Whatever you are doing tonight, drop it immediately and watch Armando Ianucci’s 2017 film, The Death of Stalin instead. Even if you have seen it already, watch it again.
What a strange talent to make good jokes out of the very worst of humanity. Terror, injustice, summary execution, rape — a lot of rape. But out of all of that, the scariest thing about this movie to me was the language. Because it reminded me of the woke-speak that we all are now expected to regard as normal and totally unthreatening.
This film is not a minute-by-minute historical re-enactment of the last days of Stalin, but it does what great art is supposed to do. It brings out the universal truths. And here, the universal truth is that the totalitarian mindset is a prison more fortified and impenetrable than any physical jail or internment camp.
One of the plot lines involves the Foreign Minister Vyachslav Molotov, played by a delightfully bumbling Michael Palin, and his unfortunate wife Polina. (In real life Molotov was far from harmless — he signed more execution lists than anyone, even Stalin himself.) Polina was thrown into prison on Stalin’s orders, and Molotov thinks incorrectly that she was executed. In a hilarious scene between Molotov and Nikita Khrushchev, they outdo themselves in condemning her and praising the dead Stalin. “Treacherous sow,” her husband calls her, “I’m glad she’s dead.” Then the scheming Beria (head of the vicious secret police and profligate rapist) suddenly appears with Polina, who he released to win Molotov over to his side. Molotov is overjoyed, all his spewing about his wife’s traitorous ways immediately forgotten. Just like that, her virtue is restored. The most important human connection, love, is re-established. But even love cannot dislodge the power of Stalin’s ideology. Days later, Molotov is still claiming his beloved wife’s guilt. Only when browbeaten into submission by the twisted manipulations of Beria, who uses acrobatic contortions of logic to remind him that Stalin would have him shot for insisting on his now blameless wife’s guilt, does he recant. “I am ashamed and I beg your forgiveness for my selfish deceitfulness, I will go and reassure Polina,” he says.
Terms like “false narrative” and “narcissism” I see in our contemporary media are peppered throughout the snappy dialogue. The grovelling apologies and recantations are reminiscent of the statements made by those who today fall foul of our woke overlords. We are living through a time of denunciations and continued fealty to the ideology even after suffering at its hands. This scene at Stalin’s deathbed, where his toadies have gathered to praise and to succeed him, reminded me of the CNN talking head who claimed the beams of light across the Mall in Washington were like Joe Biden’s arms embracing all of America.
Thankfully, our current situation is still being acted out only with words.
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What I'm watching: The Death Of Stalin
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Whatever you are doing tonight, drop it immediately and watch Armando Ianucci’s 2017 film, The Death of Stalin instead. Even if you have seen it already, watch it again.
What a strange talent to make good jokes out of the very worst of humanity. Terror, injustice, summary execution, rape — a lot of rape. But out of all of that, the scariest thing about this movie to me was the language. Because it reminded me of the woke-speak that we all are now expected to regard as normal and totally unthreatening.
This film is not a minute-by-minute historical re-enactment of the last days of Stalin, but it does what great art is supposed to do. It brings out the universal truths. And here, the universal truth is that the totalitarian mindset is a prison more fortified and impenetrable than any physical jail or internment camp.
One of the plot lines involves the Foreign Minister Vyachslav Molotov, played by a delightfully bumbling Michael Palin, and his unfortunate wife Polina. (In real life Molotov was far from harmless — he signed more execution lists than anyone, even Stalin himself.) Polina was thrown into prison on Stalin’s orders, and Molotov thinks incorrectly that she was executed. In a hilarious scene between Molotov and Nikita Khrushchev, they outdo themselves in condemning her and praising the dead Stalin. “Treacherous sow,” her husband calls her, “I’m glad she’s dead.” Then the scheming Beria (head of the vicious secret police and profligate rapist) suddenly appears with Polina, who he released to win Molotov over to his side. Molotov is overjoyed, all his spewing about his wife’s traitorous ways immediately forgotten. Just like that, her virtue is restored. The most important human connection, love, is re-established. But even love cannot dislodge the power of Stalin’s ideology. Days later, Molotov is still claiming his beloved wife’s guilt. Only when browbeaten into submission by the twisted manipulations of Beria, who uses acrobatic contortions of logic to remind him that Stalin would have him shot for insisting on his now blameless wife’s guilt, does he recant. “I am ashamed and I beg your forgiveness for my selfish deceitfulness, I will go and reassure Polina,” he says.
Terms like “false narrative” and “narcissism” I see in our contemporary media are peppered throughout the snappy dialogue. The grovelling apologies and recantations are reminiscent of the statements made by those who today fall foul of our woke overlords. We are living through a time of denunciations and continued fealty to the ideology even after suffering at its hands. This scene at Stalin’s deathbed, where his toadies have gathered to praise and to succeed him, reminded me of the CNN talking head who claimed the beams of light across the Mall in Washington were like Joe Biden’s arms embracing all of America.
Thankfully, our current situation is still being acted out only with words.