I can't be the only person out there with a list of movies we know we SHOULD be watching instead of streaming Avatar: The Last Airbender again, right? I mean, rewatching Community a fifth time feels a lot easier than slogging through an "important" movie made for grown-ass adults.
Well, I finally tackled two in my to-watch list this past week, and I'm happy to report that the experience was not altogether unpleasant and I will certainly consider watching non-super hero, non-Star Wars, non-animated-or-made-for-tweens motion pictures again in the near future.
The first was "The Death of Stalin" from 2017, available to steam on Netflix. The movie presents a truncated version on the events of March 1953, leading up to the titular death of Joseph Stalin and the subsequent power struggle among the Soviet Central Committee. But there is much more packed into what would otherwise be a by-the-numbers drama. The movie is directed by Armando Iannucci, Scottish satirist best known in the States as the creator of “Veep,” but who has worked in British television for decades. This movie, though, looks anything but televisual. There's a quality to the film's set-dressing and photography that really evokes a mid-century aesthetic in the colors on the screen. I found it quite visually arresting.
Well, I finally tackled two in my to-watch list this past week, and I'm happy to report that the experience was not altogether unpleasant and I will certainly consider watching non-super hero, non-Star Wars, non-animated-or-made-for-tweens motion pictures again in the near future.
The first was "The Death of Stalin" from 2017, available to steam on Netflix. The movie presents a truncated version on the events of March 1953, leading up to the titular death of Joseph Stalin and the subsequent power struggle among the Soviet Central Committee. But there is much more packed into what would otherwise be a by-the-numbers drama. The movie is directed by Armando Iannucci, Scottish satirist best known in the States as the creator of “Veep,” but who has worked in British television for decades. This movie, though, looks anything but televisual. There's a quality to the film's set-dressing and photography that really evokes a mid-century aesthetic in the colors on the screen. I found it quite visually arresting.
In any case, the movie balances more than bold color. The tone of the movie is expertly managed, chiefly in its central conceit; the script uses current vernacular speech in lieu of employing the typical Hollywood trope of making people in period movies set in Russia sound either like very posh Brits or like borsht-belt hacks. (Or in the case of “The Hunt for Red October,” literally both.) The effect this has in the framework of the movie is revelatory; it shows starkly that this power struggle was, at day’s end, nothing more than a venal pissing-match between powerful but petty men, regardless of the pageantry of the dictator’s funeral or the real stakes for world-ending catastrophe.
This contrast between high and low comes to brutal ends as Nikita Khrushchev, played as a put-upon cynic by Steve Buscemi, consolidates power in the political equivalent of a back ally mugging. The event puts punctuation to a film that is at turns hilarious and truly frightening.
This contrast between high and low comes to brutal ends as Nikita Khrushchev, played as a put-upon cynic by Steve Buscemi, consolidates power in the political equivalent of a back ally mugging. The event puts punctuation to a film that is at turns hilarious and truly frightening.
It's fitting then that the second movie we watched this week is also a visually intriguing study in contrasting tones... but I'll need a few more days to get it all together in my brain. In the mean time, comment below if you've seen "The Death of Stalin." How did it strike you as a work of history? Were you put off by the shenanigans? I didn't even try to make contemporary comparisons, but there is a certain rats-from-sinking-ships quality that maybe begs the question RE: certain current occupants of the White House. Is that a stretch?
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