Taurus

Even more hermetic and impenetrable (albeit less offensive) than Moloch, the second film in Sokurov's tetralogy about influential 20th century men finds Lenin dying in a confiscated dacha, surrounded by his wife and sister, officials, servants, doctors and nurses, and visited at one point by Stalin. Of course, it's a meditation on power - its tendency to corrupt and destroy, its inevitable evanescence in terms of the individual - but it sheds little or no light on the topic, since Sokurov can't be bothered to contextualise for those less well versed than himself in the details of his subject's last few hours. Dramatically, it tends towards the inert, while the director's own camerawork - all long, woozy takes and pea-green tints - is merely an irritating distraction.