like I know a lot/all of it is bs (I've learned the murder of all the funeralgoers visiting Moscow is entirely fabricated) but I thought the movie was pretty funny. does this make me a bad leftist
I mean, the message is much more "Beria bad" than "USSR bad." And Beria was in fact very bad
I think he was nicknamed the Soviet Himmler, and if it proves one thing, it is that communist parties must be vigilant against this type of rats. Truly a monster who'd have deserved worse.
Nah it's an excellent movie, and like with the Chernobyl miniseries there are broader critiques of power and systems to be extracted from it. The movie and shows are no more about the Soviet Union or socialism than King Lear is about King Lear.
The Chernobyl miniseries is great. I watched it with my dad (he was born in the USSR, I'm from post-Soviet Ukraine). We had a lot of fun marvelling at how Slavic most of the actors looked. He made me look up three times that the actress playing Lyudmila wasn't actually Russian 😂 The props and setting were really good too! Some moments we laughed at ofc but overall it was fantastic.
Also sidenote - I really appreciate both Death of Stalin and Chernobyl letting the actors keep their accents. None of this fake Russian "My name Ivan" bullshit. I'd like all movies to go that way - nobody expects movies about ancient Rome to go "It's a meee, a Juuulius." Give the rest of us the same dignity lmao
Kubrick's Paths of Glory is great on this.
Imagine if Shakespeare were performed in the regional dialects of the setting. Although maybe the true mystic of power of Hamlet has yet to be unlocked by incomprehensible Danish accents.
It was critical of the USSR. In the first episode, just before cutting the phone lines to the city, the mayor of Pripyat gives a hilarious "bad guy" speech about the need to do evil in the name of Lenin. And in the last episode, Legasov extols on the superiority of the West in a grand speech that was entirely fictionalized. At several points it also depicts Soviet people as slaves operating under the constant threat of execution (e.g. Legasov on the helicopter and the miners).
nah it’s pretty funny
side note though am i a lib if i enjoyed chernobyl?
Enjoying stuff and thinking it's good are different things, keep on keepin on comrade! <3
cough
insert star wars slap fight herecoughOh don't worry, just have patience and it will come, you said star wars sucks on the internet
What if you wanted a calm and collected comment section
but someone said
The Last Jedi
each movie is individually OK but what the hell is going on in between? how are they linked? WHY THE FUCK DID YOU HANDWAVE PALPATINE COMING BACK???
Because the trilogy wasn't planned out at all and JJ is a hack.
The show Chernobyl is kinda a allegory/metaphor for doing something about climate change, so not necessarily.
Plus they make the miner union look badass. Especially when the politician guy shows up to tell them to do something and instead of them being forced, they bully him and decide that it's their duty to help contain the disaster.
I enjoyed it, despite having several critiques of their depiction of the Soviet Union.
To be fair, it was presented as no less corrupt and bad than the US government was in Veep.
There was also the scene where literally thousands of people stormed the streets to mourn Stalin, which never happened in Veep. So they at least showed that the people were supportive, even if the politiboro wasn't.
I couldn't get into Chernobyl because everyone spoke in bloody Brit accents
Everybody spoke in their own accent in Death of Stalin too, except Zhukov
I really feel like the Soviet backdrop of the whole movie was secondary. Like, you could have made almost an identical movie with in a different setting. It's just a group of people vying for power in a comedic setting. If anything, I think the movie challenges a few notions that westerners have about the USSR. For example:
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When Stalin died, the people mourned. This actually happened, when he died the Soviet people were genuinely very sad about it, and the movie hits on this. They were definitely not all "whew no more of that murderous dictator Stalin!"
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Even the most powerful people in the USSR lived modestly. Khrushchev, Molotov, et al... they lived in just normal apartments, instead of in luxury. Pretty sure that was true throughout Soviet history for all the leaders, even Stalin. Now contrast that with the opulence nearly every senator and most reps live in.
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A minor point, but the movie shows the Orthodox bishops showing up to the viewing. Most Americans assume religion was completely banned and anyone who had even a Bible was executed by the USSR, or some shit like that.
Having watched Veep, it actually makes the Soviet politburo look reasonable by comparison.
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Listen to the Left Media podcasts discuss the movie w/ Proles of the Round Table
Is that episode still available online? I remember the Proles joking that the CIA had it taken down.
https://theleftmediapodcast.simplecast.fm/9d971696
Ask and yee shall receive comrade
It’s a funny movie in parts. But it is anti-Stalin/communist propaganda (as will anything be coming from Hollywood)
