Vissarionovich

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Top 50 Films of 2021 

#45 : State Funeral

The eerie last rites of Stalin’s Soviet Union are enacted as massed mourners hail the dictator’s flower-clad body in a film that gives long-lost footage, assembled by In the Fog director Sergei Loznitsa, a new and unnerving lease of life.

Unsurprisingly, I know nothing about this film but I'm not expecting it to be a barrel of laughs.  And, it appears, 135 minutes of not a barrel of laughs.  I'm somewhat intrigued as to how it's gonna play out, but I'd struggle to say I'm looking forward to it.

And it appears they're playing it straight down the line.  It's basically film of many different crowds of people stood around (in what appear to generally be freezing conditions) either listening to public service announcers read out details of Stalin death, reading newspapers about the man, paying their respects in various ways or actually attending the funeral.  In small doses, it's a fascinating slice of history but as an entire film with no commentary to provide the slightest context, it's somewhat dry.  It probably won't surprise you to hear I resorted to playing it at double speed very early on - and my biggest disappointment was that I have no way of playing it even faster.  I REALLY can't overstate how much of a drag this film was.  And then, at the end, you get four pages of text saying "Actually, he wasn't a nice guy after all".  Utterly pointless.

I'm quite prepared to admit that some people will find this all absolutely fascinating and I've very pleased for both of them that they have a new favourite film.  But for the rest of us, a quick 5 minute Youtube video entitled "some Russians in funny clothes from a long time ago" would probably suffice.  I think there probably is an interesting film to be made from the footage (possibly one not quite so long) but I'm not entirely sure how I'd go about it.  However I might do it though, I have to say it's certainly an "interesting" stylistic choice to just show the footage (and I'm sure there was no "just" about the amount of work that was involved in selecting the footage, but that's what it feels like).  

I'm not sure what more I can say about this film.  IMDB amusingly lists the cast as Joseph Stalin as Self, Nikita Khruschev as Self, Lavrenti Beria as Self, etc etc and tells me that its global box office takings were $48,003 - which is approximately $48,000 more than I was expecting.  And the top (and only) review there is as follows 

2+ hours archive footage of people from all over USSR gathering in town squares to either hear the news of Stalin's passing or going to see his corpse at the Unions building. Nothing else happens. Doesn't mean it's bad. Or good. Just saying.

However, that's one more user review than Rotten Tomatoes has.  The critic's reviews there are mostly pretentious bollocks, but I did like "both remarkable and tedious" and "I look forward to the footage used in State Funeral being repurposed to make a real movie, but this is not it" (which is kinda what I'm saying, except that I'm not looking forward to it).

The Guardian make some odd choices in their lists and I've learned to expect them and roll my eyes at them, but this really challenged my good nature I'm afraid.   One final word of advice for you - whatever you do, do not sit down to watch this film thinking it is Armando Ianucci's Death Of Stalin - this film contains a far less amusing array of accents.

At the time of writing, the film is available to stream on MUBI or rent in the usual places but do yourself a favour and run screaming for the hills instead.

#46 - An unsettling (and often unpleasant) experience
#44 - A pleasingly and disappointingly brief film