Sundance ’18: The Death of Stalin

Maria Yudina was such a brilliant classical pianist, she survived the Great Terror, even though she made no secret of her Orthodox faith and her contempt for Stalin’s brutal regime. According to a story mostly considered apocryphal, she was dragged back for a repeat concert performance (with full orchestra) after Stalin requested [demanded] a recording of her live radio broadcast of Mozart’s Concerto No. 23. That true-in-spirit historical legend inadvertently ignites a political crisis in Armando Iannucci’s The Death of Stalin (trailer here), which screens during the 2018 Sundance Film Festival in Park City.

The poor, harried director of Moscow Radio does indeed call back Yudina and the orchestra to accommodate Stalin’s whims. She is not inclined to be so agreeable, but her participation is quickly purchased. It is also an opportunity for her to slip a personal note of pointed condemnation to Stalin, who is so surprised to be criticized in such terms, he has a massive coronary and dies.

Of course, this ignites a power struggle within the Central Committee. Technically, the pompous Georgy Malenkov is next in line as the Deputy General Secretary, but the real contenders are Lavrentiy Beria, the sadistic chief of the NKVD and Nikita Khrushchev, the closest thing to a reformer in Stalin’s inner circle. Thanks to his de facto control over Kremlin administration, Beria gets a jump on Khrushchev, hypocritically positioning himself as reluctant participant in the purges and a would-be liberalizer. However, Khrushchev will win over key allies, such as Field Marshal Georgy Zhukov and the dithering senior statesman, Vyacheslav Molotov.

Adapted from Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin’s French graphic novel, Death of Stalin is a wickedly funny, pointedly scathing satire of corrupt power run amok. Frankly, the succession battle waged by Khrushchev and Beria ranks up there with the rivalry between Simon Yam and Tony Leung Ka-fei in Johnnie To’s Election, but Iannucci’s film has a higher body-count—by a factor of at least one hundred. Despite the mordant wit and subversive slapstick humor, Iannucci and his platoon of co-screenwriters make it chillingly clear what happened to inconvenient witnesses and ninety percent of the victims Beria swept up during the Stalinist Terror. It is hard to believe one can laugh so much during a film openly discussing torture and mass executions, but such is the case.

It is also hard to believe that A: we can find ourselves openly rooting for Nikita Khrushchev and B: pencil-thin Steve Buscemi would be the perfect actor to portray him, but both also prove to be true. In fact, Buscemi gives a tour-de-force, possibly career best performance as Khrushchev, with the help of a little stomach padding. Arguably, Iannucci’s conception of Khrushchev as shrewd opportunist and a fount of nervous energy rather puts him in Buscemi’s wheelhouse.

Buscemi is perfectly counterbalanced by Simon Russell Beale’s wonderfully sly and flamboyantly sinister portrayal of Beria, which rather helps align viewer sympathies with Team Khrushchev. Jeffrey Tambor basically does his regular shtick as Malenkov, assuming he won’t be replaced by Christopher Plummer for the film’s American theatrical release. However, it is a real stitch to watch Jason Isaacs ham it up as Zhukov. Yet, maybe the best surprise in DOS, is a late-career comedic gem from Michael Palin as the astonishingly indecisive Molotov. Plus, Olga Kurylenko adds some class and poise as Yudina, while Andrea Riseborough gives it greater human dimension with her vulnerable and conflicted turn as Stalin’s future-defector daughter, Svetlana Stalina.

Satirizing a period of such widespread fear and suffering is a tricky business, but Iannucci and company pull it off with flying colors. DOS manages to be absolutely hilarious and totally chilling, simultaneously. It is a terrific film, but don’t take my word for it. The Putin regime is considering banning it, so you know it must be good. Very highly recommended, The Death of Stalin screens again on Saturday (1/27) in Park City, as part of this year’s Sundance.

D Train: It’s Not About Dontrelle Willis

There are two kinds of people—those who look forward and those who look back. Dan Landsman is definitely a rearview mirror kind of guy. As he gears up for his high school reunion, he will painfully illustrate why such a neurotic approach to life is so deeply unprofitable. Prepare to squirm when Landsman makes a last ditch effort for popularity twenty years after graduation in Jarrad Paul & Andrew Mogel’s D Train (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

After college, Landsman stayed in the same Pittsburgh suburb, attending community college, taking an office job, and marrying the nicest girl from high school who would talk to him. At every meeting of the high school alumni committee, he offers up a textbook example of trying too hard. Smarting from the rejection he continues to invite, Landsman hatches an unlikely plan to convince Oliver Lawless to attend the reunion, so he can hopefully ride on his coattails of coolness.

Lawless was the sort of roguish popular kid everyone wanted to hang with. After graduation, he left for Hollywood, where he barely scrapes by on commercial work. However, Landsman and their fellow alumni see him as the embodiment of all their unfulfilled dreams and aspirations. Landsman will indeed trek out to California to woo Lawless, but the cover story he fabricates about a potential business meeting inconveniently blows up in his face when his technophobe boss, Bill Shurmur insists on accompanying him. Nevertheless, Landsman manages to meet-up with Lawless, but things get a little out of hand, with much awkwardness ensuing.

The good news is Lawless is coming to the reunion. The bad news is Lawless is coming to the reunion. Frankly, you may never see another film that so thoroughly confuses humiliation with humor. D Train is a truly a cringe fest. Anyone with a shred of empathy will be extremely uneasy watching Landsman’s degradation, but Paul & Mogel keep pouring it on. It gets to be punishing—for the viewer.

You have to give Jack Black credit for taking it and liking it. As Landsman, his desperate neediness is uncomfortably convincing. It makes you think he could do an entire postscript to Kevin Pollak’s Misery Loves Company by his lonesome. On the plus side, believe it or not, James Marsden turns some surprisingly nice moments as Lawless and it is always amusing to watch Jeffrey Tambor do his thing as Shurmur.

It is hard to judge D Train, because the cast always hits their marks and inhabit their characters pretty credibly. Eventually though, all the piling-on poor Jobish Landsman just makes you shake your head. This year, there were at least two films at Sundance that used Erasure’s “A Little Respect,” but Seoul Searching is exponentially more fun because it remembers both the good and the bad of high school (and Korean culture camp). Honestly, it is a real shame Paul and Mogel were apparently so unhappy during high school, but hopefully making this movie helped them work through some of their issues. An exhausting film, D Train will should bring out Jack Black fans nonetheless when it opens this Friday (5/8) in New York, at the AMC Empire.