The Death of Stalin

Dr. Strangebedfellows: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Bury the Politburo
or
"How Can You Run and Plot at the Same Time?"

"The Death of Stalin is aimed at inciting hatred and enmity, violating the dignity of the Russian (Soviet) people, promoting ethnic and social inferiority, which points to the movie’s extremist nature. We are confident that the movie was made to distort our country’s past so that the thought of the 1950s Soviet Union makes people feel only terror and disgust."

Petition from the Russian Cultural Ministry

"[a] western plot to destabilise Russia by causing rifts in society"

Public Council of the Russian Ministry of Culture

Oh, those poor Russkies.  They finagle our elections, annex territories, disrupt social media, and conspire with tyrants, while bagging as many rubles for themselves in their so-called "everybody-is-equal" political system. 

But, criticize them and they bleat like sheep.

Never mind that the director has been making fun of the British and Americans with his past work—like In the Loop and "Veep"—that no doubt cheers them and think are a laugh riot. But, turn the same satirical eye against them and it's a plot to "destabilise" Russia. As if they needed any help doing that themselves.

In a rather reflective "coalition of the willing" The Death of Stalin combines French, British and American forces; it started as a french comic book, and is a combination of Brit and Yank talents to bring it to the screen. Maybe the Culture Ministry feels that's a little too much attacking from the same forces. Satire does raise hackles. However, the satire of In the Loop and "Veep" produced an echoing silence (tacit approval?) while The Death of Stalin creates howls of protest and conspiracy concerns. What's good for the goose is not always good for the self-satisfied gander. 

So, what's causing the fuss? The Death of Stalin looks at the scrambling done by the prominent members of the Politburo following Stalin's death by a cerebral hemorrhage on March 5, 1953.

The events begin when Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin) requests a recording of a performance he'd heard on Radio Moscow that night. Unfortunately, when the live concert was broadcast, a recording was not made—but one does not disappoint Stalin (one might get shot). So, a second impromptu concert is staged, paying off the piano soloist (Olga Kurylenko), to repeat the performance and rousting a replacement conductor from his bed, after the original one suffers a debilitating accident while fainting at the prospect of any potential consequences. The pianist includes a note with the recording, deriding the Premier, whose reaction (either from the note or the poor rushed recording) prompts his stroke. The guards outside his door hear him collapse, but, having orders not to disturb his sleep under penalty of death, do nothing but hold their post.

The next morning, the dacha housemaid enters the room and finds Stalin unconscious on the floor. Phone calls are made—not to any "good" doctors as many of them have been purged—but to the senior officials under Stalin. They include Georgy Malenkox (Jeffrey Tambor)—who has been rumored to be replaced (and killed) in Stalin's plans, Lavrenti Beria (Simon Russell Beale), the security director of the secret police, the NKVD, and Moscow Party Leader Nikita Krushchev (Steve Buscemi), who is awakened by the news and is so exercised about the event that he arrives at the dacha in pants and pajamas. Beria manages to get there first, finds the body and searches for the key to Stalin's files and manages to smuggle some out. Before Krushchev and Lazar Kaganovich (Dermot Crowley) can arrive, Beria convinces Malenkov that he should be the next Premier, knowing that he's weak and easily influenced. When Krushchev and Kaganovich enter the room, Beria and Krushchev begin to butt heads over who can out-blackmail the other to gain a stronger footing.

But, one should never count their hens. When Stalin is moved by the four (with the help of Anastas Mikoyan (Paul Whitehouse) and Nikolai Buganin (Paul Chahidi) to his bed and examined by the best doctors not currently in prison or a gulag, it looks like the Premier might make a recovery, and the group returns to the fawning postures that (of course) they hope for a full recovery and everything will stay just the same—until Stalin actually dies and they return to dividing the spoils. No sooner do Beria and Krushchev curry favor with Stalin's daughter Svetlana (Andrea Riseborough) while marginalizing his drunken son Vasily (Rupert Friend) and leave the premier's quarters, that the NKVD move in and evacuate the building, take over all the possessions and furnishings and murder any witnesses.

Once Vyacheslav Molotov (Michael Palin) is brought on board (Beria has released his wife from prison where she was imprisoned for supposedly being anti-Stalinist), the group can start having rather tentative meetings and votes on how to proceed—everyone eyes each other to see how the other will vote, hands tentatively half-raised before committing—and is decided that Comrade Krushchev should be kept busy planning the late Premier's funeral...where the personal positioning for power can really move into full swing.

The political fandango is based (advisedly) on true events, with comedic license for interpolations. To see the power elite of Moscow at their most insecure, even while the stakes are life-changing is a hilarious dance of desperation that shows how petty and craven the instincts of those in power can be displayed (even before Twitter). That's what satire does—expose the frailties, whether in people, in systems, in governments, and how the best-laid plans have beach-like foundations. It's a release valve for the toxic stress involved in the absurdities of flawed circumstances. But, the only way to see the humor of it is to admit the flaws. To not do so runs the risks of making the same mistakes over and over...which really is the height of both tragedy, as well as comedy, comrade.

Time Bandits

Time Bandits (Terry Gilliam, 1981) As a filmmaker, Terry Gilliam grew up with the making of Time Bandits, while still maintaining the childish sense of fun and menace that permeated his work before and during his days with the Monty Python flying circus. Time Bandits is a work of pure imagination, a four-ring freak show that just might kill you, where time is the scene of the crime, and even God and Satan are susceptible to the charms of a precocious little boy with a taste for adventure and the voracious team of avaricious little people that he happens to partner up with. One's tempted to say it's Gilliam's version of Snow White or a flipped version of The Wizard of Oz, but that would be taking the piss and anarchy out of it. Those others would not have the temerity or the audacity of just leaving their tween with a heart-warming life-lesson, but actually challenge him to apply it without the benefit of having a safety net. But, in Gilliam's mind, his hero's fate is unarguably better than the unquestioning materialistic zombie-hood that he would be subjected to with his parents.

11 year old Kevin (Craig Warnock) is fascinated with Ancient Greece, which some parents might find a sign of a curious intellect but inspires nothing but neglect in his parents. One night, the wardrobe in his bedroom is shattered by a horse-bound knight who bursts through it and gallops down a forest road that has suddenly appeared—clearly something is amiss in the space-time continuum! The next night, Kevin wants to go to bed early, but instead of a knight-errant, he's visited by a crush of six thieving "little people." They're demoted employees of The Supreme Being (voiced by Tony Jay, but will appear later as a doddering Ralph Richardson)—seems their previous job of designing trees and bushes was sub-par and they're now tasked with fixing rends in the fabric of space-time. But, being particularly (how should we say?) "entrepreneurial" they've seen that their map of black holes can take them to other Earth-eras, from which they can pillage whatever they can carry in a necessarily brief time. 

"Necessarily" because they're being pursued by extremes of Good and Evil (aren't we all?), with T.S.B. wanting his map back and the personification of Evil (David Warner, clearly relishing the role) coveting the map, so that he can fix T.S.B.'s mistakes and make the Universe more to his liking.

Gilliam's film then hops and darts and falls into an episodic structure, where the diminutive fugitives "crash" various eras, including Sherwood Forest in the era of Robin Hood (John Cleese, doing a hilarious version of Prince Charles), a campaign of Napoleon Bonaparte's (a nearly incomprehensible Ian Holm), who is obsessed with puppet shows (because they're smaller than him), the HMS Titanic (served "neat"), and, to Kevin's delight, Ancient Greece, where he befriends King Agamemnon (Sean Connery*), who is first seen battling a Minotaur. 

Most of it works and works hilariously, even when Gilliam veers into the surreal...and the budgetarily spare. Still, the low-tech miracles Guillam pulls off with limited resources (5 mil' financed by George Harrison's Handmade Films) are awe-inspiring, not only for their realization on film, but also for the sheer visual splendor—and squalor—Gilliam's considerable imagination envisioned (and still does). It's an amazing spectacle, and if the film stutters a bit pace-wise (especially during the Napoleon segment), the delights to the eye tend to gloss over any story-telling problems. Gilliam's pictorial eye would become bolder and his subject matter richer, but Time Bandits was the transition-point between a sketch-comedian/animator and a true film-maker and visionary.

What all the fuss is about

* The script (by Palin and Gilliam) reads: "The warrior takes off his helmet, revealing someone that looks exactly like Sean Connery, or an actor of equal but cheaper stature." Gilliam was shocked that not only had Connery read the script, he wanted the part, and even suggested a disconcerting cameo at the end.

** Northumbrian Tin Soldiers has made sculpts of the bandits, listed as "Dwarf Robbers:"

Olde Review: Monty Python and the Holy Grail

This was part of a series of reviews of the ASUW film series back in the '70's. Except for some punctuation, I haven't changed anything from the way it was presented, giving the kid I was back in the '70's a break. Any stray thoughts and updates I've included with the inevitable asterisked post-scripts.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, 1975) I also like "Monty Python." It is refreshing to turn on the tube and see total anarchy once in awhile. But, there is such a thing as good, disciplined cinema comedy, which places it above well-made home-movies like Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I mean, these silly gits won't even take the credits seriously, fer chrissakes! It is not without its gory charms (you have to admire people who come up with a blood-thirsty rabbit).

Maybe what I'm griping about is this: It is possible to have good screen comedy and a disciplined film at the same time. It's even possible to have it with anarchic comedy as in Howard Hawks' Bringing Up Baby. And it is this discipline that is missing in "The New Comedy" as these films are billed*--they are funny, but they are not graceful. They are really quite slip-shod in the way they have been shot and edited. 

"Zis is wot I sink off yo re-fiew!"

Really, the only man who is continuing in the tradition of anarchic comedy and good film-making is, of all people, Mel Brooks, but only because he made two gems of recent comedy--Young Frankenstein and Silent Movie. There is still hope for Woody Allen, if he returns to the style of Sleeper. There is no hope for Monty Python--they would have to change their comedy style--and it wouldn't really be worth it.

The moral to all this is: It may be funny as Hell, but that don't make it a good movie!

Broadcast on KCMU-FM November 4th and 5th, 1976

Poppycock! The style, or lack of it, in Holy Grail, is part of the fun. At times epic, and at other times amateurish, it is the unexpected ways that Python (Monty) has of playing with the medium that makes up the charm (and a great deal of the comedy) of the film. Another look at the film (with the stick removed from my ass) shows it to be messing with the conventions of the fantasy film and of film in general (love the credits with the Norwegian translations) in fresh ways--and isn't that evidence of style? And while Terry Jones, who directed most of Grail, has had a somewhat lackluster directing career, Terry Gilliam has had an amazingly rich (if problematic) one. Style? He has bags of it!

The writer of this review (me, younger and certainly dumber) was hung up on "Filum" as "Aht" and more concerned with adhering to basic rules of "cinemah," rather than working with, without and outside of them to create spontaneous comedy. Sometimes, obeying the rules deprives one of opportunities to expand the discipline to achieve a richer art-form.

As for my better alternatives, the hope for Woody Allen that I spoke of was just around the corner with Annie Hall, and after his successes, Mel Brooks made the most conventional and laziest of his comedies The History of the World, Part 1 (after a less-than-inspired spoof of Hitchcock films, High Anxiety.) The dedication he used to bring the look to the movies I mentioned, went away, and he decided that what he was doing was "good enough." It wasn't. On to Broadway...

(Post-script: Ironically Holy Grail also made it to Broadway as "Spamalot" as directed by Mike Nichols)

*Lest we forget the program was The Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film, Love and Death, and this one.