In a Rotten Tomatoes list with best comedies of 2018, The Death of Stalin is on #6, after movies like Keep the Change, Bathtubs Over Broadway, Eighth Grade, and Oh Lucy!. That is insane! Nobody heard of those, I’m sorry. It seems that Armando Iannucci‘s movie is the best of 2018, and of 2017, the official released year. It is said that all the best comedies contain serious messages. Now The Death of Stalin is a satire and a comedy which is advisable to be considered as such. Seriously? There’s nothing laughable about the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century and his acolytes: Beria, Khrushchev, Molotov, Malenkov…
Steve Buscemi, Olga Kurylenko, and Simon Russell Beale in The Death of Stalin (2017)
[source of both pics: imdb.com]
Plot
In a time of deep terror and when the telephones were scarce if your’s rang was thrilling, because at the other end could be the Supreme Leader himself, and you never knew what his mood might be. Stalin is a renowned criminal for whom human life doesn’t value much. His closest associate was only Lavrentiy Beria, the chief of NKVD.
One evening, the phone rang at the national radio station. It was Him, the Stalin, requesting a recorded copy of that night’s Mozart concerto. The chilling thing was that there wasn’t one, some responsible guy forgot to push the button and… the event went just in the air. So, they had to keep the guests there, plus the orchestra, to fill the empty chairs with pedestrians and to replay the concerto. The lady pianist didn’t want to acquiesce no matter the pleas and death threats, her family members were already murdered or in some Gulag. She let herself be persuaded but she had a plan. When the soldier came to take the record, she inserted inside the covers a note in which she blames Stalin for his crimes. Eventually, he read the note and had a stroke. That’s not a spoiler since it is the set-up for the whole film. The movie is about how the Central Committee coped with Stalin’s death.
Cast
Steve Buscemi is Nikita Khrushchev, a future cleaner and actual chief conspirator. Simon Russell Beale is Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin’s Security chief. Paddy Considine is Yuri Andreyev, the national radio station’s manager. Rupert Friend is Vasily Stalin, a drunkard sun. Jason Isaacs is Georgy Zhukov, an army marshal, and conspirator. Michael Palin is Vyacheslav Molotov, the one with the famous pact. Andrea Riseborough is Svetlana Stalin, a daughter. Jeffrey Tambor is Georgy Malenkov, Stalin’s Vice President. Adrian McLoughlin is Joseph Stalin. Olga Kurylenko is Maria Yudina, the “brave” pianist. Paul Whitehouse is Anastas Mikoyan, a Committee member, and conspirator. When I say “conspirator”, I refer to a plotter who made schemes against Beria, AFTER the death of Stalin. With the tyrant alive, no one dared to even think of something. They were all a bunch of sycophants, probably except for Beria, who was Georgian, like his boss.
Directed by Armando Iannucci. Written by Iannucci, David Schneider, and Ian Martin, based on some comic books by Thierry Robin and Fabien Nury.
Trailer and More About The Death of Stalin
Armando Iannucci is the brilliant creator of Veep. The culture ministry of Russia has banned the satiric film The Death of Stalin because it makes fun of certain revered historical figures and symbols and events of the mid-20th century. Now, that was ironic. Which “revered” figures? Anyway, I am continuously appalled by the blur in Western minds. For them only Hitler is the bad guy they don’t joke about, one has to be Mel Brooks to dare that. Stalin, a genocide architect, is a darkish character, but he’s funny, and strong, like a bear, a funny little bear, we put his name on vodka, and he also beat Hitler, the worst character of the 20th century, right? Stalin, the former Hitler’s ally, was at the end of the war on the victors’ side, so his new Western allies, didn’t even think to punish him for “crimes against humanity”.
The Death of Stalin – poster
The Death of Stalin is a deep grotesque dark comedy, acted very well by all of them, funny or less funny.
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