Taurus

Two days in 1924. The leader of the revolution is living at his estate outside Moscow after a stroke. He has trouble speaking, cannot remember names, and has been shut out of his own decisions. Around him are his wife, his sister, his doctor and the attendants; all of them look after him and all of them watch him. One day a car is brought out and they go for a picnic in a meadow. Aleksandr Sokurov's film is the second part of his tetralogy about men of power in their last days; the first takes Hitler and the third Hirohito. Lenin's name is barely spoken in the film. Leonid Mozgovoy takes the lead. The image is blurred and close to colourless; Sokurov builds the film not as a history lesson but as the observation of a body that has lost its power. It competed at Cannes in 2001.