Peter Pruce's dynamic teleplay, disregarding Rasputin's political angles, sticks to the mystic route, and it works. Director Uli Edel, turning the script into a mesmerizing biopic, delivers top dramatic fare.

With hemophiliac Prince Alexei (Freddie Findlay) narrating the events, the eye-filling story begins with the boy Rasputin (convincingly eerie Tamas Toth) playing psychic out on the steppes. Twenty years later, he reports he received word from the Holy Virgin telling him to come to St. Petersburg to help the secretly stricken Alexei, who mysteriously repairs after Rasputin's visit.

The story's familiar. Czar Nicholas (Ian McKellen) tentatively accepts Rasputin (Alan Rickman in a stunning performance), while Czarina Alexandra (Greta Scacchi) buys him all the way -- until her final, stinging denial of him.

Scripter Pruce sets up the czar and czarina as totally sympathetic innocents, kind, thoughtful victims of a system bound on destroying them; it may stretch truth, but it boils down to impressive TV drama.

Rickman's electric Rasputin seizes attention with the actor's magnetism and dramatic know-how. Rasputin's personal excesses are ticked off -- in a dance club, his drunken behavior shocks patrons -- but Pruce charitably credits the monk with sacred intentions.

Rickman's eyes glow in close-ups, the actor's energetic physicality pumps up the debauchee with sustained vitality. Admirably, scenes of him in bed with women, noble or otherwise, are handled with restraint.

Under director Edel's tight command, Rasputin's crudities illustrate his decadence and disdain of authority; his difficult death, staged with commendable imagination, only perpetuates a legend.

Portait of the real Prince Felix as a young man
McKellen makes soft, troubled Nicholas acceptable; Scacchi gives Alexandra a becoming strength. A charming romantic passage between the two has a delightful tenderness and urgency to it. Young Findlay's Alexei is first-rate, and James Frain, as chief assassin Prince Yusoupov, acts with authority.

As for the royal family, they're again brought to the infamous cellar and led to believe they're sitting for a portrait -- until the guns appear.

There's dramatic purpose to the often re-enacted action: The narrating boy Alexei's the last to die -- off camera -- and a note at the end of the film mentions that the DNA report of the family's bones doesn't include his body.

Maybe someone, proclaiming himself an aged Alexei, will claim the crown; he won't be the first to represent himself as a member of the Romanov royals.

One of Edel and cameraman Elemer Ragalyi's remarkably subtle touches is an occasional silent-film look; combined with Natasha Landau's smashing costumes and Miljen Kljakovic (Kreka)'s production designs, the technique hands the telefilm a stunning and rich sense of era.

Historically, of course, the vidpic's a hoot. Nothing's mentioned of Rasputin's unscrupulous reactionary appointees in governmental, business and clerical circles who supported him and made hay out of their high posts vacated by fired loyalists.

Rasputin's personal influence on the czarina once the czar left for the front was strong enough to undermine the government (he's seen dictating a letter to Alexandra to be sent to the czar); court attendees and the people juggled rumors that he and the Hessian-born czarina were working on the German side.

Film, shot over eight weeks in tough weather and finished in December, used the czar's village, Tsarvoe; a restored Peterhof Palace on the Baltic; St. Isaac's Cathedral and the Yusoupov Palace, where Rasputin died.

His body's tossed into the frozen Neva River from the real Petrovsky Bridge, site of the deed.

Pruce, Edel and Ragalyi tell the story with gusto. Tech credits are superb, and the producers have done something few American filmmakers have heretofore done -- waded into the Revolutionary period up to their necks without losing sight of the story and its principals; more, they've seized this high-flown tale by the throat.

Cast: Alan Rickman, Greta Scacchi, Ian McKellen, David Warner, John Wood, James Frain, Diana Quick, Ian Hogg, Peter Jeffrey, Ian McDiarmid, Sheila Ruskin, Julian Curry, Freddie Findlay, Vladimir Ermilov, Elena Malashevkaya, Rostislav Tkachenko, Natalie Zhuravel, Zhanna Sukhopolskaya, Laszlo Aron, Janos Bata, Istvan Bicskei, Istvan Bubik, John Cater, Laszlo Csurka, Constantine Prolov, Eugine Ganelin, Nicolett Gallusz, Nick Gillott, Kirl Gorov, Janos Gosztonyi, Bora Horvath, Istvan Hunyadkurti, Zsofia Ivony, Victor Khozianov, Tibor Kenderesi, Ferenc David Kiss, Agi Kokenyessy, Andras Komlos, Gabor Koncz, Patricia Kovacs, Robert Lang, Alexander Lykov, Elena A. Malashevskaya, Zsuzsa Malnay, Iren Markus, Michael Mehlman, Ferenc Nemethy, Anna Orosz, Fanni Peto, Alexander Polovtsev, Adrienne Raiczy, Natasha Reshetinikova, Laszlo Sinko, Anatoly Slivnikov, Miklos B. Szekely, Peter Szokol, Tamas Toth, John Turner, Bela Unger, Andras Varkonyi, Nandor Wampetich.

Filmed in St. Petersburg, Russia; at Lenfilm Studios, St. Petersburg; and in Budapest by Rysher/Citadel Entertainment Prods. Executive producers, David Kirkpatrick, David T. Ginsburg; producer, Nick Gillott; director, Uli Edel; writer, Peter Pruce; camera, Elemer Ragalyi; editors, Seth Flaum, Dan Rae; production designer, Miljen Kljakovic (Kreka); art director, Branimir Babic; costumes, Natasha Landau; sound, David Allen; music, Brad Fiedel; casting, Joyce Nettles.

At its center was a crude, filthy, uneducated and debauched Siberian peasant-monk named Gregory Rasputin. Possessed of demonic eyes and extraordinary hypnotic powers, he cast the last czar and czarina of the Russian Empire under his spell with his uncanny ability to arrest and treat the frightening hemophilia of their only son, Alexis.

For this blessing, they and their nation paid a terrible price.

HBO has assembled a cast led by three of England's best actors--Alan Rickman as the monk Rasputin, Sir Ian McKellen as Czar Nicholas II and Greta Scacchi as Czarina Alexandra--to retell this spooky, passionate, heart-wrenching and ultimately gory tale in a made-for-TV movie quite unlike any other in the genre.

"Rasputin" premieres on the cable network at 8 p.m. Saturday and will be replayed on March 26, 29 and 31, and April 4, 8 and 13. Rickman's "mad monk" is a tour de force for the London-born actor, familiar to American audiences as one of the stars of the Oscar-nominated "Sense and Sensibility" and also as the movie-stealing villain in Kevin Costner's "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves." A classical actor noted for his command of nuance, as he demonstrated in such sophisticated films as "Close My Eyes" and "Truly, Madly, Deeply," Rickman here plays a hulking brute of untamed appetites and vile habits - including exposing himself in the most elegant public places.

Yet he must convince the audience, as he does the czarina (Scacchi) that he is indeed a holy man, with the faith and desire to cure her son, the only male heir to the tottering Romanov throne.

"You're playing someone who actually lived, so you feel an immediate piece of luggage," said Rickman in an interview. "You have actual research, but I suppose the biggest piece of information you get is that he was almost illiterate, and he was a peasant from Siberia. "Then you look at his history and you realize it's been written by other people because he couldn't write his own. And it's been written by people with a huge agenda; i.e., they hated him, because he took a lot of their influence away. Therefore, I was concerned to try to tell the story without any kind of preconceptions, and I hope people will try to watch it without any preconceptions."

Born Gregory Efimovich - the name "Rasputin," which he took later, means "dissolute" - the self-made monk was a farmer and the married father of four children. Lacking any kind of religious training, he was inspired by a vision to go on a pilgrimage, drawn first to Greece and then on a later journey to the Imperial Russian capital at St. Petersburg.

As this otherwise painstakingly authentic film doesn't quite make clear, Rasputin was some years insinuating himself into the staid, Victorian royal family. He prospered first and foremost among the more decadent members of St. Petersburg society as a kind of forerunner to today's television preacher.

As historian Robert Massie, author of "Nicholas and Alexandra," put it: "Women who found him disgusting discovered later that disgust was a new and thrilling sensation."

With his fame spread word of his supposed healing powers, which were put to the test once he was admitted to the presence of the czar's family.

"It is undeniable that he was able to slow the blood (of the young Alexis)," said Rickman. "Rasputin came along and slowed his blood flow, and stopped it from coming out of his body."

Massie, himself the father of a hemophiliac son, concurs that there is evidence supporting the healing effects of hypnosis.

From that time on, the czarina, and later the czar himself, were in Rasputin's thrall, and he increasingly became the central figure of their lives at a time when the flames of popular anger and revolution were licking at everything the Romanovs held dear.

No evidence suggests Rasputin had any burning political agenda, or wished anyone ill, but he enjoyed immensely the influence, status and comforts his ties to the Romanovs provided, and began interfering in government to assure that powerful ministerial posts--and even generalships on World War I's Eastern Front - went to people friendly to him. Such friendships were often sealed with generous bribes.

His behavior was outrageous. Devouring women sexually much as he fed his copious appetites for food and drink, Rasputin went from being a figure of scandal to monster, the target of a starving, impoverished, war-weary public's wrath.

The czar and czarina's affections toward him waxed and waned according to the state of health of their son, but the aristocrats at court wanted him gone.

Prince Felix Yussoupov, a young cousin of the czarina, formed a conspiracy to murder him. Luring Rasputin to his house with the promise of a dalliance with his beautiful wife, the Princess Irina Yussoupov, the prince reputedly filled the monk with poisoned cakes and wine. When that failed, he shot him, clubbed him, wrapped him in chains and threw him into the River Neva.

Rasputin had written a prophetic letter to the Romanovs warning that, if he was killed by a noble, they, too, would perish within two years. So it came to pass.

Unlike any previous film account of Rasputin and the Romanovs, the HBOfilm unflinchingly depicts the regicide that took place on July 16, 1918, when the czar, his entire family, their doctor and servants and even Alexis' little dog were brutally murdered in the basement of a "house of special purpose" in the Ural Mountains.

The movie was shot entirely in St. Petersburg and Budapest. Several of the czarist palaces were used as settings, as was the actual Yussoupov mansion where Rasputin was murdered.

"It was chilling," Rickman said. "We actually shot in the house where Rasputin was shot. I actually went down into the room. They have wax figures of Rasputin and Yussoupov in the room and I went down the stairs in my costume. That's a pretty strange little moment. After that, you kind of got the feeling that somebody was watching what we were doing - and it wasn't the KGB."

5 star rating Oh it is so good . . .
There are no words to describe Alan Rickman in this movie. He is so magical and passionate and moving and seductive. I cannot even think of another film where an actor gives a performance like this, even the rhythm of his speech was magical.

The rest of the cast is great as well, Ian Mckellen and the woman who played the Tsarina, she was very beautiful and touching, right down to James Frain whom I never grow tired of seeing pop up in historical films. I confess I'm not an expert on that time in Russian history, but as far as I know the events in the movie are pretty much accurate.

I liked how the film showed his appetite for sex and alcohol but reserved judgement, as I don't believe a person is sinister or evil simply because they're a bit lusty... I like how the film doesn't make him out to be some villain wanting control of the Court, but reminds us that it was the nobles who came to *him* and brought him into political affairs instead of just leaving him to heal the boy.

In the end, he was a martyr, and the movie has no overbearing message to leave you, just to show you an episode in history and enlist Alan Rickman to demonstrate, in all his mystical glory, why this man might have created the stir that he did.

Alarmed over the extent of the hold the debauched Rasputin wielded over the Tsar and Tsarina, and aware that rumours were spreading that the Tsarina and Rasputin were in the pay of the German enemy, Yusupov determined, in conjunction with other reactionary members of court, to arrange Rasputin's assassination.

Yusupov invited Rasputin to dine at his home on 29 December 1916 where he was given poisoned wine and cakes. Alarmed at Rasputin's apparent immunity to the poison Yusupov shot him in panic ("A shudder swept over me; my arm grew rigid, I aimed at his heart and pulled the trigger.", Lost Splendor, 1953).

After a brief period of collapse Rasputin recovered and managed to escape into the courtyard, where he was again shot (by another conspirator, Vladimir Purishkevich). Finally, presumably to make quite sure of the matter, Rasputin's body was dropped through a hole in the Neva river, where he finally died by drowning. His corpse was later discovered on the Neva's banks.

As an attempt to salvage the credibility of the monarchy Yusupov's bold move came too late; if anything, the murder of Rasputin removed a buffer between the royal family and their critics: no longer could the nation's ills be attributed to the mad monk.

Despite Rasputin's prophesy that his eventual murderer would himself suffer a short life, Yusupov - who sought exile in the U.S. following the February Revolution in 1917 - lived to the age of 81, dying in 1967. He published his memoirs, Lost Splendor, in 1953.