When Gérard Depardieu triggered a fiscal feud with the French government a few weeks ago, the media had fun recasting him in his movie role as the comic book character Obélix, a fat and superhumanly strong Gaulois who stands up to the Romans. Now that the French movie star has abandoned the land of the Gauls to become a Russian citizen, his recent film role as the mad monk Rasputin is being evoked to put a cinematic image on a bizarre real-life drama that has become an affair of state. ...Depardieu's love for Russia cannot be indifferent to the country's...