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Hilarious hi-jinks in Soviet Russia as the politburo struggle to deal with The Death of Stalin |
Director: Armando Iannucci
Cast: Steve Buscemi (Nikita Khrushchev), Simon Russell Beale
(Lavrenti Beria), Paddy Considine (Comrade Andreyev), Dermot Crowley (Lazar
Kaganovich), Rupert Friend (Vasily Stalin), Jason Isaacs (Georgy Zhukov), Olga
Kurylenko (Maria Yudina), Michael Palin (Vyacheslav Molotov), Andrea
Riseborough (Svetlana Stalin), Jeffrey Tambor (Georgy Malenkov), Paul
Whitehouse (Anastas Mikoyan), Paul Chahidi (Nikolai Bulganin), Adrian Mcloughlin
(Joseph Stalin)
Armando Iannucci is a brilliant television satirist, who
spring to wider fame with the success of foul mouthed political satire The Thick of It (re-imagined as Veep in the USA). His sweaty, sweary, fly-on-the-wall
style, and characters who embody the panicked agitation of the nakedly
ambitious but not-too-bright, was a perfect match for our modern world. Does
the style work for the past? You betcha.
In Soviet Russia, a country near paralysed with terror, the
ruthless dictator Stalin dies. This starts an immediate scramble to succeed
him, with the leading candidates being weak-willed, vain and foolish deputy
Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor), vaguely principled but fiercely ambitious
opportunist Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi) and sinisterly sadistic police chief
Beria (Simon Russell Beale). Soviet Russia though is a pretty ruthless place
for political manoeuvring, with retirement usually coming in the form of a
single bullet to the back of the head.
First off the bat, The
Death of Stalin is a blisteringly funny film, a real laugh-out loud riot.
Why does it work so well? Because it understands that, hand-in-hand with the
horror, Stalinist Russia was so completely barking mad that it lends itself
completely to black comedy. Imagine The
Thick of It, but with Malcolm Tucker executing rather than dismissing
terrified ministers. Welcome to the madness. Events that seem crazy are pretty
much true: although time has been telescoped, the struggle for the succession
did more or less play out like this (with less swearing).
Every scene of this dark farce has a memorable, stand-out
line or moment. The sweaty panic of these over-promoted yes-men is brilliantly
reminiscent of the sort of panic you can imagine seeing in your office, with
the exception that it probably isn’t literally life-and-death. Iannucci completely
understands the wild improvisation of the fiercely ambitious in high-stress
situations. If you think the ministers of The
Thick of It were adrift when confronted with parliamentary enquiries,
imagine how their counterparts struggle when faced with the threats of a bullet
in the head.
Because that’s the great thing about this film – while still
being hilariously foul-mouthed, it actually gives a pretty good idea of what it
might have been like to live in Soviet Russia. The characters are constantly
having to adjust to who is in favour and who isn’t, what it is permissible to
think and say and what isn’t, who is “dead and who isn’t”. Iannucci totally
understands human nature doesn’t change – those left alive around Stalin are
just the sort of shallow, selfish, weaklings he’s been lampooning in The Thick of It. Most of the ordinary
people we see are just desperate to keep their heads down – getting noticed for
regular joes in this film is basically a death sentence.
The opening sequence really gets this idea across. Paddy
Considine is hilariously nervy and terrified as a radio producer ordered to
send a recording of the live concert they’ve just broadcast (unrecorded) to
Stalin. The frantic rush to reassemble the orchestra, fill the audience up
again with people from the street, replace the conductor (the original having
passed out in terror at the possibility that he may have been bugged
questioning Stalin’s musical knowledge) is brilliantly funny – but works
because the genuine expectation that doing the slightest thing wrong could lead
to immediate execution is completely clear. Especially as the scene is intercut
with Beria’s heavies rounding up innocent civilians to disappear into a gulag.
Iannucci doesn’t dodge the ruthlessness. The film is
punctured throughout by executions, often carried out with a black farcical
desperation. It doesn’t shy away from the brutality of Beria, whose violence,
sadism and pathological rape addiction we are constantly reminded of (and which
are even more effectively sinister as he’s played by the cuddly Simon Russell
Beale). In turn, a frantic Beria berates the rest of the politburo for their participation
in the orgy of killings and show trials Stalin organised. We see people about
to be taken to their deaths hurriedly offering terrified goodbyes to their
loved ones. The final sequence of the film, as the battle for the succession
reaches its end-game, tones down the jokes to give us an alarmingly realistic
picture of a coup. Black farce ending in death: it’s as legitimate a picture as
any of living in Stalinist Russia.
All of this is presented in a razor-sharp and witty script,
and the cast who deliver it are brilliant. In a fantastic touch, the actors
(with the exception of Isaacs) use their own accents, which only adds to the
crazy fun. The acting is, across the board, fabulous. Russell Beale gives his
greatest ever film performance as a grubby, ambitious, not-quite-as-smart-as-he-thinks
Beria, with bonhomie only lightly hiding his chilling sadism and cruelty.
Buscemi is equally brilliant as Khrushchev, who has the ego and self-delusion
to convince himself that he is the only hope for a reformed USSR, while
actually being a weaselly political player with naked ambition.
Around these two central players there is a gallery of
supporting roles. Tambor gives a brilliant moral and intellectual shallowness
to the hapless Malenkov. Friend is hysterical as Stalin’s drunken son, a
deluded man-child barely tolerated by those around him. Palin’s cuddliness
works perfectly as fanatical Stalinist Molotov. Whitehouse, Crowley and Chadihi
are also excellent, while Riseborough does well with a thankless role as Stalin’s
daughter. The film may be hijacked though by Isaacs as a swaggeringly blunt General
Zhukov, re-imagined as a bombastic, plain spoken Yorkshireman, literally
entering the film with a bang half-way through and bagging most of the best
lines.
The Death of Stalin
is not just a brilliantly hilarious comedy, it also feels like a film that
completely understands both the terror and the confused ineptitude of dictatorship.
In a world where it is death to question the supreme leader, is it any surprise
that his underlings are all such clueless, ambitious idiots? Has anyone else understood
the black comedy of dictatorship before? I’m not sure they have. You’ll laugh
dozens and dozens of times in this film. And then you’ll remember at the end
that when this shit happens, people die. This might be the best thing Iannucci
has ever made.
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