Staline

It's certainly not a brief, inaccurate retelling, but it's neither a history captured. Hollywood with the help of Czechoslovakian immigrate Ivan Passer and famous movie stars offers quite a simplified vision of a terrible man Stalin and his crimes. The history of Russian revolution and USSR from 1917 till 1953 appears as a screen version of quite honest but so much oversimplified cartoon-like cliches and sketches. For every Russian spectator all the characters (beginning with Stalin) are unbelievable in every way from make-up to behavior. Seems like all of them escaped from an amateurish waxwork museum. Even the magnificent Russian actors Feklistov, Tabakov and Larionov had skillfully degraded and performed very brief roles which is a great shame considering their high level. Quite a Hollywood is an American attempt to warmer a Monster type with a lyrical story line of Stalin's relationship with his daughter Svetlana who is telling the story.

I re-watched this film in order to put faces to the names, as I was studying for a Soviet History midterm. In terms of the film's accuracy, it is largly excellent (from what I have read). However, the tendency of the film to separate the good guys (e.g., Bucharin) from the bad (es.g., Stalin, Beria, Ezhov) is not great historiography, but makes the film easier to digest.

It is hard to know what effect the death of Stalin's wife had on him. Clearly the film needed an overarching plot structure to attempt an explanation of a complex man. Unfortunately, it is impossible to get inside Stalin's head. Duvall's performance is masterful, I think, because he manages to capture the LACK of essence of Stalin. If anything, the man was driven by hatred and little else--a hatred that is difficult to articulate, but which was at least admirably displayed in the film.

"Josef Stalin's crimes caused the deaths of tens of millions of Soviet Citizens," the epilogue tells us, but you might not know it from watching this film. A few allusions and allegations aside, the impression you get is that of a gangster, Little Caesar maybe, who bumps off a couple of rivals while taking the place of the Big Boy. The few executions we witness are personalized.

It's based on the memoirs of Stalin's daughter, Svetlana, a big seller in the 1960s, so one would expect a kind of benign view of the Soviet dictator and, indeed, Svetlana appears to be the only person towards whom he shows genuine affection. He loved his wife, Julia Ormond, of course but mistreated her to the point of suicide. He hated his illegitimate son and kept his own son in disregard. So it's a daughter's view of her admittedly flawed father, but let's keep some things in the family too.

Among the things kept in the family -- simply hinted at baldly or ignored altogether -- are, let me think, (1) the assassination of Trotsky, (2) the purges of the officer corps in the Russian Army during the 30s, the word "purge" being spoken only once, (3) the non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin, (4) Stalin's not believing the intelligence indicating Hitler was about to invade, (5) the use of "blocking units" that shot any Soviet soldiers retreating, (6) the use of penal details to march across mine field or draw fire from the enemy, (7) the disposal of all spontaneous resistance leaders, Cossacks, and Russians who had been German POWs and possibly "tainted" by Fascist ideology, (8) the disastrous mismanagement of industrialization and (9) the famine resulting from Lysenkoism -- a rejection of Darwinian evolution and Mendelian genetics. So, yes, Stalin killed tens of millions of Russians. More than Hitler killed.

It's not a terrible flick, especially considering it was made for television by HBO. The make up is superb and it was shot on location. Some of the actors turn in performances that we can relish -- Max Schell and Joeren Krabbé, for instance. But Robert Duvall slogs through the role of Stalin as he would a puddle of mud. Okay, I think we can all agree that the Stalin we're familiar with was no ballet dancer, nor was he a spellbinder like Hitler. But if Duvall's intent to was to portray the murdering thug as a deliberate ox driving towards a goal, he's succeeded all too well. Julia Ormond, on the other hand, is splendid as Stalin's tormented wife. She makes responsiveness visible. With Duvall it's mostly guesswork.

Most disturbing is what looks like carelessness in the writing. Two examples. This was a seminal period in Russian history, and early on, after we learn of the Russians' withdrawal from World War I, we learn that another war is going on -- "a civil war." Well, WHAT civil war? We never find out. Nothing about White or Red Russians, or Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, or why there was wariness between Georgia and Moscow.

"Trotsky had missed his last chance to stop my father," we hear. We've already found out that Stalin and Trotsky hated one another -- but why? What did Trotsky want that Stalin didn't want? It's enough to drive a dummy like me to Wikipedia.

Still, for all its weaknesses, I applaud its having been made at all. "Our history required Stalin," one character pronounces after Stalin's death. It's more than our history books require. Russia -- its history and culture -- was an adversary for so long that for too many of us it's not much more than a vaguely ominous blank.

I freakin love this movie. I don't even really know why. Probably a combination of factors. First of all, this was the first movie I ever saw Robert Duvall in, and he does an exceptional job as he has done in every role he has ever had. Also, it gave me a decent historical picture of Stalin which led to years of fascination with the man. It was also one of HBO's first in a long string of award winning historical fiction TV movies, and still my personal favorite. If you like Robert Duvall and great dialogue, I highly recommend it.

To appreciate this film you might read any one of the best accounts of Stalin's dictatorship by Roy Medvedev, Dmitri Volkogonov, Edvard Radzinsky, Simon Sebag Montefiore, or Donald Rayfield. If you know these books you'll find little reason to argue with how this film portrays 'The Boss'. Other reviewers on this site have noted how well Robert Duvall captures Stalin's surly, crude, cunning, sadistic, paranoid personality. They're right. He's marvellous in the role. One reviewer has questioned whether Voroshilov would have dared to shout at Stalin, as he does in this film, at the start of the war. This is a fair point as Stalin picked his men carefully for their inability to stand up to him or take initiative. However, Donald Rayfield cites an example of the normally slavish Voroshilov doing something very like what is portrayed in the film, shouting at Stalin as war with the Nazis was looming for murdering most of the Red Army high command and so crippling the defences of the USSR. He was one of the few men to do anything of the kind and survive Stalin

The film is shot at the scenes of the crimes - the Kremlin at Stalin's Kuntsevo dacha - and is sumptuous watching as a result. Watch out for Satlin's huge, waddling shadow on the ceiling as he climbs a great staircase, an incubus about to settle on the Soviet People. It might be a standard trick but it doesn't look contrived.

Rather less convincing are the portrayals of Stalin's wife and some of his associates. This is the fault of the script or the direction or both, not the actors. For example, Stalin's second wife Nadya was not quite the principled heroine seen here who apparently took her own life because she saw no other escape from the evil that her husband was bringing to the country. The real Nadya brought some of her own problems to her marriage and these contributed to her death. Bukharin, wretched in his final weeks, may have been the best of them but that was saying little. He was not quite the noble, tragic 'swan' portrayed. He was prone to hysterics - about his own problems primarily - the suffering millions could suffer as long as he was approved of. During his final imprisonment, Bukharin wrote to Stalin offering to do anything, put his name to anything, if only Stalin would be his 'friend' again. Stalin takes all the heat and deserves plenty but many of the rest seem like innocents, fooled by him, finding out too late that they were caught up in his evil and corrupted or destroyed by it. But Stalin, like Hitler and any other dictator, was only possible because those around him saw advantage for themselves in supporting him. If there's a problem with this film it's that it lets some of Stalin's minions off the hook. It settles for extremes - Stalin and his chiefs of secret police on the one hand, and the good or loyal but naive on the other. But the only innocents were the people of the former Soviet Union, those far from power whose lives were destroyed according to the requirements of a command economy - so many deaths and so many slaves were required from every walk of life, like so many tons of iron, to meet quotas. (They are acknowledged in the film's dedication). Those around Stalin, however, were all up to their elbows in blood just as he was, obsessed with their own positions, Bukharin, Zinoviev, and Kamanev included. This is perhaps something to bear in mind in watching a generally excellent and historically accurate film. If you're interested in the psychology of Stalin and his henchmen try Jack Gold's 'Red Monarch' (1983) with Colin Blakely as Stalin. The history comes second to the general impression in that film but it's worth the sacrifice. Duvall as Stalin is marvellous in a deadly serious way, but Blakely is bloody marvellous in a deadly funny way. Red Monarch also spares the audience English peppered with 'Da' to remind you that these people are really speaking Russian, and faked Eastern-European accents.