This is a strange insider's tale, that's for sure. A man named Ganshin was the NKVD's cinema projectionist (called the 'KGB' in English, but that is just a simplification of course for people who never heard of its predecessor) and was suddenly coopted to start screening movies for Stalin and his 'Inner Circle', which included the spy boss Beria. This is therefore an extraordinarily interesting and revealing film of that man's tragic story. Ganshin is played in the film by the American actor Tom Hulce, best known for playing Mozart in AMADEUS (1984). He does an excellent job, far better I must say than he did with Mozart. He has just the right amount of naïve credulousness and open-eyed faith in Stalin and the system to be convincing. He, like so many millions of others at that time, was a 'true believer'. Such people genuinely believed that Stalin was a kind and loving Father of the Nation. Such was the extent and success of the brainwashing at that time! Indeed, Stalinist Russia was so like today's North Korea that the resemblances are eerie. The personality cult of Stalin was all-encompassing, and the mystique of his invincibility and superhuman wisdom was wholly accepted by the mass of the public. This is why the portrayal of Stalin in this film by the Russian actor Aleksandr Zbruev is so incredibly effective. Zbruev himself was the son of one of Stalin's ministers! But in 1937 the father was arrested and executed for being 'an enemy of the people' in the Great Purge. Zbruev here plays the man who ordered his own father's execution. He plays Stalin as a quiet, modest and straight-talking man who very softly, like a priest or a sophisticated gentleman, orders millions to be killed. In other words, as a psychotic, Stalin did not rant and rave, he quietly killed people by the millions as if he were putting a baby to sleep in a cot. The total terror inspired by the man amongst his immediate associates is better understood when we realize that they were dealing with a quiet psychopath, who smiled gently at those whom he intended to exterminate minutes later. As for Beria, he is played with great subtlety and terrifying menace by Bob Hoskins. The film was shot in Moscow, using a number of the real buildings as locations, and directed by Andrey Konchalovskiy, one of Russia's most brilliant directors, who has also worked a lot abroad. He is known for SIBERIAD (1979), RUNAWAY TRAIN starring Jon Voigt (1985), and SHY PEOPLE (1987), which is set in the bayous of Louisiana. His film RAY will be released in 2016, so that he is still very hard at work despite the fact that he is 79 years old. Hulce's wife is played by the Canadian actress Lolita Davidovich. Her acting is very intense and effective in the latter half of the film, where her situation has become so desperate. There are wonderful Russian character actors in the film, such as Feodor Chaliapin, Junior, aged 85, playing the old professor who insists that 'Satan is in the Kremlin'. The story of this film is a hair-raising one and not easily summarised. The many tragedies are heart-breaking, but then very many millions of hearts broke under Stalin, not to mention the many millions of hearts which stopped beating altogether under his gentle policy of looking after his beloved people by means of mass murder. One is left with the big question to which there has never been an answer: why is it that most of human history has been defined by psychopathic leaders who commit mass murder? Why has this scenario recurred throughout all the thousands of years of recorded history with unerring similarity? A maniac gets control of a country and starts killing everyone and no one stops him. Millions die. Still no one stops him. Even more millions die. And even then no one stops him. Does the blame lie with those who let him rise to power? Does it lie with those who suffer quietly under him and sometimes worship him while the blood in the street rises up the level of their necks? Why is it that so many political leaders are psychopaths anyway? (There are plenty of them spread around the world at the present time.) This is a question which people ignore at their own peril. This film is a useful lesson in how homicidal maniacs seize and use power, and keep it by means of inspiring sheer terror.
Review of The Inner Circle
