Amazon.com: Here's an intriguing little premise: Inside Stalin's Kremlin, as seen by... his movie projectionist! Now that's glasnost. As played by Tom Hulce, he's an optimistic little dweeb who believes that Fearless Leader has only his best interests at heart. Most of the film is about his waiting to do his job, getting occasional glimpses of Uncle Joe, not realizing that, when the ruthless dictator finally does engage him in conversation, Stalin might as well be talking to a bug. Bob Hoskins pops up as Berea, head of the KGB and master of deceit--but mostly he wags his eyebrows and looks amused. It's a long slog to the finish, but then, that's true of almost all of director Andrei Konchalovsky's films. --Marshall Fine
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Rating: - When is this EXCELLENT movie going to be released on DVD?
This movie is to me Andrei Konchalovsky at his very best.
One of the darkest periods of the Russian history told through the eyes of the innocent Ivan Sanshin. Communist Joseph Stalin purportedly killed millions of fellow Russians through famines, executions, deportations, and in the Gulag, most of them for political reasons. No opposition was allowed whatsoever, and Russia experienced the horrors of a blood-thirsty despotic regime with an asphyxiating cult to the "leaders'" persona.
As we see Ivan Sanshin's story develop in the movie (Tom Hulce), we can't help but wonder how many peoples along history have blindfoldedly fallen in the depths of savage and ruthless regimes?
How many more will keep falling?
We have lessons to learn from "The Inner Circle" particularly in countries where rise of totalitarisms (this time with the dangerous ingredient of populism ... Read More
Rating: - When the result is minor than the sum of the parts!
This is one of these films in which the dimension of the script simply did not cover all the expectations; there was so much to grasp beneath this interesting plot but the one -dimensional approach of the main character and the anecdotic character weakens it deadly.
Rating: - An eyewitness to history---behind Stalin's own Curtain.
Buzz, buzz, goes the doorbell. A man in his underwear rises to answer the summons in the dead of night, leaving his new bride in bed. "Comrade Sanshin?" the uniformed agent of the KGB asks, as the door opens. "Sir!" Sanshin responds. "You'll be coming with us", the uniform announces. "Where are you taking me, Sanshin asks, nervously; thinking of his neighbor who had just recently been taken away in the middle of the night. "No questions," says the uniform, adding, "we must leave immediately." Toward the waiting car downstairs they go, Sanshin declaring that "there must be some mistake. I've done nothing wrong." His neighbor, having been arrested for being 'an enemy of the people' leads Sanshin to state, "I've had no contact with foreigners"---the charge leveled against that neighbor. They get into the black official car and begin to move through streets wet from recent rain. Through semi-fogged windows ... Read More
Rating: - Haunting movie
Even though this movie is very long and at times can be viewed as depressing, I think this is my all-time fave movie. Ever since the first time I saw it on the History Channel in July of 1996, coming on it during the scene where Ivan is first meeting Stalin and saying his hands are shaking because it's the first time he's stood so close to him, I've been enraptured by it, and always watched it from then on out whenever the History Channel showed it during Movies in Time. Thankfully I videotaped it in June of 1997 and got all of the quotes and commentary on the movie between commercial breaks (such as the quote from director Konchalovskiy about how he wanted to portray terror by showing the arrest of a single Jewish intellectual in lieu of mountains of dead bodies), as well as the interview and movie discussion with Daniel Pipes that took place right after the movie ended, stuff specific only to the History Channel's ... Read More
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- When the result is minor than the sum of the parts!
