Armando Ianucci's The Death of Stalin

Looking forward to this, Rise of the Nutters/Spinners and Losers is probably peak The Thick of It so another farcical power struggle seems like pretty good material for the big man. Also glad they've just had everyone do various english and american accents.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukJ5dMYx2no

almost flawless looking cast there, apart from Considine - who really gets on my tits! I've got really high hopes for Simon Russell Beale's Beria, he always brings it. Not sure about Issacs Yorkshire accent tho, but another actor I like there.

Laughing like a dickhead just watching the trailer.

I heard Stalin's own accent compared to a broad Yorkshire one I think. Supposed to be very broad and rural to anybody familiar with Russian accents.
Think it was the Yorkshire one but could have been another definitively non-London or Home Counties one or probably more non received English.
Can't think what the source was. But is that in near meme circulation or something? Wondered if that accent might be a reference to that.

He had a thick Georgian accent which would have made him a provincial pleb to the sophisticates of Moscow!

I wouldn't imagine there was that much logic used when deciding what accents the actors should do.

Stalin also had very Northern habits, like smoking and boozing. His pipe wasn't a prop like Wilson's. He used to rip open some cheap brand of Russian ciggies and tip the baccy into his pipe iirc

Makes me think of the 1983 Channel 4 film Red Monarch. Brian Glover as Kruschev! Perfect casting. In that, I think all the Georgians had Irish accents?

Never seen Red Monarch, will have to check that out.

I think all the Georgians had Irish accents?

This would make sense.

we're in a tiny vacation house and everybody else is nominally still trying to sleep so I had to watch this on mute and it looks phenomenal.

And the great Colin Blakely (from Co Down, NI) was Stalin. Not sure if the casting director went as far as to map Eastern Georgia to Northern Ireland but I think there were some other deliberate regional specifics (Yorkshire, Glasgow, etc).

Welsh would have been better!

I can't get the idea out of my head of an Azerbaijani character in full traditional dress, speaking in a thick Kerry accent.

Welsh would have been better!

― Tonight I Cut My Temple Teeth (Tom D.)

Makes me think of the rival organisation to the People's Front of Judea who all inexplicably have thick Welsh accents.

Isaacs is hilarious in that trailer.

I'm baffled that anyone could dislike paddy considine!

http://33.media.tumblr.com/02e340a33444c8a650271dcab2977949/tumblr_n733e7DcOj1rrtza4o9_500.gif

xp

He has shit taste in music, seems like a total dick, is a shit director and makes me think of those godawful Shane Meadows travesties!

when I say "shit taste in music" - he is a fully paid up member of the Real Music is made with Guitars posse.

oh god I've just got depressed realising Shane Meadows is still alive and all his shit movies haven't been obliterated by an industrial laser.

Haha. Fair then.

What's that gif from chap?

Hot Fuzz.

This is reminding me that I need to watch Khrustalyev, My Car!

Khrustalyov, even. It seems this movie night be somewhat indebted to it

That's quite a cast. Looking fwd to Buscemi's Khrushchev and Palin's Molotov.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4686844/fullcredits/

this looks great but personally - and it might just be my mood today - the terror looks thick enough in the trailer to be a bit too frightening for full belly laughs

I think it's a good moment for comedies of terror.

this is playing the NY Film Fest

oh it's certainly the right moment

it's super weird to me that it's in english but other than that i'm highly anticipating

That looks awesome! I was wondering on Wednesday where Michael Palin had gone.

Love that no one tries for accents! It was all I could do to stop the trailer early just so I could watch it again.

PBS just aired this 3-year-old Palin show

http://www.pbs.org/show/remember-me/

Isaacs is Zhukov I'm guessing?

looks fantastic

I presume he is Zhukov, it isn't credited on imdb.

oh it's certainly the right moment

It's the perfect moment! Hell it should be coming out right today.

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/55893/stalin-vol-ii/

woah! Kotkin's vol II has a release date as well.

when I say "shit taste in music" - he is a fully paid up member of the Real Music is made with Guitars posse.

He is also autistic, and has admitted he has some issues as a result

so i guess this isn't getting released in the usa until 2018

Booooooo whereza torrents then

[doing a Rick & Morty fan Szechuan sauce freakout, but about not being able to watch The Death of Stalin even though it's out in the UK]

— The Discourse Lover (@Trillburne) October 22, 2017

honestly I saw it at TIFF and it was dece but certainly no IN THE LOOP. it feels weirdly slight for what's effectively framed as a huge story, whereas ITL managed to be v funny while also telling a complete story about how modern war legislation is sold. certain awful truths of the characters and period sit awkwardly with the lols. Friend and Isaacs are great and should both do more comedy

I don't remember ITL so much but I thought this was great, the fact that it was about a real and murderous regime made it all the more chilling. The climactic scene was seriously intense. Some insight into how these regimes function - the groupthink, the cognitive dissonance; the true believers, the cynics & self-servers. Still funny though, & not too much of the fucknugget cockwomble type dialogue.

not on in Hull today sadly, wanted to fuel my inner despair without booze

Friend and Isaacs are great and should both do more comedy

Really well-cast all round

Was just reading about the Aleksei German death of Stalin movie. Which provoked a massive walkout at Cannes '98 and Scorsese wanted to award it the palme d'or. His movie is coming from the pov of a persecuted Jew during Stalin's antisemitic Doctor's Plot. It sounds fucking great tbh, I just wish my copy had subtitles.

http://sensesofcinema.com/2013/cteq/khrustalyov-my-car/

thanks for tip

subtitles! [

https://sovietmoviesonline.com/drama/305-hrustalev-mashinu.html

Is that site legit? I wouldn't complain about paying $3 for a good copy.

Oh I see you don't need to pay to watch, cool!

no idea bud but you can stream the movie for nothing anyway

Absolutley fucking cool, tbh!

excited for my tankie friends to get all mad about this

omg thanks nv!!

Will give that a watch.

Not seeing Death of Stalin but its been an...experience seeing Peter Hitchens go on about this *all day*.

Stoked for the opening of the communist museum.

I bet there isn't a moment in The Death of Stalin where Beria, standing over Stalin's fresh cadaver, says to Klensky: "Make him fart again".

I thought this was A+. Good year for films imo.

Was just reading about the Aleksei German death of Stalin movie. Which provoked a massive walkout at Cannes '98 and Scorsese wanted to award it the palme d'or. His movie is coming from the pov of a persecuted Jew during Stalin's antisemitic Doctor's Plot. It sounds fucking great tbh, I just wish my copy had subtitles.

I saw this several years ago as part of a German retrospective. (I think My Friend Ivan Lapshin was the only other title I managed to get to.) My impression was of a nightmare journey seeded by a deep study of the period. My memory is almost certainly at fault, but I'm remembering a faux-one shot stream of consciousness a la Birdman. I probably should revisit it, if it's available to stream.

I thought it was very good. It felt you are experiencing someone's internal memory of The Terror and experiencing memories in the abstract and disjointed way that they are relived in your mind. If that makes any sense. And this was mixed with much more vivid horror, like the innocuous looking NKVD van with the advert for Soviet Champagne on the side.

And Klensky seems such a strongman character and pretty invulnerable in the first act, by the end he is broken and humiliated. I'd imagine this was the director's memory that *anyone* could be broken in that era.

The overwhelming atmosphere of menace rendered simple sight gags excruciatingly hilarious. At some points I almost felt like I could be shot for laughing, which made not laughing much harder.

I thought this was great, amazing entrance scene from the guy playing Zhukov.

Jason Isaacs, he is hilarious in this. I liked it a lot also. I expected it to have had all the best jokes in the trailer but there were plenty more. I also found it surprisingly affecting. Andrea Riseborough as Svetlana deserves a lot of credit for that, in particular. Great performance.

when/where can i see this

I saw it (friend wanted light relief) and it was really bad although given where I am often coming from it might be impossible for me to find it good. There were only a couple of funny moments in this (the "you can plot while you run" quip at Khrushchev) and Isaacs was given the best lines, although the general as working class no-bullshitter who cuts through felt too easy a thing to do.

Otherwise it wasn't doing much of anything - felt like middle-class people laughing at stuff. Palin's role gave it a People's Front of Judea vibe to it and I mostly hate Python.

Palin was the week link

This was great

It was a weird experience. About 20 of us. One man at the back was laughing hard, a couple of others were doing so now and then. Everyone else quiet - it could be they were all laughing silently.

I was just hate-watching: these people are my enemies. I don't much like Thick of it either, not that they were attempting that trick here so much.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9eAshaPvYw

omg it's cpt lorca

when can i actually see this movie i've been dying to see since [looks at thread start date] six months ago??

opens March 9!

I predict yanklx will love this to the deserved extent ukilx obv just hates things these days cos brexit or w/e

Iannucci = centrist dad par excellence, amiriteukilx?

Centrists > ukilx

Khrustalyov, My Car >>> The Death of Stalin

by miles as well. I've got to admit I really enjoyed Simon Russell Beale's Beria in this, because I don't h8 fine actors. But it was pretty wank overall, just predictably shrill, shouty Iannucci type comedy, which is quite painful + predictable if it's not to your taste.

It is to my taste usually, or was, haven't seen much of it recently. I get the impression Iannucci's ship has sailed in the UK, and not just on ILX.

I used to like it, but find it exhausting these days. Not just because of his Centrist arrogance or whatever... I just feel like if you've watched the trailer to this there isn't much more to see really.

I just stuck the centrist dad bit in for laughs tbh, all I care about is whether the thing's funny or not.

i really enjoy all of ianucci's stuff despite him urging us to vote lib dem in the election that brought us the coalition and his other centrist crimes.

haven't seen this yet mind you

Both screenings of this sold out at the local intl film fest.

Should note that this is tbf far from flawless it doesn't really hang together as a movie but as a collection of scenarios and performances it's a beaut

i loved this

Iannucci's ship hardly seems to have sailed commercially as this was a lot more succesful than In the Loop with audiences. (Haven't watched it yet)

that's all that matters really, innit?

No, but it is an answer to "I get the impression Iannucci's ship has sailed in the UK, and not just on ILX."

It hasn't sailed commercially on ILX? I've no idea how it's done at the box office, but Iannucci and his style doesn't seem like a thing anymore in the UK, it seems to be still novel in the US though. For what it's worth, which isn't much, I've not heard a single person talking about this film outwith this thread.

Right well, anecdotes aside, I don't know what factors we can look at outside of Ilxor other than commercial and critical response, both strong for his latest project.

Did this even open in the US?

Out this week, I think

It hasn't sailed commercially on ILX? I've no idea how it's done at the box office, but Iannucci and his style doesn't seem like a thing anymore in the UK, it seems to be still novel in the US though. For what it's worth, which isn't much, I've not heard a single person talking about this film outwith this thread.

― Buff Jeckley (Tom D.), Tuesday, 6 March 2018 10:10 (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he hadn't done anything in the Uk for several years prior to this. I saw it in a busy cinema in its third week or release and talked to lots of people about it, so i'd describe this post as "rabid", "pig-ignorant" and "stultifyingly ill-informed".

drag him jed

LOL OK I admit to bias because Iannucci is such a smug dickhead.

And I am personally bored with his shtick.

this was funny and taught me nothing

Funny is something though.

i liked it when stalin died

but true story i did briefly fall asleep ftb too much pre-cinema beer

Some of the sketches were excellent

But taught oh no oh deary me no at the cinema oh god no

it's half a satire

felt like a full satire to me. i think that some of ianucci's pet themes are a little obviously trod in this (the buffoonery & cravenness of politicians, the apolitical nihilism of power) but there were some genuinely good ideas as well i thought. the jockeying for approval from and then slow decline of the influence of stalin's immediate family. that beria's hands were just too stained w/ blood to either move to reformer or weather the immediate storm. molotov insisting on his wife's guilt even after beria returns her to him. the shock of khruschev being the last man standing. i enjoyed a number of performances in this - jason isaacs as zhukov was great. buscemi was great. tambor was eh. russell beale was great. it was v funny. i'm not sure ultimately how i feel about it being done in english and english accents and also stalin - for the brief period he was alive on the screen - was totally unbelievable. some of the stuff was like classic soviet stuff (re-performing the musical performance bc stalin demanded a recording after the show had ended, all the stuff with people chiding each other for saying politically incorrect things where bugs could pick them up) but still enjoyable. i liked when they stop the executions midway through an execution and all the men left to be shot look over at all the people already been shot as if to wonder why god spared them. i liked the kid informing of his father and then his father coming back.

i thought it was just packed w/ good stuff and even if it doesn't hold together as like a singular work of a complete political/aesthetic vision there was still plenty to enjoy imho.

I still feel despite the lols that this didn't quite work, but six months later I do think of Jason Isaacs' spectacular entrance from time to time

he was maybe too good. i didn't quite get why khruschev had won and not zhukov since isaacs plays him w/ such aplomb and charisma and he seems to be underwriting the entire thing (and quite literally so since it's the army that ultimately establishes power). ianucci kinda handwaves that away in the final scene by saying that khruschev later demoted him and maybe showing how the complete acquisition of power occurred was out of this film's remit but that was an unsatisfying loose strand for me.

The whole last 20 minutes or so was kinda unsatisfying to me - still think this would have been much better suited to being a miniseries

Agreed - would've loved to see as a series.

"i'm not sure ultimately how i feel about it being done in english and english accents"

A stroke of genius imo

You couldn't have everyone doing hammy Russian accents surely to goodness.

i like some of the reasons for doing it - a) get to use the actors you want and they get to be funny (whereas who knows what happens if you force buscemi to talk in russian or a russian accent), b) suggest the universality of political jockeying, c) make the players seem even more pathetic and trashy than presumably they would in russian or russian accents. but otoh russians can be trashy too easily and i think a more competent filmmaker would accomplish some of these other things despite having more fidelity to the language. idk maybe ianucci can't make this film in russian, or it's not funny in russian. but at a number of points i felt like it was totally unbelievable and kinda cheap feeling and i think the vox had something to do w/ that.

maybe he had to do it, but it doesn't make it a fantastic choice imo.

the suffering in the film feels very cheap and meaningless partly bc it's not a generous film and no one seems rounded enough to be real let alone likeable, and also bc it's v silly & broad in a pythonish way. if this was by some unknown I would enjoy it more heartily but given it's IA there's this nagging feeling that the film is operating under the illusion that it's more than a lolsy romp about the paranoid politburo murdering ppl

The suffering is apparent and real and not underplayed by those suffering. It's merely not the focus of our main cast and the camera follows this approach for both dramatic and dark comedic effect, successfully so imo.

Mordy, I think the choice of accent in each case for the English actors is deliberate and is a further layer that possibly the American audience wouldn't get?

i was expecting a really grim black comedy that would make me puff out my cheeks thinking about soviet russia but it was lighter and more absurd than that. the ppl suffering were all clowns, ppl getting executed in the background edited into a giddy, rollicking ride. nothing about it felt real and so everything was underplayed

xp very likely! Please explain

I knew the regional accents thing had been done before and here's where:

Red Monarch is a 1983 British television film starring Colin Blakely as Joseph Stalin. It is directed by Jack Gold and features David Suchet as Lavrentiy Beria and David Threlfall as Stalin's son Vasily.[1]

Red Monarch is a comedy based on The Red Monarch: Scenes From the Life of Stalin, a collection of short critical essays by the Russian dissident and former KGB agent Yuri Krotkov. The film depicts Soviet politics and the interplay between Stalin and his lieutenants, particularly Beria, during the last years of Stalin's rule. The reading of Yevgeny Yevtushenko's "The Heirs of Stalin"[2] in the final scene supposedly warns that the threat of totalitarianism is constantly present.

And, from a review in IMDB:

A clever touch is the use of British and Irish regional accents to reflect variations in regional accents of the USSR. The Georgians are all Irish and Stalin himself is very audibly from the north of that country. Molotov (Nigel Stock) is Welsh, Mikoyan (Freddie Earlle) apparently a native of Glasgow, Kruschev (Brian Glover) from the north of England.

Kruschev (Brian Glover)

"i read a book once, red it was"

Pretty much something like that.

Not sure why people have an issue with this being done in english accents. Did people have the same issue with that War & Peace recent miniseries?

BTW as others have said, Isaacs was the standout in this, he was hilariously OTT.

Have to admit I fell asleep at about the 3/4 mark but thats not on the film, I'd had a long day and a big dinner (this wasnt in a cinema it was at home)

Did people have the same issue with that War & Peace recent miniseries?

i probably would! it makes a big difference whether they're speaking in russian or french at a given time!

Thats a fair point, and yeah it wasnt too obvious who was who, no one even bothered with accents.

(it was good though! but thats off topic)

I enjoyed this. A series would have been better, yeah.

I watched The Red Monarch last year, it wasn't too bad. But the Mao Zedong scenes were 100% painful humour-fail. The norn iron guy who plays Soso was pretty bloody good tho!

Great actor.

IIRC they used regional accents in the film 'Gorky Park', I'm sure Ian Bannen and Rikki Fulton kept their Scottish accents.

are we drawing a distinction between accents and language spoken here because fair enough if the film is in the appropriate language but comedy drama school foreign-accented English doesn't seem to have much point to me

I don't know, Mordy seems to want Steve Buscemi et al to learn Russian.

the accents are actually a problem in gorky park -- but that's because i don't think they're being deployed to indicate regionality, as (apparently, i haven't seen it yet) here

(also i don't think bannen does retain his scots?)

it's a pity ianucci feel out with the veep crew, i think julia louis-dreyfus as stalin and tony hale as beria etc could work (i started this sentence as snark and end it sort of believing it)

I liked this quite a lot - think it is very funny and does convey the political brutality and fear.

My main doubt about it was the sense of Khrushchev and Zhukov as, in effect, 'heroes' - I liked them but I was suspicious of the fact that the film needed me to like them, ie: to have some sympathetic points of identification. This felt more like a filmic / narrative need than a reflection of history, but then I don't know the history well.

This felt more like a filmic / narrative need than a reflection of history

Er, welcome to all fictionalised historical movies.

imo the accents, after being slightly jarring at the start, made the film more believable and relatable, not less.

I think when you try and think about the despot and his fun crew of killer lackies as human beings - rather than historical figures it gets quite dark and scary in a truly troubling manner, and if there is humour to be derived from this bunch of fearful jobsworths and genocidal arselickers - I don't think this does it successfully. It needs a lighter more subtle touch, rather than endless overworked zings in series imo. tldr version Iannucci is a total knob and I can't stand the fucker!

xxpost

It's 20 +years since I last saw 'Gorky Park' so my memory of it may be slightly fuzzy. Checking wiki I see that Alexei Sayle is in it too, which I'd totally forgot about, and unsurprisingly what accent he had in it.

(xp) Kinda off the wall here, but I really went off Iannucci when I listened to the commentary on the DVD of "Knowing Me, Knowing You", which was him and everyone else in the cast except Coogan (of course). He didn't seem to understand what parts were funny and what weren't and was constantly derailing amusing conversations between cast members to show that he was in charge and he could do comedy too. Plus smugness.

continuing the gorky park derail (as I haven't yet seen DoS): I rewatched it on amazon prime a few months back, and on the whole it's pretty good -- william hurt at his most charming, a story about idealism and corruption in soviet moscow in its next-to-last days (the novel came out a decade before the end of the USSR, the film a couple of years later)

the accents thing i felt was too half-hearted really to do the job required of it: you don;t get a sense of the vastness and variation of the soviet empire from it, nor really of melting-pot moscow

alexei sayle is reliably terrible: in 1983 people still hadn't realised he couldn't act and had very little craft as an on-screen performer :(

and to pushback-stan for iannucci a little: veep is genuinely great i think (i liked it a LOT more than the thick of things)

Gorky park is bad it's bad

it's no hobbit 3

less hobbits

I think when you try and think about the despot and his fun crew of killer lackies as human beings

Well they were human beings. That's kind of the point.

these takes are getting too hot for me to handle, I'm out

There are a few gears of bad, Gorky park and hobbit 3 may be different gears of bad but that is not much good if one seeks a good movie

the mark s distruster has logged on

Heh if that was in fact a sly reference to hobbit 3s excellence I'm afraid I'm unconvinced alright

xpost We've talked about it before I'm sure, but I know lots of Chinese speakers who have issues with, say, "Crouching Tiger," because the regional accents are all over the place. Or even, more recently, "Black Panther."

Manohla Dargis in the NYT loved it... this post hasn't been updated yet.

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/4917-the-daily-toronto-2017-the-death-of-stalin

just NY/LA i think

loved this...if anything it was a bit darker than i had assumed it would be, it doesn't really shy much away from Beria's proclivities nor as d-mac noted the suffering of anyone, it just tends to occur at the margins or in the background or offscreen or the fallen bodies are a bit out of focus and so on. the panic and terror of the people before their demises is quite real and the situations are absurd (which is what's played up.)

I thought it was...weird that they made such a thing of the other politburo members denouncing Beria for his sexual crimes when they sentenced him to death. I'm by no means an expert on the real events, but it seems like that was not a stated reason for his execution at all? As noted above, seemed like an attempt to elicit audience sympathy for the ostensible heroes of the piece. I mean he was obviously a monster, but it felt a little clumsy to me

but tbh I thought this didn't work at all. Although Isaacs was pretty amusing

I don't know much about the exact details either but i feel like I've read somewhere that reference was made to his crimes when he was charged. I could be wrong. I didn't read that moment as a way to garner sympathy, I read it as the other committee members being well aware of his nature and only cravenly turning on him once his power ebbed even slightly, as a way to find a scapegoat, and as a bit of self-preservation knowing what he was capable of doing should he come to increased power.

if you ranked the worst people portrayed in this movie, Khrushchev's legacy might be slightly underrated next to Beria's. He left a mountain of corpses in Ukraine. And post Stalin, he was hypocritical enough to posthumously rehabilitate some of his own victims of his own purges, that wiped out 400000+ people in the 30's, that's before you get onto his role during Holodomor, and there is more!

this movie does a good job of making me want to see it by having a title that reminds me Stalin is fuckin' dead, which makes me happy, I want very much to support the death of Stalin so that more people like Stalin might also be encouraged to fuckin' die fast

time probably makes more totalitarian despots die than shit movies do!

Speaking of communist biopics, we saw “Yung Marx” last night and enjoyed it.

They go to town with all the cameos

This was okay, a few chuckles, it gets by on pacing. Malenkov moaning, "I'm exhausted – I can't remember who's alive and who isn't" could've come from his diaries if he'd kept any.

Such facts would stop the movie cold

You think she's portrayed as being an older teen?

Wasn't as funny as I expected. This hasn't happened in a while to me but I think p much all of the funniest bits were in the trailer (at least the red band one I saw at the theater over the past month). Really wanted to like it and was bummed when it lost momentum and became oddly procedural half an hour in. It also completely died in the packed theater.

the often discerning Michael Sicinski thinks this film is a miscalculation

https://letterboxd.com/msicism/film/the-death-of-stalin/

if I'm a huge idiot with enormous blindspots in european history and comparative politics, will I enjoy this movie?

i think the tone of the film shifts but it does so pretty well. i didn't mind any supposed discrepancies at all. and the funniest moments for me weren't in the trailer, i think the best bit was Molotov carefully trash-talking his disappeared wife to Beria while she was waiting outside as a surprise and him shifting to careful euphoria when she walked in.

i think you would!

imo you don't really need to know anything to enjoy this movie

the often discerning Michael Sicinski

lol, sic batsignal is triggered by someone called Sicinski. I still think he's right about some of the problematic humour of this movie, and how it doesn't really work.

if I'm a huge idiot with enormous blindspots in european history and comparative politics, will I enjoy this movie?

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Thursday, March 29, 2018 2

yeah the apparatchiks are all treated as obese idiots

It was funny at points—Tambor's balcony scene was the best—but the rapid tonal shifts from screwball comedy to mass gulag executions and the serial rape of young girls were too much for me to handle.

Dark comedy usually isn't a problem for me, but why not just set this at Auschwitz? And follow that up with a spoof of Jerry Sandusky?

Also John Ganz in the Baffler presents a more polished version of Sicinski's argument

https://thebaffler.com/latest/as-stalin-lay-dying

"THERE ARE MOVIES YOU ROOT FOR. You want them to be great, and when they disappoint, you don’t want to admit it to yourself or others: you might laugh along with the audience, afterwards you might recommend them a little more highly than you know they deserve."

Maybe Iannucci is just too heavy handed to do a dark comedy set in a genocidal regime (yeah but he already did the USA to many rave reviews ... ba-dum-tshh).

still think he's right about some of the problematic humour of this movie, and how it doesn't really work

yeah, no beef with his personal distaste, he just looks like a dummy when he tries to support it extra-textually

tbh I have never seen the Clinton movie either

What Clinton movie?

Morbs told me TV shows are movies now

Here's an extract from one of Iannucci's movies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Wnnf6MZL-w

he's worth it even for the fact that he brought new audiences to opera

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH18mqCJdDs

This was surprisingly good - not vs. reviews or ILX opinion but it seemed to be meandering a bit in the middle then the shift in tone hits perfectly. My only complaint is that I could have used even more Jason Isaacs.

yeah for real - if this had been a TV series, his arrival would have tilted the narrative balance & made him a breakout star 💯

petitioning for Malenkov biopic

I fancy him.

No Zhukov. That's who I fancy.

the Horniburo

I would kind of like to see a film about Malenkov's later years

In 1961, Malenkov was expelled from the Communist Party and exiled to a remote province of the Soviet Union. He became a manager of a hydroelectric plant in Ust'-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan.[19]

After his exile from the Party, Malenkov fell into obscurity and suffered from depression due to loss of power and the quality of life in a poor province. However, some researchers say that later Malenkov found this demotion and exile a relief from the pressures of the Kremlin power struggle. Malenkov in his later years converted to Russian Orthodoxy, as did his daughter, who has since spent part of her personal wealth building two churches in rural locations. Orthodox Church publications at the time of Malenkov's death said he had been a reader (the lowest level of Russian Orthodox clergy) and a choir singer in his final years. He died on 14 January 1988 at age 86.

He became a manager of a hydroelectric plant in Ust'-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan. After his exile from the Party, Malenkov fell into obscurity and suffered from depression due to loss of power

ambiguous wikipedia sentences

lol!

This ruled

Late to the party, but wanted to say I really liked this. It is hilarious, and it has succeeded in making me interested in Russian history, which has always seemed dauntingly vast to try to comprehend. Maybe I'll pick up a book on the subject later this year when I'm not so damn busy.

haha, number none that is too funny! :D

i loved how AI stuffed genre characters into the political allegory, largely indicated by the accents. Stalin as mob boss, Stalin's kids as 1920s minor aristocracy, leader of the army as no-nonsense Yorkshireman etc. It felt like the film was a vague allegory concerning now, as opposed to about the actual death of stalin. At one point, Beria was threatening a guard and came out with a malcolm tucker style "rip off your head and shit down the neck" quip, and it wasn't funny because Tucker won't actually rip off your head, while Beria has probably done that today before breakfast. In using standard AI farce with a collection of monsters, it kinda illuminates how monstrous our current political animals are - malcolm tucker would be head of the secret police in another life.

Although a bit of a kolbasa-fest, I really liked this and how stage-y this was. That's usually a criticism of poor cinematic adaptation of a play, but I really liked the intimate production - it probably didn't need any of the wider shots of Moscow, parade, etc.

i really enjoyed this. really funny, solid performances, and some genuinely unsettling moments. especially liked buscemi who i thought put across khrushchev's slow transformation really convincingly. the only thing i didn't much like was the portrayal of stalin himself. even tho he doesn't get much screen time i still felt he should have felt like a shadow kind of hanging over the entire movie, like you should have FELT the characters' terror of stalin and their lingering fear that he might just walk back into the room. and i've read descriptions of stalin's actual moment of death, the deathbed scene where he raised up his hand, that were genuinely chilling and haunting and nothing like the goofy and over-the-top way they handled it here. still liked it overall and would prob watch again.

Stalin came off stupid and bumbling, which, uh, he was not

Iannucci repeating Trotsky's mistakes :-O

Stalin came off stupid and bumbling, which, uh, he was not

He's at the end of his life, pretty difficult not to appear bumbling when you're having a heart attack.

this was okay. geeked out to it of course but it left a lot on the table and only beale (definitive, so far) really approached his role as a role. tambor did the thing he does. buscemi did one of them. both were funny.

biggest laughs for me kept coming from stuff that was totally indistinguishable from veep: "switch with me, we can make it look like part of the ceremony", buildup+payoff of malenkov and the little girl, etc. pretty good but pretty generic. (i get that being generic is to some extent the Point but eh.) an exception was when palin's molotov, orating, got stuck a while on the word "unwavering": this was a joke about the soviet union. (so was "i've had nightmares that made more sense than this", but that was in the trailer.)

svetlana and beria's vibe was wrong. even as a little girl she feared and hated him, couldn't stand to be around him (which because her father was, she always was: being picked up, dandled on knee, etc). showing this-- even just w body language, which in their first scene together (everyone racing to hug her) i thought for a second they were doing-- would imo have made the occasional references to beria being a serial child rapist feel less... is the word really "awkward"? better-integrated into the movie. (btw yes i am fairly sure this did come up at his "trial"-- yezhov's porn stash certainly came up at his.) but they don't do that really. nevertheless beale was, again, vivid, great.

they should have used patronymics. it would have been funny every time.

this was a joke about the soviet union.

another good one: "hey, polina's back!"

This was OK - banality of evil and all that - but it was too long for a farce.

This was fine. Almost as funny as In the Loop and of necessity a smoother and handsomer production.

most of this was on the level of the extremely dull opening ~20mins of in the loop, but nowhere near the american section; their rumsfeld caricature was realer than the entire politburo put together

(i did see it a second time and wrote this more detailed post which i consigned to my folder of ilx posts i don't post, but i figured i'd dig it up if the thread got bumped)

i saw this again and i don't actually think it's very good? you don't notice at first because conceptually it's such a gimme and the performances range from good to very good. but so much of the writing is SO lame, so disconnected: svetlana/khrushchev on "harm" (agonizing silence @ this and later callback, from otherwise p responsive audiences); khrushchev as funeral director (built up, then immediately squandered as blandly as possible in a scene that compares unfavorably to a bit from woody allen's hollywood ending); pointless "we are russians! in russia" flags (ninjinsky, baku pisshouse); concept after concept that feels like a mid-tier thick of it joke gone totally unaltered. "who puts a lamp on a chair"-- what the fuck was this? stop wasting my time. "maybe he's the milk" / "maybe you're the tit"-- compare this to in the loop's "they're so massive they actually draw in other tits from the surrounding area" / "like you?" for the difference between spending four seconds writing a joke and spending thirty.

sometimes there are little errors that make it feel chintzy and glib if u are a pedantic nerd, like malenkov drawing himself up in pomp to announce he is "the general secretary of the soviet union", or beria the human filing cabinet mispronouncing kaganovich's name, or the titles calling 1953 "the midst of the great terror". and for some reason even tho the movie is a door-slamming farce there are only two scenes set in the house on the embankment! nina khrushchev is in one of them and i kept wanting her back.

surprised myself on rewatch by thinking the nkvd raid scenes were pretty good. the near-wordless subplot about the son who denounces his father weighs more than anything else in the movie (but not as much as the state) and got v grim lols. (the massacre scene is barely legible tho. idk that ianucci's mise en whatever is any better than kevin smith's. would've been better if he'd just pastiched eisenstein.) also good: anything with the central committee formally assembled-- wish there had been more of this, it rly snaps the writing into focus. everyone sitting around waiting for palin's undead molotov to finish torturing a foregone conclusion of power into a just product of soviet principle is exactly the level too little of the movie is on.

i think they should have come back to "are you still testing me?" a time or two. instead of harm.

lose the title cards.

Is there a patreon I can subscribe to where I can see this folder

their rumsfeld caricature was realer than the entire politburo put together

Did you ever hear Kubrick quoted by one of his actors, "Real is good; interesting is better"?

I think my favorite line is "Who the fuck would want eternal life?"

i've read descriptions of stalin's actual moment of death, the deathbed scene where he raised up his hand, that were genuinely chilling and haunting and nothing like the goofy and over-the-top way they handled it here

b-b-but it's a comedy

It's a comedy in the sense that life is a comedy, but it's not particularly funny.

Then it's a not very good comedy.

Comedies don’t need to be all that funny, tho.

heard a lot of that lately and not seen many good comedies in the past few years

compared to Tag i expect it's funny

Stalin doesn't have much confidence in the setting; it could be any corrupt regime perpetuating itself, an idea that absolves the filmmakers of writing jokes to fit the material.

i agree, and i liked that about it

(i have forgotten most of the Soviet history i knew in college)

nearly assuming the audience knows what the NKVD was is plenty confident for this era

the palin committee meeting stuff was actually painful bad and well beliw the rest of it

You didn't need to know anything about Soviet history. Imagine watching a Italian comedy where they talk like Cubans.

"or the titles calling 1953 "the midst of the great terror""
I didn't notice this at the time and I was looking to pick at this thing, cos I can't fucking stand Ianucci's style and the rest.. anyway absolutely fab post there, DLH.

the CC scenes are actually not far from Python's People's Front of Judea in Life of Brian

Imagine watching a Italian comedy where they talk like Cubans.

is this a Scarface reference

Just finished on BBC2, what a piece of pointless crap.

yep. A self-satisfied Iannucci gag fest no less, with some good and bad actors enjoying themselves much more than the poor viewer.

It's not good on many levels but I enjoyed a couple of the performances. I don't much care about movies having a point either but yeah, this is waste, especially compared to Khrustalyov

It was simultaneously too light and too dark and ended up as nothing. Not funny. I grinned once.

It really doesn't work as a comedy

And it definitely doesn't work as a drama, apart from the last 5 minutes.

Plus I'm sorry the bit where Beria has a hissy fit and starts shouting accusations at the other committee members was just a pale shadow of Glenn's "I AM MAN" meltdown in "Rise of the Nutters".

There was an 80's brit tv comedy drama about Stalin that pissed all over this, but I saw it years ago and can't remember the name of it, and then there is the darkest of dark comedy of Khrustalyov My Car which isn't going to be for everybody but goes more into the anti-Semitic "doctors' plot" violence at the end of Stalin's era, which much more interesting than doing shit comedy versions of famous Soviet commissars in *hilarious* UK regional accents. Actually maybe the latter could actually be funny if it was done by anyone but fucking Iannucci.

Having Paul Whitehouse play Paul Whitehouse, Michael Palin play Michael Palin and Jeffrey Tambor play Jeffrey Tambor was a bit lazy.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/dec/14/khrustalyov-my-car-review-visually-amazing-russian-gem-aleksei-german

lol Khrustalyov is the recipient of that highest of movie accolades, a five star P Badshaw review! tbf on him it is a decent little review.

Fuck off back to Georgia, dead boy.

finally watched this. not funny at all apart from isaacs

i mean there's a line of people being shot in the head and then news of stalin's death reaches siberia and the next guy doesn't get shot. that isn't funny and it isn't satire

it's reveling in misery