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| I defend The Death of Stalin. He was evil – but he’s ripe for satire | |
| (about 3 hours later) | |
| Not everyone admires Armando Iannucci’s new film The Death of Stalin, and chief among its detractors is Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens, who claimed that it trivialises the death of a mass murderer, and those of his millions of victims. He asked if “anyone would think the final days of Hitler … would make a good comedy” and concluded: “No, of course not.” | Not everyone admires Armando Iannucci’s new film The Death of Stalin, and chief among its detractors is Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens, who claimed that it trivialises the death of a mass murderer, and those of his millions of victims. He asked if “anyone would think the final days of Hitler … would make a good comedy” and concluded: “No, of course not.” |
| In light of an ensuing online discussion, he found it necessary to write a further piece arguing that the innumerable YouTube Downfall spoofs, Chaplin’s The Great Dictator and Mel Brooks’s The Producers are irrelevant or inadmissible in this context. Well, for me, The Death of Stalin is brilliant precisely because it addresses Stalinism’s pure, nauseous, insidious evil. It is not a knockabout comedy or a documentary but a satire. | In light of an ensuing online discussion, he found it necessary to write a further piece arguing that the innumerable YouTube Downfall spoofs, Chaplin’s The Great Dictator and Mel Brooks’s The Producers are irrelevant or inadmissible in this context. Well, for me, The Death of Stalin is brilliant precisely because it addresses Stalinism’s pure, nauseous, insidious evil. It is not a knockabout comedy or a documentary but a satire. |
| I thought of the film again this week, when I was reading Orlando Figes’s A People’s Tragedy, his history of the Russian Revolution. In 1920, as Russia descended into chaos, a Times correspondent in Petrograd (as it was called then) wrote that he had found a human finger in his soup at a restaurant. Figes writes of the pompous way in which the great author Maxim Gorky haughtily responded to this: “Believe me, I am not unaware of the negative aspects created by the war and revolution, but I also see that in the Russian masses there is awakening a great creative will.” The human finger in the soup: bizarre, macabre, trivial perhaps. But a sure pointer to the larger horror. | I thought of the film again this week, when I was reading Orlando Figes’s A People’s Tragedy, his history of the Russian Revolution. In 1920, as Russia descended into chaos, a Times correspondent in Petrograd (as it was called then) wrote that he had found a human finger in his soup at a restaurant. Figes writes of the pompous way in which the great author Maxim Gorky haughtily responded to this: “Believe me, I am not unaware of the negative aspects created by the war and revolution, but I also see that in the Russian masses there is awakening a great creative will.” The human finger in the soup: bizarre, macabre, trivial perhaps. But a sure pointer to the larger horror. |
| Crime and punishment | Crime and punishment |
| The scandal around Harvey Weinstein – who has denied committing criminal offences, has not been charged with any and who so far faces incarceration only temporarily in a “sex addiction” facility – is causing many in the film world to ponder the grimly Dickensian case of another film producer, Christina Slater from north London, who made the Bafta-nominated documentary Taking Liberties. Last July she was sentenced to four years in prison for tax fraud. | The scandal around Harvey Weinstein – who has denied committing criminal offences, has not been charged with any and who so far faces incarceration only temporarily in a “sex addiction” facility – is causing many in the film world to ponder the grimly Dickensian case of another film producer, Christina Slater from north London, who made the Bafta-nominated documentary Taking Liberties. Last July she was sentenced to four years in prison for tax fraud. |
| In this world, tough retribution is something that some film producers have thus far managed to avoid | In this world, tough retribution is something that some film producers have thus far managed to avoid |
| Along with others, she created fake invoices, claiming phoney deductible losses. When she was jailed, Slater was breastfeeding her three-week-old baby. That newborn went into the prison’s mother-and-baby unit. But since September, the child has had to leave the unit, having passed the age of 18 months, and live with family members – a separation reportedly devastating to Slater. Even if she is released on home detention the reunion will not be until February, and if not, next summer. Her lawyers asked for a reduction in sentencing due to her distress and previous good character. The judge refused. Well, this was a serious offence. We need to get tough with wrongdoers. But in this world, tough retribution is something that some film producers have thus far managed to avoid. | Along with others, she created fake invoices, claiming phoney deductible losses. When she was jailed, Slater was breastfeeding her three-week-old baby. That newborn went into the prison’s mother-and-baby unit. But since September, the child has had to leave the unit, having passed the age of 18 months, and live with family members – a separation reportedly devastating to Slater. Even if she is released on home detention the reunion will not be until February, and if not, next summer. Her lawyers asked for a reduction in sentencing due to her distress and previous good character. The judge refused. Well, this was a serious offence. We need to get tough with wrongdoers. But in this world, tough retribution is something that some film producers have thus far managed to avoid. |
| Lost in Venice | Lost in Venice |
| People who love the city of Venice adore a specific pleasure – wandering and even getting a little lost in its alleys and streets. Becoming temporarily lost in Venice is an exquisite, piquant delight. Yet this tradition took a weird twist this week at the Venice marathon. The motorcycle guiding the competitors took a wrong turn, leading the front six runners in the wrong direction. By the time they realised their mistake, they had lost two vital minutes, and Eyob Faniel – an unknown local straggling behind – won the race. Well, getting lost in Venice is most famously represented in the scary movie Don’t Look Now, in which Donald Sutherland chances upon a tiny, red-clad figure that appears to be the ghost of his dead child. At least the disappointed marathon stars didn’t have any supernatural encounters. | People who love the city of Venice adore a specific pleasure – wandering and even getting a little lost in its alleys and streets. Becoming temporarily lost in Venice is an exquisite, piquant delight. Yet this tradition took a weird twist this week at the Venice marathon. The motorcycle guiding the competitors took a wrong turn, leading the front six runners in the wrong direction. By the time they realised their mistake, they had lost two vital minutes, and Eyob Faniel – an unknown local straggling behind – won the race. Well, getting lost in Venice is most famously represented in the scary movie Don’t Look Now, in which Donald Sutherland chances upon a tiny, red-clad figure that appears to be the ghost of his dead child. At least the disappointed marathon stars didn’t have any supernatural encounters. |
| • Peter Bradshaw is a Guardian columnist | • Peter Bradshaw is a Guardian columnist |