Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/09/08/trailer-for-the-death-of-stali.html
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Ianucci and Soviet era Russia, with this cast? Take my money now, Armando!
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Yeah, I’ll watch that.
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I look forward to the final final trailer, where absolutely everyone’s head is censored out.
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“Citizens! Patriots! Ignore the saboteurs! Steve Buscemi is not in #TheDeathOfStalin.”
He’s been erased from the picture, Stalin-Style!
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Movie of the year, by far.
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To be That Guy: American actors Jeremy Tambor and Steve Buscemi are emphatically NOT using British accents. I believe everyone’s using more or less their own accents.
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Made me think of “Repentance” which avoids directly mentioning Stalin, even if the dead mayor is essentially a stand-in for him.
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I read that and I thought, “What, even Jason Isaacs?”, so I looked him up and fuck me, he’s a Scouser.
Does anyone know who all the various characters are? I’m guessing Simon Russell Beale is Kruschev, and obviously Rupert Friend is Dzhugashvili Jr, but the others I haven’t a clue about.
Isaacs is probably Marshal Zhukov or some fictional equivalent, From the titles I would assume Tambor is Malenkov (Stalin’s deputy and toady at the end of his life) and Beale is Beria (the intelligence chief). Molotov should be in there too, somewhere. Not sure about the others – Buscemi may play Khrushchev, except of course he’s not actually in this movie.
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Jason Isaacs - Georgy Zhukov
Steve Buscemi - Nikita Khrushchev
Rupert Friend - Vasily Stalin
Jeffrey Tambor - Georgy Malenkov
Paddy Considine - Comrade Andryev
Michael Palin - Vyacheslav Molotov
Simon Russell Beale - Lavrentiy Beria
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Wait!
Stalin’s dead?!?!?
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Should there be a thread about it?
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50 years from now there will be a movie like this about the Trump administration.
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5 years! Hell, 5 months.
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Wasn’t there a TV play about this in the 70s? ISTR Brian Glover being Krushchev (who played him more than once), but it’s not in IMDB so probably not him.
Man, this sort of thing really reminds me just how ignorant I feel about Russian history. All I really think I know about that country is that before they were the bad guys, they were the good guys.
Besides, say, Dr Zhivago, or Children of the Revolution what films would you recommend for ignoramuses hungry for a clue?
Very much looking forward to this, even though I was mostly disappointed with Veep and In The Loop, everything Iannucci has been involved with before them has been amazing (his lesser known shows Time Trumpet and The Armando Iannucci Shows are particularly worth a watch). Trailer looks good too, and he’s working with a much better cast than his last film, so pretty optimistic about this one.
I saw him at a live podcast thing last year where he talked about this and a possible next film project, which involved a robotic AI revolution, but where the AI is incredibly incompetent, keeps falling over and can’t get up stairs properly, things like that, sounds great.
“…its transposition to mid-century Moscow (complete with the comically inappropriate but oddly convincing use of British accents to illustrate class and regional signifiers at the high end of Soviet politics) is so bizarre and unexpected I think it’ll either fail and become a cult classic, or be the biggest movie of the year and hated by everyone forever.”
“Bizarre and unexpected”? Use of “British accents to illustrate [Soviet] class and regional signifiers” in Western films has been going on for decades. The same trick has been employed in dramatic film depictions of Ancient Rome.
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Pretty much all the good Russian-themed cinema I can think of is more useful as a demonstration of propaganda technique than history. That applies to films made in both ye olde USSR and the USA.
OTOH, for a quick Russian history hit, see:
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