not only for Sasha and his wife Marina and the courage it took for him to do what he did, but for the courage it took David to play this role and the production team to tell this story. I truly hope that the BAFTAs and and any/all awarding bodies acknowledge David for his work in Litvinenko, because he absolutely deserves it.
