Armando Ianucci's The Death of Stalin

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.

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