The Last Czars


 The producers of this documentary made a stylistic choice to focus on how out of touch the Romanovs were and how that led to their brutal murder at the hands of violent extremists. I think it ultimately fails because it focuses so much on the Romanovs and not the sufferings that policies created. It's easy to do this because the story is quite sensationalistic - a very sick child and a family coming under the influence of a cult leader. The parts connected to or indirectly connected to the family are re-enacted and the effect on the Russian people is described either through archival footage or interviews with talking heads. This does a very good job in showing how out of touch the Romanovs were, but it doesn't explain the anger felt towards them by the majority of the Russian population by 1917. I think a better choice would have been to follow more closely the character that actually executed Nicholas II. He's just introduced by saying yeah he thought the war was bad, there's a scene of him leading the mutiny. One more of him being in charge of the Royal Family. And then of the execution. That is a very well done and brutal piece of film making. The Bolshevik reads out the fact that the Romanovs have been sentenced to death by the Ural Soviet and Nicholas asks what does this mean - you've been sentenced to death - then he is shot brutally in front of the eyes of his wife and children. If you want to know more about the Russian Revolution, this might be a good beginning step.

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