MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > OT: The Death of Stalin

OT: The Death of Stalin

posted 7 years ago by ecarle (14979)
8 replies | jump to latest

Its been an arid season for movies to see, in my opinion. For some reason, I'm comparing this season to the winter/spring of 2011, which seemed to have a decent thriller almost every week for a few months there. But it seems that Black Panther is so dominating right now that very little has come out to counter it in the "medium range thoughtful movie for adults" category.

But I found one: The Death of Stalin.

The optimum way to see "The Death of Stalin" is to rent a movie from 2009 called "In the Loop" first. Both films are from a British writer- director who delighted me with the world of "In the Loop" and has now done it again with "The Death of Stalin."

Both films are about life-and-death politics as played out by politicians who spend every moment cussing each other out and plotting against each other. "In the Loop" was modern day and about the starting of the war in Iraq. "The Death of Stalin" is set in 1953 Russia(or was it the Soviet Union then?) and is about the crisis fomented when Stalin, indeed, dies. This one raises the intriguing point: when a country is in thrall to the Cult of One Man...who takes over when that man dies?

"The Death of Stalin" confronts the nastier edges of Communist totalitariansm in a way few films have dared before. We are shown Stalin approving "execution lists," shown people being rousted out of their apartments by the secret police and dragged off for summary executions. We are shown people being tortured and beaten as a matter of routine. We are shown people in deathly fear OF being fingered, dragged out, executed. A people living in constant fear. We are shown a son directing the secret police to where his father is hiding , so that they can drag the man out for execution.

Its a comedy. A HILARIOUS comedy.

It boiled down to me to a scene where a Russian secret police guy is walking down a row of men, shooting each in the head. He is reached mid-way through his executions by an officer who tells him to halt the executions. Caught by surprise, the killer nonchalantly "shoots one more"(the man in front of him) and then tells the next man he is free to go. The horrific arbitrary nature of the power to kill one's enemies at whim is turned here into a gory joke with a bloody punchline.

And the whole damn movie is like this.

You have Steve Buscemi in a fat suit playing Nikita Kruschev. You have Jeffrey Tambor doing his "Larry Sanders Show" thing as a weaselly chicken-heart who becomes a bullying tyrant when suddenly given some power(He is the "acting" leader of Russia after Stalin dies, a puppet front man to the evil torturer Beria and a joke to the rest of the leaders.)

There is a lot of comedy with dead bodies in "The Death of Stalin" that conjures up memories of The Trouble With Harry, and the whole thing has a black comedy air(people die horribly but the laughs never stop coming) that recalls for different reasons, "Dr. Strangelove" and "Frenzy."

Additional funny bits by Michael Palin(a Monty Python veteran, now distressingly elderly) as one of the plotters(who doesn't know he was on an execution list himself but spared by Stalin's death) and by Jason Issacs as a scarfaced Army general who is the one macho man in the whole story, mocking all the weak politicians around him (think Patton or General Buck Turgidson).

Which reminds me: the one identifiable face in "In the Loop" from a few years ago was the late, great James Gandolfini, playing a sympathetic Army general who resists the Iraq invasion pointing out that the commitment of men has to include not only those who will get killed, "but some you have to make sure come out alive so it doesn't look like you lost."

Rent "In the Loop." See "The Death of Stalin." Preferably one right after the other. Dark, dark political laughs for our dark, dark political times.

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

I enjoyed The Death of Stalin too but, at least on first viewing, it didn't have quite the impact that In The Loop had back in 2009. Where I had ITL as one of the top films of the year (For me, 2009 was a pretty great film year: Best = Inglourious Basterds; Honorable Mentions = The White Ribbon, Fish Tank, Hurt Locker, In the Loop, Avatar, Fantastic Mr Fox, A Serious Man, Dogtooth), TDOS was amusing but not a film-of-the-year (for 2017) contender for me.

I'd need to see TDOS again to be surer/clearer about what made it fall a little short for me.... but as a first effort, I find it natural to compare and contrast it with ITL. Ultimately perhaps at least if you're US/UK/anglospheric then the big difference is that in TDOS you're laughing horrifiedly *at* the Soviets whereas in ITL the horrified laughter is against yourself and what *you* fell for and were complicit in back in 2003, etc.. At least for Westerners, then, ITL is a more cutting, deeper experience.

Put thus, the basic point feels a little abstract, but director Iannucci constructed ITL very carefully so that as a series of concrete decisions the ending of the film lands very hard, is devastating really. There's no comparable structure in TDOS that I could see (maybe a Russian could enlighten us - but, ha ha, TDOS is banned in Putin's Russia!).

Here's how I saw the ending of ITL specifically working back in 2010:

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

Until its very busy end credits, ITL has only diagetic music: Washington aids trying to blow off steam and get laid go to a Death metal concert, a minor character has some background classical music playing in his office, and that's about it.

In the last 10 minutes of the film we witness the manufacture of the bogus intelligence that will be the official trigger for the Iraq War and we watch as one after another each possible institutional safeguard and office-holder that/who could possibly stop this disaster/crime from occurring wimp out, sell out, are side-stepped, bamboozled by bureaucracy, side-tracked by their ambition or self-righteousness or vanity, and so on. Gandolfini's General is paradigmatic of these 'institutions that fail' and gets the final laugh line before the credits: (To an obsequious Brit aid) 'Go F___ yourself Frodo'.

We fade to black and as the credits together with a series of further hilarious conversation scenes begins to roll our first score cue enters: Bach's sublime, soothing Prelude #1 in C Major, i.e., the opening stanza of his The Well-Tempered Clavier, which represents The Enlightenment, reason, the potential of the West - everything that we've seen painfully, hysterically go up in flames over the course of the film.

As the Bach winds down we settle back in the UK govt office, The Ministry for International Development, whose Minister's off-hand statement about the unforseeability of war got the film's plot rolling. The War's evidently been underway for some time and according to the new minister it's 'going great guns'. A new piece of score music begins due to Adem Ilhan, for string quartet and a bunch of mallet instruments (and possibly a piano):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dTZlF7005w

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

Ilhan's piece isn't as sedate or inherently optimistic as Bach's Prelude, hence its use isn't as straightforwardly ironic. Rather, Ilhan's piece functions as a come-down, chill out, sobering up, de-ironizing piece for the audience. It's melodically and timbrally plaintive even as it's rhythmically insistent. We leave In The Loop entranced by the piece, but also somewhat saddened. It makes us think of the (likely now suicidal?) classical-music-playing figure in the film who (i) tries to do something noble (Spartacus-like) by volunteering to take the blame for a leak, (ii) is turned into the marionette typist of the doctored evidence in the film's ugliest scene, and who (iii) suffers the indignity of being named as literal, final causus belli, "Debussy". Ilhan's music's impact is huge in other words. When it hits, we *get* it.

To be sure, one doesn't want to exaggerate the significance of a coda/recessional/outro that lots of people, eager to get out of the theater or to switch off their dvd probably never hear. But one also doesn't want to underestimate such pieces. The impact of Jaws is widely believed to have been measurably heightened and the film deepened overall by John Williams's haunting, perfectly timed end credits theme:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0ZUtPBfP6U
The brilliance of ITL's musical construction is up there with Jaws's. TDOS tries to play a similar trick by beginning and ending with the same concert pianist playing but it doesn't land or form the key to anything the way the music does in ITL, so it's just a lesser film I think. ITL is Strangelove. TDOS is more like Fiddler on The Roof!

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

You see, swanstep...that's why I come to this board.

I liked ITL back when I saw it for its surface intentions -- the lead British guy who cussed at everyone and tore into them on a moment's notice was the focal point, but EVERYBODY was backstabbing and CYA-ing -- the fact that I was always laughing even as its brutal political realities came into view(I noted above that Gandolfini was "sympathetic" - in that he did NOT want the war, but I can't remember now -- he caved?)

And that's pretty much where The Death of Stalin stood with me, too. I sensed an "auteur" in Ianucci(maybe in a more refined Sorkin/Tarantino way -- his dialogue and characters were the big sell) in that I felt immediately a lot of the vibe of In the Loop.

And I noticed the concert thing at the beginning and end of TDOS certainly.

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I suppose I was drawn to TDOS because I'm often drawn to what totalitarianism looks like at its brutal base.

Its simple: kill all your enemies. Even if they only MIGHT be your enemies. You gotta be careful. Why take a chance.

The hatred I oftimes see expressed in the comments section of political internet columns reminds me that that the fantasy to overthrow, dominate and execute ones perceived enemies is always seething within too many humans. To win an election is not necessarily to "bring us together," it is to smite one's enemies for good. But we haven't yet reached the dragging out of folks for execution in America on this level. (Or have we, some would say.)

I felt that even amidst all the comedy in TDOS, a couple of points were made that I took at face value about lethal totalitarianism:

ONE: The victims all willingly and passively accepted their executions. I felt this was saying that in a world in which the threat of death is omnipresent but torture and/or slow death is always an option -- a bedraggled citizenry will pray for that quick bullet to the head and "get me off the planet." This mood enveloped Schindler's List at times, too. The entrapped and weakened prisoners simply gave themselves over to death, or to the delusion that they were just going to take a shower.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

TWO: When Stalin died, says this movie, hundreds(thousands?) of his people swarmed into Moscow to pay him homage and to view his body. If this is to be believed(and I don't see why not)...its more human psychology: a people who only know a tyrant come to love that tyrant and are shattered when he dies.

I suppose it is the Stockholm Syndrome on a huge scale plus...he kept a lot of them fed and housed, I guess.

Anyway, The Death of Stalin used its comedy and its pace to tell its dark story well. I report on it because its one of the few movies that has drawn me away from my home screen in this first third of 2018.

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

Black Panther is so dominating right now that very little has come out to counter it in the "medium range thoughtful movie for adults" category.

The Sundance-hyped Jon Hamm-starring, Tony Gilroy-scripted Beirut goes on wide-release in a week or so. So does the promising Emily Blunt-starring horror A Quiet Place. Soderberg's iPhone-shot Unsane? Has that just vanished without a trace? (I still haven't caught up with Logan Lucky!)

Beyond that, I think part of what has made the last few months feel a little empty is that so many of the more adult releases from late last year that have been trickling onto local screens are at least slightly disappointing - not bad, even very interesting, but not the knockouts the directors' previous films were. I include Death of Stalin in that group. Others include Lanthimos's Killing of a Sacred Deer (not up to the standards of The Lobster which was my Best Film for 2016 or Dogtooth, one of 2009's best), Ostlund's Palme D'Or winner The Square (not as good as his breakthrough Force Majeure), Haneke's Happy End feels pretty warmed over and mediocre (it's no Amour or Cache or Code Unknown that's for sure), Florida Project wasn't as interesting as the director's previous Tangerine, ditto Payne's Downsizing, even Phantom Thread and Shape of Water are pretty tame compared to their directors' previous bests.

One adult-ish entry I'm looking forward to catching: Filmstars Don't Die In Liverpool w/ Bening playing a fading but still glamorous Gloria Grahame.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

The Sundance-hyped Jon Hamm-starring, Tony Gilroy-scripted Beirut goes on wide-release in a week or so.

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I like the stardom that Jon Hamm created for himself on Mad Men(handsome but vulnerable) and I would like to see him get a movie star career going(those silly H and R Block ads he is doing must pay a fortune but de-value him.)

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So does the promising Emily Blunt-starring horror A Quiet Place.

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Co-starring with her husband, that boyish but manly guy from The Office (I have a friend since high school who looks just like him, I find him amusing in that regard.)

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Soderberg's iPhone-shot Unsane? Has that just vanished without a trace?

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Possibly, Soderbergh seems to "one off" box office movies with experiments that get no release.

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(I still haven't caught up with Logan Lucky!)

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It has faded from my memory, even as I decided that only Logan Lucky, Baby Driver, and Molly's Game met my criteria for the kind of movie I enjoy watching the first time and will re-watch incessantly. (I gave Molly's Game my Number One slot in that regard, but I can't say I NEED to see any of these films again anytime soon.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Beyond that, I think part of what has made the last few months feel a little empty is that so many of the more adult releases from late last year that have been trickling onto local screens are at least slightly disappointing - not bad, even very interesting, but not the knockouts the directors' previous films were. I include Death of Stalin in that group.

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Understood and understandable. A hard truth of the movie business is that a lot of directors or writers only have one or two really good films in them. They dine off those first hits for years on "cruise control." It makes what Hitchcock did(DECADES of hits and classics) all the more amazing.

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One adult-ish entry I'm looking forward to catching: Filmstars Don't Die In Liverpool w/ Bening playing a fading but still glamorous Gloria Grahame.

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Gloria Grahame rather fascinates me. I'm much weaker on female stars than male stars, but she certainly had SOMETHING to her -- a mix of the sexy, the vulnerable, and the "other worldly" -- and there it is in The Bad and the Beautiful, In a Lonely Place and The Big Heat. Her life story bottoms out in some sexual scandal and odd marital choices, as I recall(which would be perfectly acceptable in today's climate, but not back then.) I'd like to see Annette Bening play her.

You'll recall that I often summon up memories of the 60's TV whodunit show "Burke's Law," which cast a mix of old-timers(Billy DeWolfe, Lizabeth Scott) and newcomers(Frankie Avalon, The Smothers Brothers) as murder suspects each week.

Well, one week, Gloria Grahame was on -- and she was the killer. And Burke treated her very gently at the end because she had killed a pretty rotten guy and she was pretty mentally gone at the end, "in fantasy land" in her head. This must have been among the last Grahame performances -- and she was older, more haggard than in her prime.