The War Symphonies: Shostakovich Against Stalin is all about one composer's (that would be Shostakovich) fight against a brutal regime (that would be Stalin). We've seen a lot of these types of movies before, heck some even current (most of them of course coming from China), but this topic never gets old. Communist Russia, for some odd strange reason, is fascinating to me, so this was especially interesting. Weinstein deftly handles the material using a wealth of stock footage not only of Shostakavich and Stalin, but of general scenes from Communist Russia (and best of all, from those old Communist manifesto musicals), and makes this film about classical music (usually a warning sign for me) passable.
