'Taurus'

[Daymare17]

Have any Russian comrades seen this film?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/story/0,3604,468605,00.html

Now that the Soviet imagery of Lenin has been toppled, the last agonised months of his life have been reclaimed for public consumption. This is the subject of Alexander Sokurov's new film, Taurus, recently shown to a small Moscow audience in preparation for its Cannes debut. For the first time in Russian cinema the reverence demanded by the creators of Lenin's personality cult has been abandoned. In place of adoring respect, there is harsh realism - only not the socialist variety. The 53-year-old Lenin is shown as a broken figure, crazed, rambling and unable to recognise even the distinctively sinister figure of Josef Stalin.

...Taurus is the second film in Sokurov's planned quartet about the 20th century's most powerful rulers. The first, Moloch, was a human portrayal of Hitler at home with Eva Braun in his last weeks in power. In both works, Sokurov focuses on the intense dissatisfaction experienced by the leaders as they reflect on what they have achieved. "These are people whose lives have not worked. These were deeply unhappy human experiences - from childhood to the last days of their lives. Both attempted to change the world by violently interfering with people's lives. Neither achieved his ends," he says. "I feel very sorry for them."

...Despite the director's desire to inspire pity and not censure, it's hard to feel too sorry for the dying Lenin. His powerful thirst for violence imbues the entire film. When he wakes up in the morning he asks his wife to read to him about different forms of punishment, about how the flesh falls from the human form after a certain amount of beating; when they sit together picnicking in a field, she reads to him in a comforting voice about death and torture.

And from another article http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,596809,00.html

Taurus is set in Gorky in 1923, one year before Lenin's death and six years after the Bolshevik Revolution. Incapacitated after an operation to remove a bullet from his neck - Lenin was the target of an assassination attempt in August 1918 - Sokurov's Lenin battles against the effects of several strokes. He is allowed no telephone calls, no post and no contact with the outside world. And kept under guard by the Politburo's secret police, he contemplates suicide, rants against Jews, visits prostitutes and is treated as an insignificant figure by Stalin.

Sounds enticing...

[nordicmarxist]

I have seen the film in sweden. I have also seen other films by the same director.

The director is talented but is a total reactionary. He is a conservative who looks back on the great days of the tsar.

Obviosuly he hates Lenin.

The film is quite boring, very slow you wittnes Lenin very sick he is an old man who sometimes very angry on people around him. I think i left before the film was over.
Nothing interisting is being sad about Lenin.

The same director has made film which is shot in Erimetaget which also is filled by the same conservative feeling, this film is more interesting to watch from a cinematic view. The film is called russian arc.