BEFORE: I've reached another century mark, which also means that Movie Year 2019 is 1/3 over already - man, that was fast! I'm not sure exactly why I picked THIS one to stand on the hundred-movie mark, just that my boss reviewed it about two years ago on HIS blog, and he said it was a very funny film. Our tastes often differ, but that was enough to spark my curiosity. And with all the Russian stuff in the news these past few months, I guess I thought this could be timely, even though it's set back in the 1950's. Anyway, onward and upward, here's to the next 100 films, and I've already got over 80% of the next 100 films already mapped out, so there's a good chance that I'll hit at least 200 linked films this year, which would be a record for me. Do I dare hope that I can link the full 300?
Paul Chahidi carries over from "Christopher Robin", as does one other actor.
THE PLOT: After being in power for nearly 30 years, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin takes ill and suddenly dies. Now the Council of Ministers scramble for power.
AFTER: Tonight's film is a comedy, believe it or not - while at first glance there might not seem to be anything funny about a dictator or the death thereof, they cast a bunch of (mostly) comic actors to play all the Russian ministers and generals, in order to, I'm guessing, make some larger political point. It's almost like an SNL or sketch, or something from the Monty Python guys (one of whom is cast here as Vyacheslav Molotov) except I imagine that if Monty Python had a sketch with this name, it would have an enormous build-up as something dramatic and important, and then you'd just see Terry Jones dressed up as Stalin, walking in his garden, quickly grabbing his chest and saying "Arrrgh!" and then keeling over. Comedy gold.
But this is a longer, more drawn-out process, not so much about Stalin's physical death but the death of his government, his regime and its ideals, and the resulting power vacuum that several power-hungry people rushed to fill, though while trying to look like they were NOT doing exactly that. Because in the Soviet Union back then, everything had to be for the greater good, and nobody could appear to WANT to rule the country, because that would mean they were corrupt and individualistic and thinking only of the wealth and power that they craved, and that's exactly who the Communist ideals said should NOT rule the country, yet that's who they kept getting, again and again.
Look, I was raised during the Cold War, and we were taught in school that the Soviets were our enemy, and how were we supposed to regard the country and its people, after all of us good little U.S. children were indoctrinated to see them in a certain way? Later, during the rule of Yeltsin and Gorbachev came terms like "glasnost" and "perestroika", which I think meant "good feelings" and "pay no attention to the suffering of our people". And they almost got me, too - after the breakup of the Soviet Union it seemed like we'd won the Cold War, though there was no real prize, and then came Putin and invading Crimea and interfering in the U.S. elections. So it seems we're right back where we started, with a whole new "Red Scare" and a new generation will also learn not to trust the Russkies.
Since we have a dictator of our own right now, someone not elected by a majority of the voters but who took power anyhow (and why nobody kept looking into election fraud, I don't quite understand) and his party is also finding ways to control the narratives news, we're just one whisker away from state-controlled media and totalitarian rule ourselves - the true test will come in 2020 if Trump loses the election and won't give up his position, but by then it will be too late. People need to act now, maybe we should have our next election monitored by the U.N., like they do in Third World countries, just to make sure that no funny business takes place. Because Republicans have a funny way of winning in the counties where they are responsible for counting the votes, I'm just saying. Can't we get a third party to supervise the voting? Ah, I just realized the problem with that.
But let's take "The Death of Stalin" as an allegory, for just a minute. If Trump was suddenly removed from office - through impeachment, or a sudden accident or a health emergency, we'd have President Pence, and how do we know that's not worse, in some ways? Suddenly gay rights and abortion rights could disappear, and we'd be back in the 1950's, morally speaking. Somebody made a shrewd pick for V.P. if we feel, on any level, that we're better off with the devil we know. And there could be a similar power vacuum to the one seen in this film, with everyone rushing back to Washington to get a job in the "new" administration, to help chart whatever the new foreign and domestic policies would be. Plus, what a blow to late-night comedy that would be, as that's one market that's been THRIVING for the last 2 1/2 years, because of the wealth of material that comes out daily from the Commander's Twitter feed.
I don't want to dwell too much on politics tonight, U.S. or Russian, because there will be a time for that, probably in my documentary chain coming up in June. But whatever your political leanings are, when you think about how screwed-up American politics are, just remember that it could always be worse. Yes, our two-party system has its faults, but from what I've heard, even less gets done in countries where there are five, six or more political parties. The smaller ones have to form voting blocs just to get enough power to influence legislation, and that means more deals, more confusion and more compromising. And then you've got countries like Russia where there is really only ONE political party, and people have no choice at all when it comes to voting. So yeah, I'm OK with two parties, even though it often results in voting for one of two terrible choices. Maybe we should take a cue from Soviet Russia, and only elect people who don't seem like they want the office.
What was really strange to me about "The Death of Stalin", though, was how un-Russian everyone sounded. They cast mostly British and American actors, and absolutely nobody was trying to sound Russian. Huh? How am I supposed to believe these characters are Russian if nobody sounds like it? That really took me outside the reality they were trying to create, so it seems like a very questionable choice. Now, if these were the actors they really wanted, maybe if they all took on Russian accents it would have sounded very fake (because that's a very hard accent for an actor to adopt, unless he was raised in a Soviet country) but I don't think letting everyone continue to sound British was a proper solution. Come to think of it, they were all speaking English, and it would also have been ridiculous if Russian characters were speaking English with Russian accents. And you certainly couldn't have them all speaking Russian with subtitles, because then nobody would watch. So there's no real good answer here, except to try to not let the out-of-place accents bother you. In fact, try to forget I brought it up.
As I mentioned before, I've got a bunch of World War II-era films to get to, with "Darkest Hour", "Dunkirk" and "Churchill" all on my list, plus "Defiance", "The Reader" and "The Zookeeper's Wife". I'm going to try to get to as many of these as I can during the latter 2/3 of this Movie Year, so in the recap this can be a theme, tying in Nazi Germany with Soviet Russia, and maybe some aspects of the current political climate will factor in to my conclusions as well. Certainly there are some comparisons to be made between this film and "Vice", since Lavrenti Beria was shown acting very much like the Dick Cheney of the Stalinist regime.
Also starring Steve Buscemi (last seen in "I Think I Love My Wife"), Simon Russell Beale (last seen in "The Legend of Tarzan"), Jeffrey Tambor (last seen in "Under the Tuscan Sun"), Jason Isaacs (last seen in "Peter Pan"), Michael Palin (last seen in "Concert for George"), Rupert Friend (last seen in "At Eternity's Gate"), Andrea Riseborough (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), Adrian McLoughlin, Paddy Considine (last seen in "24 Hour Party People"), Olga Kurylenko (last seen in "Seven Psychopaths"), Paul Whitehouse (last heard in "Alice Through the Looking Glass"), Dermot Crowley (last seen in "The Legend of Bagger Vance"), James Barriscale, Leeroy Murray, Daniel Fearn, Luke D'Silva, Gerald Lepkowski, Dave Wong, Richard Brake, Diana Quick, Justin Edwards, Tom Brooke, Nicolas Woodeson, Karl Johnson (last seen in "Mr. Turner"), Cara Horgan, Jonathan Aris (last seen in "All the Money in the World"), Roger Ashton-Griffiths (also carrying over from "Christopher Robin"), Sylvestra Le Touzel, Paul Ready.
RATING: 5 out of 10 freed political prisoners
No comments:
Post a Comment