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Desire and Inertia

Doug Anderson | Miami Beach, Florida United States | 08/27/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Oblomov resigns his post as a civil servant at the age of 30 and thereafter spends entire days laying in bed daydreaming, bickering with his equally indolent servant, and generally preferring a life of quiet contemplation to a life of action for which he seems singularly unsuited. Oblomov's solitudes are punctuated by his dreams of an idyllic childhood and the peace and love he felt when in the warm embrace of his mother and it is to this kind of warm embrace that he longs to return hence his love of sleep, of escape from the mundane toilings of existence, and his pursuit of more dreams of that desired unity with his mother.

His best friend, Stoltz, is just the opposite. Stoltz is a man who is enlivened by worldly commerce and affairs. In contrast with the robust Stoltz who is completely at one with the world and succeeds at everything he attempts; Oblomov seems pathetic, childlike, incompetent, fragmented, will-less. Stoltz labels his friend's condition "Oblomovism" and sets about reforming him with a strict diet, a social agenda, and plans to take him abroad and stir in him an interest in the business of the world. But Oblomov's heart is not in it. He doesn't care at all that he looks 50 even though he is 30, he is mortified at the thought of having to socialize, and although he acquires an expensive set of luggage he has no intention of going abroad and leaving Russia.

In one of the most memorable scenes of the film, Oblomov meditates aloud to Stoltz about how his mind is full of so many dead things (religions, civilizations, dates, facts) and he expresses his desire to be at one with the world around him (as a leaf on a tree). In this moment the ever-active Stoltz is completely quieted by Oblomov's profound way of viewing existence. But the moment passes and Stoltz is once again swept up with the business of the world.

Despite his penchant for inertia, one thing does stir him from his solitude: Olga. Olga is a woman with a divided temperament. She seems to be a woman who thrives on social interaction and so seems to be naturally drawn to Stoltz who has a way of drawing her out and making her laugh, but there is also something about Oblomov that she is equally responsive too: his stillness, his poetic quiet, his longing to be at one with the world. Oblomov and Olga are each poetic souls who are mesmerized by natural beauty and each other, and so long as they are alone in the idyllic landscape of Oblomov's country estate where they have chosen to summer together they do seem to be at one with the world and each other. But when Stoltz returns from one of his world tours so does Olga's desire to be more involved with the world and so she turns her attentions once again toward him. But Olga is fascinating, her inner conflicts are never fully resolved, and even though she marries Stoltz, late in life she finds herself thinking once again of Oblomov.

The ending of this film is one of the most moving of any film that I can recall, and also one of the most evocative of life's enduring patterns, as well as its enduring promise (even though those promises are not always fulfilled or fulfillable).

I suppose it is possible to interpret Oblomov as being symbolic of Russia's insular and brooding separatism from Europe, and its refusal to let go of its past, to modernize, and adjust to the commercial age. And its also possible to see in Oblomov a precursor to the kinds of characters that would later appear in modernist works by Kafka and Beckett. But there is something about Oblomov that resists these kinds of historicizations. Like all great literature, Oblomov seems to symbolize something that is true about the human condition and life in all times."