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The Death of Stalin (Film Review)
Back when I was a student, there used to be this debate about whether or not you can create artistically successful comedy out of the horror of the Third Reich without selling its victims short, and the standard answer was that Lubitsch and Chaplin could (with To be or not to be and The Great Dictator respectively), but that both of them said they couldn't have done it had they known the full extent of the horror. Mind you, it was a very late 70s, early 80s debate; that taboo has long since been shattered.
Now, Stalin and his millions of the dead were always a lesser taboo, not least because of the Cold War situation in which I grew up. But I can't think of a good example of an artistically successfull comedy set in the Stalin era and using its brutality, either; movies like Ninotchka present their Russian communists as a strict, humorless bunch, but the worst its characters have to fear is prison. Well, The Death of Stalin is that rarity, imo as always - a hilarious pitch black comedy which does not shrink from, on the contrary, highlights the horror its setting and yet doesn't belittle the victims. The goings on around Stalin's last day and the aftermath of his death are farcical, but the atmosphere of utter fear and the destruction a totalitarian state wrecks on relationships between people on every level (including the husband/wife, parent/child ones) are tangible.
Like the trailer made me hope: no fake Russian accents, THANK GOD. (The habit of making actors speak in fake Russian or for that matter fake German accents when the movie or tv show in question is set on a location where the audience is aware the characters are talking in their own language to each other is a pet peeve of mine.) The splendid cast is in high form, with Simon Russell Beale utterly chilling as Beria, Steve Buscemi doing the hiding-canninesss-under-buffoonery thing very well indeed as Chruschev, Michael Palin as the ultimate company man as Molotov and Jason Isaacs in what is this movie's Harry Lime role (i.e. really little screen time, big audience impact) stealing scenes as an art form as General Zhukov. The "Stalin demands a recording of a concert Radio Moscow has just broadcast, since none has been made the concert has to be performed again to oblige" anecdote was familiar to me, though I guess the Stalin-loathing pianist who through all that happened to her is past fear (the only character other than Zhukov who is) is invented. But then, unlike many non-comedic takes on history, this film never claims to be oh so accurate only to then not to be, but unabashedly stands by its history-as-a-comic-book origins.
Mind you, given contemporary events, the difference between reality and satire has been lost anyway. While thankfully the only one of the current autocrats holding something like the same power over his subjects that Stalin did is the one in North Korea, the sycophantic public flattery and humiliation of minions rings oh so familiar, no matter in which direction you look (Putin, Erdogan, Orban, Kascynski, and of course the Orange Menace). That's another reason why I'm glad the director decided against fake Russian accents and went for US and British ones; there's no othering possible when it comes to the characters. Most of us (as in "us the audience this movie will likely have"; it's forbidden in Russia, which is telling) don't live in a totalitarian state in which we can get shot on a whim, thankfully. But more and more of us live with leaders (or aspiring-to-leadership-politicians) who keep rewriting the past as it suits them, conflate facts and opinions and demand public glorification as their due. No, this is not a historical movie.
Now, Stalin and his millions of the dead were always a lesser taboo, not least because of the Cold War situation in which I grew up. But I can't think of a good example of an artistically successfull comedy set in the Stalin era and using its brutality, either; movies like Ninotchka present their Russian communists as a strict, humorless bunch, but the worst its characters have to fear is prison. Well, The Death of Stalin is that rarity, imo as always - a hilarious pitch black comedy which does not shrink from, on the contrary, highlights the horror its setting and yet doesn't belittle the victims. The goings on around Stalin's last day and the aftermath of his death are farcical, but the atmosphere of utter fear and the destruction a totalitarian state wrecks on relationships between people on every level (including the husband/wife, parent/child ones) are tangible.
Like the trailer made me hope: no fake Russian accents, THANK GOD. (The habit of making actors speak in fake Russian or for that matter fake German accents when the movie or tv show in question is set on a location where the audience is aware the characters are talking in their own language to each other is a pet peeve of mine.) The splendid cast is in high form, with Simon Russell Beale utterly chilling as Beria, Steve Buscemi doing the hiding-canninesss-under-buffoonery thing very well indeed as Chruschev, Michael Palin as the ultimate company man as Molotov and Jason Isaacs in what is this movie's Harry Lime role (i.e. really little screen time, big audience impact) stealing scenes as an art form as General Zhukov. The "Stalin demands a recording of a concert Radio Moscow has just broadcast, since none has been made the concert has to be performed again to oblige" anecdote was familiar to me, though I guess the Stalin-loathing pianist who through all that happened to her is past fear (the only character other than Zhukov who is) is invented. But then, unlike many non-comedic takes on history, this film never claims to be oh so accurate only to then not to be, but unabashedly stands by its history-as-a-comic-book origins.
Mind you, given contemporary events, the difference between reality and satire has been lost anyway. While thankfully the only one of the current autocrats holding something like the same power over his subjects that Stalin did is the one in North Korea, the sycophantic public flattery and humiliation of minions rings oh so familiar, no matter in which direction you look (Putin, Erdogan, Orban, Kascynski, and of course the Orange Menace). That's another reason why I'm glad the director decided against fake Russian accents and went for US and British ones; there's no othering possible when it comes to the characters. Most of us (as in "us the audience this movie will likely have"; it's forbidden in Russia, which is telling) don't live in a totalitarian state in which we can get shot on a whim, thankfully. But more and more of us live with leaders (or aspiring-to-leadership-politicians) who keep rewriting the past as it suits them, conflate facts and opinions and demand public glorification as their due. No, this is not a historical movie.
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No, she's a real person (though who knows whether the anecdote is true):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Yudina
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