Moscow, 1902: Ivan Osokin a mid 30s poet psychologically hanging on a thread bids the woman he loves, Zinaida Krutitskaya, farewell; she is leaving on a trip to the Crimea and he is not coming, professing his own poverty and in spite of her own frustrations. Wrestling with his decision not to go, he writes to her every day, but receives only sporadic responses. After three months, she stops writing back, and through a chance encounter with her brother, he learns she is going to marry another man.
Eastern European,1902: Ivan Osokin, a struggling poet in his mid-30s, stands on a train platform to bid Zinaida, the woman he loves, farewell. She is leaving on a long vacation with her wealthy family and pleads with him to join. Penniless and too proud to admit it, Osokin makes excuses about needing to focus on his writing. In the days that follow, wrestling with his decision not to go, he writes Zinaida every day but receives only sporadic responses. After three months, he learns she has met another man and they are going to marry. His life already in shambles and now devastated from his lost love, Osokin decides to end his life. On his way to do it, he accidentally stumbles upon a street in town he had never noticed before, at the end of which he finds a house that belongs to an old magician. After brandy and cigars and relating the numerous mistakes he’s made in life, Osokin expresses a desire to live his life over, but this time with the knowledge of what will happen, so that he can make the right choices going forward. The magician informs him that he can make this happen and Osokin will remember everything as long as he does not wish to forget.
Osokin is transported back to 1890 when he was a 12-year-old schoolboy. Looking around, he is amazed that he does in fact remember everything—Zinaida, the Magician, and his whole life as an adult. Despite having all the memories of his future life, Osokin almost immediately begins to make the same choices over and over again. He can see his own bad decisions coming, but for one reason or another cannot avert them. As he gets older, this second time around, his mistakes once again lead to misfortune, as opportunities fall away one by one. Worse still, he starts to forget, and his memories of the “past” fade, diminishing his awareness of his existential imprisonment. Struggles futilely against the inevitability of what Friedrich Nietzsche dubbed “Eternal Recurrence,” Eventually all that remains for Osokin is a vague sense of nostalgia.
In the final act, Osokin is once again on the train platform, once again losing the woman he loves, and once again stumbling down an oddly familiar street to meet the old magician. But this time, just as Osokin is repeating how he wishes to go back and redo all his mistakes — something inside him shifts. Like an actor suddenly realizing he is in a play, Osokin looks around the room.
“This has all happened before,” Osokin says, slowly becoming aware of the madness of his situation. “Everything just repeats, again and again…It’s a trap!”
“The trap is called life.” says the magician. “Very few stumble upon this dark secret. It is unbearable to accept, but it is also the first step towards freedom.”
