Man of Steel (dir. Zack Snyder, 2013)

An intriguing take on the biopic format. Some of the details here are deictic -- for example, the logo worn on the costume of the Trotsky-character 'General Zod' is clearly a Soviet Era sickle:

But otherwise the film chooses to tell the life-story of Iosif Vissarionovich entirely in fictionalised form, opting (influenced perhaps by Nabokov's Ada) to read Soviet history via the trope of allegorical Americana. Arriving on Earth after the destruction of 'Krypton', Iosif Vissarionovich is brought to (political) maturity by Lenin, played by Kevin Costner (who, as he ages, looks more and more like the original). His 'true' name, Kal-el, is clearly a version of his affiliation, 'Karl (Marx)'; although he takes a mundane name 'Clark Kent' to disguise his revolutionary ambitions until the time is right. For many years this Man of Steel lives in hiding, working at a number of commendably proletarian jobs; the world is not ready for him. But finally the true danger of counterrevolutionary reaction reveals itself: the fourth-internationalist threat of General Leon Zodsky, backed by the imperialist aggression of the Capitalist West, represented in this movie by a ruthless female second-in-command, several other faceless warriors, and a large amount of 'Star Wars' era advanced weaponry. In a powerful if perhaps over-long scene, the battle for the soul of the world is waged across one symbolic city. This place, the generically-named 'Metropolis', is clearly a cinematic version of Stalingrad; and as the battle rages it is turned from a gleaming urbs to a mass of rubble: towers, railway stations, industrial zones, everything is smashed and crushed. That no Western city ever suffered so comprehensive a destruction leads, inevitably, to the conclusion that this dramatizes in fictional form the clash between Operation Barbarossa and Operation Uranus. Indeed, I watched this portion of the film with increasing astonishment at the sheer level of civilian casualties such a battle must have entailed. How great the cost, in human terms, is the repelling of invaders from the Motherland! -- and the enactment of revolution that brings the Man of Steel himself to the attention of the world!

The casting was mostly good: Henry Cavil has some of the heft and physical bulk of Iosif Vissarionovich, although he plays the role without facial hair (presumably he will wear a moustache in the sequel); Russell Crowe plays Marx again without facial hair, but the opening scenes, in which he warns of the impending collapse of Capitalism and is ignored, is true to life. Amy Adams plays Rosa Luxemburg rather humourlessly: she works (as Luxemburg did herself) for the newspaper Sprawa Robotnicza ("The Workers' Cause") but otherwise contributes little to the struggle against the imperialist running dogs.