[Doesn’t] succinctly explain how the USSR moved from the spectacle of lamentation it depicts to the disavowal of Stalin a few short years later, but it allows a kind of gentle guidance in sorting through the dossier of visual evidence that it lays out.

Both as film and as history, "State Funeral" stands as a canonical work.

In the loony seriousness of it all, "State Funeral" isn't spectator sport - it makes us active observers of a scary machinery, something to file away.

State Funeral broaches the fear and the massive mistakes Russians allowed in the Stalinist regime, but it reflects upon a world where tyranny is forgiven for the same reasons: a structure of convenience and money. [Full review in Spanish]