I spent Christmas Day (which is a national holiday here in lovely South Korea, but only for one calendar date) doing traditional Yuletide things like watching The Death of Stalin.
The performances were incredible. If you told me Steve Buscemi could "work" as Nikita Khrushchev I'd have laughed at you.
Sure, many liberties were taken, but the essentially comical nature of Stalinism comes across, as does the utter barbarity and tragedy of what was the ultimate terror state.
I'm far from an expert, but having read Simon Montefiore's Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar definitely helped me keep the many characters straight.
The murders and shootings and beatings and gulags, the shattered lives in general -- they didn't serve a purpose, they were ends in and of themselves. Terror was the point of it all.
The Death of Stalin makes this crystal clear, and you'll feel bad for finding it so awfully hilarious at the same time.
It had to be a comedy. It could only be one.
No comments:
Post a Comment