In the Loop

approach? I mean, it's an interesting question.

And I suppose coming after In the Loop, there's an interesting element to it because in some ways in the loop can be viewed as just horrifying and disgusting as this one because these are people who are working political day jobs who essentially start a war by the end of the film right and inevitably people are going to die and it's just kind of this the war machine is cranking away we're not seeing that side of it though we're not seeing all the deaths we're just seeing all the the paper shuffling and the arguments and everything else that kind of comes along with that and the political backroom dealings, etc.

This is much more close to the actual front of things.

And so we're seeing the people die and we're seeing the darkness.

It's ridiculous.

That is one of the arguments about the violence on screen.

And I think when you look at these two movies, In the Loop and Death of Stalin, together, I think Iannucci is making a specific point, even if it's unintentional.

In In the Loop, we get a position that says, you know, we're distanced from the violence, so we don't care about it, right? That is something we hear all the time about modern warfare.

Our conversation begins.

In the Loop is over.

Have you come to insult me in a different time zone? [Instrumental music] There are very few lines to choose from this movie.

[laughs]

...

I am, I am.

In the Loop and The Death of Stalin, I have seen.

Okay.

Next week, we are kicking off a new series looking at the filmmaker Armando Iannucci called Institutions Eating Themselves.

We start things off with his 2009 film In the Loop, a scathing British-American satire about a UK cabinet minister's offhand comment about the possibility of war spiraling into an international incident as spin doctors, generals, and diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic scramble to spin it, weaponize it, or shut it down.

It's got Peter Capaldi at his most brilliantly foul-mouthed as spin doctor Malcolm Tucker, alongside Tom Hollander, James Gandolfini, and a murderer's row of British comic talent.

That is next week.

It'll be interesting, especially moving from this series into our next one where we're looking at Iannucci and his satires that are also tapping into some of these things.

Like, there's a filmmaker who's telling some more timely stories, you know, with, like, In the Loop, for example.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I really like the idea of approaching it as a limited series.

weekend from 2011 that's my second to last

well the last one on my top list um is from 2009 and it's in the loop

He did not say unforeseeable.

You may have heard him say that, but he did not say that.

So this has got to go on the list.

Yeah.

In the loop.

I didn't even think about that one.