Two movies, two deaths, two dictators - tears and laughs

[Jean-Marie_Céline]

Being two big history buffs, last Sunday me and my partner a movie night with two historical movies.

Two movies that despite their differences in mood and storytelling, conveying different emotions to tell the same premise the death of a dictator.

The first movie is Downfall,(2004) by Oliver Hirschbiegel and with Bruno Ganz, Alexandra Maria Lara, Ulrich Matthes and Thomas Kretschmann.

The second one, much more lighthearted and comedic, is The Death of Stalin, (2017) by Armando Iannucci, with Simon Russel Beale, Jeffrey Tambor, Steve Buscemi and Jason Isaacs.

What can these two movies in common?

First off they depict the death of two dictators that with their actions decided the course of history in the European chessboard.

But while Iannucci's movie is terribly funny, a "comedy of horrors", Downfall is wonderfully depressing and conveys the feelings of general feeling of hopelessness and death.

But there's a lot of death in the The Death of Stalin too, lots of people gets executed by the NKVD and at one point 100000 peasants that came for the funeral get gunned down (the real life reference for this was when a structure collapsed for overcrowding and an unspecified number of people died).

The starking difference is apart from the fact that Hitler and Stalin were different expressions of totalitarism, is that the Germany depicted in Downfall is a land in ruin, and the great Reich is reduced to the city of Berlin and a couple of strongholds; while the Soviet Union in Iannucci's movie is a power at it's peak, that has just started to be "the East" in the iron strongarm with the US and NATO.

What did I see of similar in those two movies?

Two incredibly polarizing but emotionally damaged human beings, who had no real friends save for few (Hitler's lover Eva Bräun and friend Albert Speer, and Stalin's daughter Svetlana and minister Molotov -.who he was planning to kill off anyway), that died alone (Stalin) or almost (Hitler), and whose death was not cried by anyone but exploited by the dangerous sycophants they surrounded themselves with - Bormann and Himmler in Hitler's case, Berija and Kruschev for Stalin.

This the thoughts that watching those two movies, so different yet so similar, gave me.

Talk about making two different pieces of clothing with the same cloth.

Sure, the Death of Stalin is so surreal and over the top that it's not believable, but when you research and find out that the stuff wasn't too unusual at the time, it surely spurs a little thought.

I recommend watching those two movies in chronological order - they'll make you cringe and laugh, see and think.

Thank you for reading this.

- Jean-Marie

[Electric_Dreams]

Wonderfully refreshing to not have everyone putting on stupid accents. That kills it for me now, just so bloody ridiculous when everyone is speaking English but with a crap, lazy, generic attempt at an accent that just sounds like some super villain shit. If it's going to be English language, just let it be how it would be if it were in English, which means everyone has their own freaking accent! Why would they speaking English in a stupid voice?

Both great films.

[Jean-Marie_Céline]

Very true!
The thing that I really liked about "The Death of Stalin" was the lack of cringy fake accents. The actors keeping it natural made the dialogue a lot more enjoyable and didn't distract from their performances.

[Logorithim]

A number of my relatives were persecuted in Germany by the Nazis, so I tend not to watch anything related to that era. But Stalin, yeah, definitely.

[Jean-Marie_Céline]

I understand that - my father's too had problems with the Fascists, and he has a similar stand to yours.

[Logorithim]

Thanks for the MHO

[BigJake]

Downfall was overrated, given that this part of history is so heavily trodden. It's not news that Hitler lost his nut in the bunker, and it's not especially entertaining moviegoing. I would have preferred to see a movie about Munich in '38. The Stalin movie sounds interesting, though I haven't heard of it. Must have gotten lost in the shuffle of the 300 comic-book movies that were made that year.

[Curmudgeon]

Perhaps that part of history is heavily trodden, but I found it an interesting take because it was based upon the memoir of Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge, " Until the Final Hour", and the film mostly came from her point of view.

[BigJake]

@Curmudgeon I respect that it's a first-hand account. I just think there are other ideas to be done, episodes that aren't as well known in history.

[Curmudgeon]

"The Death of Stalin" probably suffered from not being in sync with Commiewood. That said, it has some awesome dark humor done by stellar comic actors. Dark humor that is all historically TRUE as well. Nick Hodges' "History Buffs" has a great review.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG-tG-Wo0Do

[ChgzDaniel]

I'm a holocaust denier and believe Hitler was the good guy in WW2 so all three of these movies had a different taste for me. I watched them pretty much as they came out and enjoyed them quite a lot, even though I hate it when people use Hitler as the proverbial bad guy.

[Jackblue]

Russia banned "Death of Stalin."

[Secretgardenblood]

Good take