The other half, of course, seems a debauched cross between Mick Jagger and Freddy Krueger. Though that pop-idol aspect means we can never talk the film as seriously as it takes itself, the split personality gives a fascinating edge to this Rasputin, to be shown tonight at 9 Eastern time. Mr. Rickman, who played snaky villains to perfection in Die Hard and Robin Hood and also carried off the gentle lover's role in Sense and Sensibility, makes his character seem cogent.

Rasputin, directed by Uli Edel (Last Exit to Brooklyn), exploits all the elements that have turned the familiar story of Nicholas and Alexandra into a booming industry: high drama, visual opulence, unresolved mystery. Filmed in Russia at several of the Czar's restored palaces, the movie is filled with sumptuous detail. And casting takes care of a lot, with Ian McKellen and Greta Scacchi as Nicholas and Alexandra. They effortlessly capture the Czar's dignity and befuddlement, and the Czarina's desperate fears for the life of their son, Alexsei.

Rasputin - or "Ras-pooh-tin," as he calls himself - is more mysterious. He is part of a Russian tradition of self-proclaimed holy men, and the film leaves no doubt that he believes in his own powers, though it allows he might be deluded about them. Rasputin leans over Alexsei's sickbed, where the boy lies with a bloody, swollen leg. He looks into Alexsei's eyes hypnotically, then limps out of the room, having transferred the pain to his own leg. Historians have offered rational explanations for Rasputin's apparently miraculous effects (everything from coincidence to the way emotions help constrict blood vessels) but the mystic's influence over the Romanovs was undeniable. They feared Alexsei would die without him. "I did not choose to be a holy man," Rasputin tells the Czar. "It scares me, too."

Rasputin may be sincere, but he is no saint. He dances wildly, tells ribald stories, and sleeps drunkenly in a gutter. Sin must precede repentance, he tells one of the many aristocratic women he lures to bed. "I talk to God," he says. "Kiss me and you kiss Him." In Mr. Rickman's sympathetic, seductive and relatively restrained performance, debauchery may be an escape from Rasputin's terrible spiritual burden.

Mr. Rickman finally gets to chew up the scenery in Rasputin's death scene, based on the account (probably embroidered but never discredited) given by the assassin himself, Prince Felix Yusupov. Rasputin eats several poisoned pastries and drinks poisoned wine to no effect, is finally shot in exasperation, and still rages out of the Prince's house like a wounded bear before he is killed at the gates. Oddly, that monster-movie episode doesn't lessen the emotional horror of the Romanovs' murders, depicted here with an understated chill.