The main political players in Children of the Revolution--the ones who are still alive--speak in the present about actions we flash back to; it's a mockumentary version of the witnesses in Reds. The best extended flashback is Joan's rendezvous with Stalin at the 1952 Party Congress in Moscow. She has been writing political position papers in his honor--they're mash notes, really--and Stalin, played by F. Murray Abraham, gets a gander at her photo and asks to see her.
Abraham may seem like a bizarre choice to play Stalin, but the role brings out his gift for antic parody. This totalitarian butcher is one horny comrade; he sets up a private screening of a movie in the Kremlin and proceeds to lightly paw his companion as if he were a teenager making the moves in the balcony on date night. The pairing of Abraham and Davis in this scene, shot in a single moonstruck setup, is nutty perfection: His insane aplomb is a perfect comedic match to her can-this-be-happening-to-me? deadpan. She's both aghast and thrilled.
When Joan has her baby back in Sydney, we wait for him to grow into a Stalinoid monster. That's the satiric point of the piece: One bad seed deserves another. There's something abhorrent about making a comedy about Stalin, but you can't take the film seriously enough to work up much outrage. A true killing comedy would require a great deal more sophistication than first-time writer-director Peter Duncan brings to the party. He hasn't made a black comedy, really; it's more like a black spoof.
As the Party functionary who marries Joan and adopts her child, Geoffrey Rush gives an adept performance in the somewhat thankless role of the schleppy, lovestruck also-ran. Rush doesn't rush it, and so, given our memories of him in Shine, he comes across here practically in slo-mo. As the grown-up son--named Joe Welch--Richard Roxburgh manages well the arc from dissolute romantic to nut-brained junior Stalin. Sam Neill does his unflappable bit as a double--or is it triple?--agent. (If Neill ever decides to team up with Pierce Brosnan, theaters won't need air conditioning.) Rachel Griffiths, playing the police officer who loves Joe even after she realizes who his father is, is very good at seeming befogged by ardor. (She may need the fog, since her character's Latvian grandparents were murdered by Stalin.)
But it's Judy Davis who shows off the real ardor. She captures, in flashes, the devotional, haranguing tone of the true believer who has continued to keep the faith when the weight of the world is against her. She's furiously pathetic, yet her righteousness keeps its snap right until the end. "The worker's revolution is not a hobby," she yowls, and you don't for a minute doubt her. Davis can make Joan's ardor comic and still show you the passion underneath.
Children of the Revolution
Directed by Peter Duncan; with Judy Davis and Geoffrey Rush.
Rated
