A Prayer for Hetman Mazepa

“A Prayer for Hetman Mazepa” unfolds during an interesting era in the history of Eastern Europe when Russia, under Peter the Great (Vacleslav Dovzhenko), and Sweden, under King Charles XII (Nikita Dzygurda), struggled for power; the Ukraine was the pawn in the middle.

This lavishly produced historical epic about Ukrainian hero Hetman (or “leader”) Mazepa, who in the early 18th century briefly secured his country’s independence from rivals Russia and Sweden, is a willfully chaotic picture. Its merits lie in its very craziness, certainly not in its utterly confusing way of telling a story