I got this film last autumn, and I watched it late last week before current events evented and suddenly Stephen Green is writing columns about it. In the interim, a fellow I work with recommended the film as well, but that did not hasten my viewing of it. I have not been watching a lot of television or movies here lately; I don’t know why, but after watching a couple of series nightly for weeks at a time, I guess I didn’t want to commit to it. Also, I guess we’re having dinner a little later these days, which means it’s 8pm cometimes when I finish the evening chores, and I’d rather not commit to a film when I might want to go to bed at 9:30.
But, as I said, I did manage to watch this film last weekend.
It opens on a concert hall where an orchestra is finishing a radio performance featuring a beautiful pianist (although you can’t see her on the radio), and a call comes into the booth to deliver a recording of the performance to Comrade Stalin. But they did not record it. So the radio director, fearing for his life, makes the orchestra perform it again to record it. And it’s pressed onto a record, the pianist slips a note into it because she hates Stalin because he killed her family. When he puts the record on, he reads the note, smiles, and has a stroke, debilitating him.
And that’s where the fun(?) begins. While he’s incapacitated, various members of the party committee vie and jockey for power, including the head of the NKVD and Kruschev (played by Steve Buscemi) and some other members, including one whose wife was purportedly taken away as a traitor but was really held by Beria (the head of the NKVD) to be returned as part of his trying to consolidate power/gain control of the committee. And I guess that’s it: the humor is how they scheme and plot against each other as Stalin is incapacitated, then dies, and through the funeral.
I’ll be honest: The film really didn’t do much for me. Maybe I am more into parody over satire (maybe not) or perhaps I just like more wordplay or slapstick. But it’s not something that I’ll rewatch a bunch. But I guess it is timely as it has possibility to be a cultural touchstone in the current moment.