So there's this long-standing debate about what killed the Soviet Union.
Internal corruption, the CIA, Afghanistan, climate issues, social unrest, the Vatican.
Everyone and their dog has some steak and some claim to the destruction of that country.
But ultimately I think it's a useless conversation. As far as I'm concerned the Soviet Union starts to die with Leonid Brezhnev. Much like the man himself the whole country was kind of on life support during he's 18 years in power and once he's gone it's just a Cavalcade of confusion chaos and a bunch of people all trying to buy for power.
Half of this film in the beginning is all these high-ranking officials who have been in Leonid Brezhnev Shadow for the last decade-and-a-half all positioning themselves in such a way as to either keep themselves safe during the chaos. Avoid being part of the firing squad or even lining themselves up for power.
Several the people mentioned will become General secretaries of the Union after his death including KGB directive Yuri Andropov and one of Brezhnev stooge man Konstantin Chernenko.
But all of this is external from what the movie is really about. The last days of Leonid Brezhnev himself and his declining health and passing memories as he re-evaluates his entire life with all the weird events that led up to him leading this stagnant superpower that has to import grain from Canada despite having more Farmland than any other country on Earth.
The movie has a nice balance between introspective moments of Brezhnev, dramatic conversations with his superiors, personal staff and past pretences of his life as he dozes In and Out Of Consciousness do to declining health and medication.
All culminating together to make a surprisingly well pact dramatic story revolving around what is in my opinion the most fascinating time of the Soviet Union.
Most people want to focus on the young days of revolutions and wars with extremely hard pressed dictators. But I find the bureaucratic stagnant nature of the Ageing bureaucracy to be infinitely more fascinating especially as you start to wonder how a nation like this was able to survive for so long.
It has fairly good camera work with a lot of dark tone filters and surprisingly simplistic shots of cityscapes especially considering that the movie supposed to take place 30 to 40 years previously. Alongside some phenomenal acting and surprisingly good costumes. They really nailed down a lot of the Prosthetics in the movie from the proper look of Brezhnev himself with makeup and his signature eyebrows all the way down to little things like what sweater he was wearing during one of his hunting trips and how he's composed is hair depending on the time of day.
A lot of the story within the first half of the movie seems to be jumping between Brezhnev's attempt at a resignation and this weird power Dynamic of Yuri Andropov setting up some sort of Scandal* revolving around the reduction in meat products.
All culminating in Brezhnev stopping off at a local store Village to pick up a single sausage worth of meat which is borderline inedible. The whole thing is played in such a way that you get this great dramatic tension of an ultimately fragile but hyper powerful man standing amongst a group of bewildered citizens who have never seen a senior high up government official in their life let alone the leader of the country.
If you like dramatic films based on historical events especially that of the Soviet Union than this movie is definitely up your aisle.
It's surprisingly well put together and it doesn't seem to play up the propaganda of Soviet Union as a positive. Luckily this was made in 2005 so Russia wasn't a complete and utter joke.
Sadly the current Russian Federation is really stepped up its game in propaganda again and I just don't think a movie like this could be made now.
At least not by a main Studio of the country. I'm sure this one I'm watching has some misleading information in it too. Especially given that it's a revolving around the Soviet Union which is one of the most this accurate countries to talk about.
My only complaint about the show is the English subtitles for it aren't the best.
And that's not the fault of anybody working on the movie itself, that's an external issue.
*I say there's an established Scandal but in reality it's just an economic system steadily falling apart and a bunch of people trying to either push the blame or use the catastrophe to push their own agenda. And it just adds that weird element of a supposed superpower that can't even feed its own people.
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