In the middle of the 20th century there was a hard core of Western socialists who were
steadfastly determined to stick with their preconception of socialism's
superiority to capitalism. Their fanaticism reached such a point that they
ignored the overwhelming and ever-mounting litany of problems in the Soviet
Union while they denied or excused all of Stalin's crimes. The saddest example of
this group was probably Julius Rosenberg, the American who actually conspired to
help Joseph Stalin, one of the greatest monsters in human history, obtain an
atomic bomb.
One such person was the grandfather of Peter Duncan, the author/director of
Children of the Revolution. Duncan decided to write a script asking the
question, "What might have convinced grandpa he was wrong?" Since Duncan seems
to have determined that the answer was going to be "Nothing," he deemed black
comedy the appropriate genre to express his conjectures. Duncan took his
grandpa's politics and placed them inside of Joan, an intense female socialist growing up
in Australia right after World War Two. For decades and decades, Joan remained a
steadfast believer in both Stalin and the Soviet system, despite contradictory evidence which
was overwhelming, stacked by a screenwriter to a point of certainty that no real-life evidence could ever achieve. To
wit: (Or, as Snagglepuss might have said, "three wit, even.")
* When she was actually invited to the Soviet Union for the 1952 party
conference, she met Stalin and observed first-hand that he was a buffoon. On
their one night together, Stalin and his stooges got Joan drunk and performed "I
Get a Kick Out of You."
* Shortly thereafter, Joan had sex with Stalin, which apparently turned out to
be too much for the old boy, who died in their conjugal bed. Joan expected that
everyone would be horrified and saddened, possibly even blaming her for the
tragic loss of their leader. Instead, she observed everyone in the Kremlin, and
thus everyone who actually knew what was going on in the Russian government,
breaking out the champagne. Even Stalin's closest allies (Krushchev, Beria, and
Malenkov) were giggling like schoolgirls as they celebrated the death of their
leader.
* She was then exposed to the evidence of all of Stalin's murderous ways, from
sources in Russia as well as in the West, all of which she ascribed to
revisionist capitalist historians and/or counter-revolutionaries in the USSR.
* When the Soviet Union eventually collapsed and the obviously relieved Russian
people giddily pulled down the statues of Lenin and others, Joan watched and
declared it to be Armageddon.
* Here's the capper: she got pregnant on the night she slept with Stalin, and
she saw her son grow eventually to be a Stalin clone, a monster in his own
right. And still she refused to condemn Uncle Joe.
As I mentioned above, the answer to the original question was that there was
absolutely nothing in existence that could have convinced her that her
beliefs were wrong. There was unrealistically overwhelming evidence against her,
and no evidence of any kind to support her side of the argument, yet her will to
believe overcame everything. That is, I suppose, the nature of a true believer.
I've summarized the central thread of the film above, but there's a lot of
sub-text and a lot of other thought-provoking ideas. Take for example Stalin's
son. When he thinks he is the son of a humble Aussie carpenter, he sits around
laughing at sitcoms and mooning over a sexy female cop, in imitation of his
presumed dad. When he thinks he is the son of Stalin, he starts to act like
Stalin. (As it turns out, it is possible that he is not Stalin's son. During the
same night Joan slept with Stalin, the dictator died. A terrified and
shocked Joan ended up seeking comfort by taking another man, a shifty double
agent, into her bed.)
And there's a lot more going on as well, with every major plot twist derived
beautifully and logically (if often absurdly) from some other earlier
development. This is a smart little movie.
It is acted by a brilliant cast of some of the very best performers from
Australia and New Zealand. Judy Davis stars; Rachel Griffiths plays the sexy
cop; Sam Neill plays the double agent; Geoffrey Rush plays the kindly
stepfather; Richard Roxburgh plays the son. The only major role not assumed by
some major talent from the Southern Hemisphere is the part of Stalin, but in
that case the director specifically recruited the outsider he envisioned in the
part - and it was a masterstroke of casting. Who better to play a comic version of the absurdly
cunning, treacherous and intimidating Stalin than Salieri himself, F. Murray
Abraham? The F-Man outdid himself in this role, as he raised his Salieri
character to an even higher level of crafty villainy, a level so absurd that he
may even have outdone the real Stalin.
If the film has a significant flaw, it is that its tone is inconsistent in
several ways. In the earlier scenes, the script passes lightly over the hard
truths in favor of silliness. Toward the middle of the film, the screenplay
dabbles in the absurd. (One example: officials try to break a prison hunger
strike with the smell of sizzling, delicious bacon being prepared right in the
cells.) The end of the movie may require a hankie or two when it verges on the
tragic.
The performances offer the same kind of inconsistency. The F-Man's portrayal of Stalin goes all the way to obvious
farce, and his three lieutenants are so fatuous they make Gilligan look like
Socrates. Sam Neill plays the double agent with Strangelovesque
grandstanding, as if he were auditioning for the part of Number Two in the old
Prisoner series. (In fact, his character's name is "Nine.") Judy Davis, on the
other hand, never tries for a laugh, and does not even seem to be aware that she is
in a comedy. She offers an intense exaggeration of a humorless
neurotic as if she were asking Charles Dickens to contact her across the ether
and supply one of his familiar one-dimensional caricatures. Elsewhere,
Geoffrey Rush is completely natural and believable as a regular guy. All those
performances are eye-catching, but they seem to come from different films. This
dissonance seems to have come from the writer/director, not the actors, since
the roles seem to have been written that way.
Those criticisms are relatively minor, but they may have
a powerful effect on your enjoyment of the film. I loved what was going on in
the earlier, lighter stages, and that put me in a mood to enjoy more of the
same. I was thus deeply disappointed when the film turned dark and heavy-handed. I'm not
saying that the second half was bad, but rather that it's not what I was
expecting as I settled in my easy chair. The two halves may well be two good
movies taken separately, but they are very different ones, and I didn't enjoy
the second one specifically because the first one put me in the mood for
something else.
