Movie Review: The Death of Stalin

The Death of Stalin **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Armando Iannucci.

Written by: Armando Iannucci and David Schneider and Ian Martin and Peter Fellows based on the comic book by Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin and the original screenplay by Nury.

Starring: Steve Buscemi (Nikita Khrushchev), Simon Russell Beale (Lavrentiy Beria), Paddy Considine (Comrade Andreyev), Rupert Friend (Vasily Stalin), Jason Isaacs (Georgy Zhukov), Michael Palin (Vyacheslav Molotov), Andrea Riseborough (Svetlana Stalina), Jeffrey Tambor (Georgy Malenkov), Adrian McLoughlin (Joseph Stalin), Olga Kurylenko (Maria Yudina), Paul Whitehouse (Anastas Mikoyan), Paul Chahidi (Nikolai Bulganin), Dermot Crowley (Lazar Kaganovich), Justin Edwards (Spartak Sokolov), Richard Brake (Tarasov), Jonathan Aris (Mezhnikov).

 

Writer/director Armando Iannucci has made his career making hilarious, biting political satire – TV shows like The Thick of It and Veep, and a movie In the Loop, that pretty much depicted all their characters as awful, self-interested and petty people who are really above nothing if it will help further their career. In The Death of Stalin, Iannucci pretty much takes this approach to the extreme – depicting the aftermath of the death of Josef Stalin, and the backstage struggle for power among the many men who wanted to replace them. They will do anything to get ahead – even so far as putting a bullet in the head of their former friend, no enemy at a moment’s notice. Iannucci’s approach here is similar to his other projects – but this time, the violence in up close and personal, so while the movie is as funny anything he’s ever done, the laughs often get caught in your throat. It’s a difficult type of satire to pull off – Kubrick did it best with Dr. Strangelove – Iannucci does it just about as well as anyone who isn’t Kubrick could.

 

The movie opens at the Orchestra – where they have just finished playing Mozart – that has gone out live on the radio. The station manager (Paddy Considine) gets a call – Stalin wants a copy of the night’s performance sent to him – the only problem being, no one recorded it. Rushing into action, Considine has to prevent all the musicians, and as many of the audience as possible, from leaving (finding random people outside – preferably fat ones - to fill in as many seats as possible) and do the whole thing all over again. It’s a funny sequence because of Considine’s manic rush to do it all – and the banter with his co-worker about when “17 minutes started” – but death hangs over it then. It’s imperative he get this done, because he doesn’t want to end up on one of Stalin’s lists – lists that will pretty much end with you being drug out into the street and shot.

 

The rest of the movie is basically comic palace intrigue – as Stalin dies, and there is a rush to fill the vacuum of power he left behind. His second in command – Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor) takes over, but he’s a complete and total idiot – a puppet controlled by the head of the security forces, Beria (Simon Russell Beale). Beria’s main competition for power is Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi) – who genuinely does want to reform the Soviet Union – and sees this as his chance that he will do anything to seize. They – among others – start trying to get the rest of the council, and the army, and Stalin’s children, to all fall in line behind them. The stakes are high – if they fail, they will die – but the kinds of misunderstandings and verbal gymnastics they have to go through brings to mind the Marx brothers.

 

Iannucci makes the smart decision to let all the different actors to speak in their own accents. Most of the cast is British – which makes Buscemi, sounding like a gangster, stand out even more. It’s doubtful that making this terrific cast (it’s one of the best ensembles of the year) speak with Russian accents would have helped anything – for one thing, when Westerners do a Russian accent, they usually sound like they are hunting “moose and squirrel” – and for another, Iannucci’s dialogue is tricky enough without it.

 

The Death of Stalin is hilarious – it’s one of the most quotable movies of the year, with one-liners galore, delivered by an amazing cast Buscemi and Beale get best-in-show, but there isn’t a bum performance here, from Tambor’s stupidly, to Michael Palin, who just won’t shut up, to Jason Isaacs going over the top as the brash head of the army. But the film is also chilling in its way – it pulls no punches in its depiction of violence – people getting shot in the head, or beaten and tortured, etc. This is Iannucci taking his approach to the breaking point. Perhaps even more daringly, he doesn’t seem to hate these people – well, not all of them – and recognizes that they are all just playing the game that is before them – Khrushchev most of all (at least he’s not a pedophile).

 

The Death of Stalin goes for broke, and that’s why it’s one of the best political satires of its sort in recent years. It recognizes both the violence in these politicians – the lust for power, and how they justify it to themselves.