{"id":7199,"date":"2018-04-13T08:04:21","date_gmt":"2018-04-13T12:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7199"},"modified":"2018-06-16T20:12:42","modified_gmt":"2018-06-17T00:12:42","slug":"on-the-big-screen-from-the-ridiculous-to-the-sublime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7199","title":{"rendered":"On the Big Screen: From the Ridiculous to the Sublime"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Death of Stalin<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Death

Steve Buscemi & Jeffrey Tambor<\/p><\/div>\n

The Death of Stalin<\/em>, from director Armando Iannucci (trailer<\/a>) satirizes the cynical, self-absorbed group of leaders surrounding the Communist dictator and their desperate jockeying for position both before and after his death in 1953.<\/p>\n

Banned in Russia, the film is based on a graphic novel by French writers Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin (Amazon link<\/a>), full of one-liners and sight gags. Undoubtedly, some of the humor arises out of a characters\u2019 sense of release\u2014having lived under such extreme repression, day in and day out, guarding every word and eyebrow twitch, a giddy humanity bubbles up once the leader dies.<\/p>\n

Late one evening, Stalin decides he wants to hear an orchestra concert that was broadcast on the radio. No one thought to record it, and the anxious scramble to recreate the concert illustrates the high-pitched fear of displeasing him. (Bringing in baffled street people to pad the audience was a nice touch.) Stalin murdered the pianist’s family, and she slips a vitriolic message into the recording jacket that causes the dictator have a stroke. His comrades can\u2019t find a doctor for him because, they readily acknowledge, all the \u201cgood doctors\u201d have been purged.<\/p>\n

Stalin\u2019s potential heirs include Nikita Kruschev (played brilliantly by Steve Buscemi), who is put in charge of a lavish state funeral where things, inevitably, go awry. Due to his position on the Central Committee, Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor) is \u201cin charge,\u201d with terror and venality at war behind his eyes. Vyacheslov Molotov (Michael Palin) is the only inner circle member unaware that Stalin\u2019s unexpected death has spared him a grim fate in Lubyanka prison. The head of state security, Lavrentiy Beria (Simon Russell Beale) oils his way into nearly every scene, always plotting and loathed by everyone.<\/p>\n

As Anthony Lane<\/a> says in The New Yorker<\/em>, it\u2019s a comedy, \u201cgrossly neglectful of the basic decencies, cavalier toward historical facts, and toxically tasteless\u201d and \u201cten times funnier . . . than it has any right to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> Critics Rating: 95%; audiences: 79%.<\/p>\n

Cezanne: Portraits of a Life<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Cezanne\"

Paul C\u00e9zanne, “Self Portrait in a Bowler Hat,” (1885-86)<\/p><\/div>\n

This beautiful documentary<\/a>, directed by Phil Grabsky (trailer<\/a>), was created to accompany a joint exhibition of some 60 of Paul C\u00e9zanne\u2019s portraits being mounted by London\u2019s National Portrait Gallery, The National Gallery of Art<\/a>, Washington, D.C., and the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019Orsay in Paris.<\/p>\n

Better known for his still lifes and landscapes, the portraits, which New Yorker<\/em> critic Peter Schjeldahl<\/a> says were \u201cthe genre most resistant to C\u00e9zanne\u2019s struggle\u201d are nevertheless worthy of careful attention. Certainly the museum staff who provide commentary for the film have been captivated by them. Yet the artist\u2019s struggle is evident in his letters to his friends, read in voice-over.<\/p>\n

What I found most thrilling were the extreme closeups of the painted surface that seeing the works on a big screen provided. In a postcard (!) or print in a book, or even glanced at in a gallery, the paintings may look rather flat, but the huge enlargement allows you to see the many layers of color used to create that surface and to appreciate these works in a completely new way. Some of the landscapes and a few still lifes also receive this close-in treatment.<\/p>\n

Although C\u00e9zanne masterfully depicted the faces and the hands of his subjects, he said that these were not what constituted the \u201cportrait\u201d of a person, but indeed the whole canvas\u2014the clothing, the chair, the background, all together, were the true portrait. See it if you can.<\/p>\n

The exhibit has had its Paris and London runs and will be in Washington March 25-July 1, 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Death of Stalin The Death of Stalin, from director Armando Iannucci (trailer) satirizes the cynical, self-absorbed group of leaders surrounding the Communist dictator and their desperate jockeying for position both before and after his death in 1953. Banned in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"On the Big Screen: From the Ridiculous to the Sublime - two excellent weekend movie picks.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[265,272,1288,58,56,682,57,104],"tags":[1295,128,416,1297,1296],"class_list":["post-7199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography","category-comedy","category-culture","category-documentaries","category-film","category-fine-arts","category-movies","category-the-morgue","tag-cezanne","tag-history","tag-real-life","tag-stalin","tag-ussr"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1S7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7199"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7202,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7199\/revisions\/7202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}