The Death of Stalin (Film Review)

[selenak]

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.

Comments

[ratcreature]

I've read though about some art house cinema in Moscow screening it even after the ban, so there is less of a grip on the media these days. And presumably pirated versions will be around too. You have to go to insane levels like in North Korea to fully control media. And I've heard even there smugglers traffic in US and South Korean media on USB sticks. The more realistic and depressing option is to get people to self-limit what they expose themselves too, because it is just more comfortable to not be challenged.

[moon_custafer]

movies like Ninotchka present their Russian communists as a strict, humorless bunch, but the worst its characters have to fear is prison.

It’s been years since I saw it, but IIRC Ninotchka did contain the line “The most recent mass trials were a great success: there will be fewer but better Russians.” I suppose it’s true we never really worry about any of the characters we actually see on-screen.

(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.)

I realized recently while watching a Fritz Lang movie that I’m slightly weirded out by hearing characters exclaim things like Gott in Himmel! even when the movie is actually *in* German and they have every right to use the expression if something startles them.

[taelle]

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.

No, she's a real person (though who knows whether the anecdote is true):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Yudina

[selenak]

That's true, alas. And not just for Russia.

[selenak]

Thank you, that's fascinating!

[monanotlisa]

Thanks for the review; I had been wondering!

[selenak]

It didn't start here in Germany until last week, so I couldn't watch it earlier, but it was on my list, after naraht wrote so enthusiastically about it.

[sovay]

Mind you, it was a very late 70s, early 80s debate; that taboo has long since been shattered.

I think it's still a pretty short list. Chaplin holds up, Lubitsch holds up, and Mel Brooks pulled it off splendidly with The Producers (1968). After that I start to have trouble thinking of examples. I'm sure there's something obvious I'm forgetting, but even so.

But I can't think of a good example of an artistically successfull comedy set in the Stalin era and using its brutality, either

I found John Hodge's Collaborators successful on both fronts, following the lead of Bulgakov's own work.

I have heard nothing but good things about The Death of Stalin. I'm glad you also thought it deserved them!

[vilakins]

Jason Isaacs stole every scene he was in (and I wish there were more). Representing the Red Army at the buffet [grin]. Zhukov sounded like an interesting character. I got a lot of laughs out of the film, but in general it was a very dark film about horrifyingly and casually cruel people. But very entertaining, which is sort of disturbing.

The pianist Maria Yudina was real, but the incident is unsubstantiated, though she did oppose the regime. I read elsewhere that the concert incident was true and the first choice of replacement conductor was too drunk to perform so they found a third one, but this was considered to outlandish to put in the film. Perhaps the whole thing is apocryphal, but who knows. It certainly showed the fear ordinary people had.

[selenak]

I think it's still a pretty short list. Chaplin holds up, Lubitsch holds up, and Mel Brooks pulled it off splendidly with The Producers (1968). After that I start to have trouble thinking of examples. I'm sure there's something obvious I'm forgetting, but even so.

I don't think it was often done successfully. But it's being done. Incidentally, I'd only add one name to your list as for comedies/farces dealing with the Third Reich directly, and that's a theatre play: George Tabori's Mein Kampf. Mind you, it's one of those "laughter sticks in your throat" cases, not to mention a "only a Jewish writer who lost his mother and a great part of his family in Auschwitz and experienced persecution and exile himself had the right to write something with this premise" case. Also I don't think I'll ever watch it again. But it is undoubtedly a powerful piece of theatre, and artistically successful. (Incidentally, there was a film version, but it flopped resoundingly, whereas the play is a recurring success through the last decades. Not sure what this says about the theatre audience, but there it is.

(Speaking of plays, there is of course the written-during-the-event Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui by Brecht, which he called "a historical farce", but I've never seen it performed on stage, so I can't say whether or not it works for me; I've only read excerpts, including the famous epilogue. "Ihr aber lernet, wie man sieht, statt stiert/Und handelt, statt zu reden noch und noch./So was hätt' einmal fast die Welt regiert!/Die Völker wurden seiner Herr, jedoch(Dass keiner uns zu früh da triumphiert –/
Der Schoß ist fruchtbar noch, aus dem das kroch." )

If we add comedies that aren't set in during the twelve years themselves but deal with some of their aftermaths, then I'd also add Helmut Dietl's movie Schtonk! (which takes its title from the nonsensical exclamation Chaplin's Hynkel yells into the microphone), which uses the rl event of the Hitler Diaries fraud for a biting satire.

But yes. Short list. Obviously this more than any is where personal triggers and squicks apply, and what works for one won't work for the other. But, for example: this is why a show like Hogan's Heroes doesn't work for me.


Re: Collaborators, I hope it's staged somewhere I can watch, it sounds fascinating.

[selenak]

It most certainly did. I also thought the entirely silent mini story that was told by the son denouncing his father and the father being spared by Beria's decision to hold the executions in order to gain popularity, then returning home to the son who betrayed him showed, in miniature form, the destruction the totalitarian state wrought on the most intimate relationships of its citizens (in this case, parent/child).

[rydra_wong]

I'm still digesting the film, but my god, Simon Russell Beale played Beria like he was born to it. And I thought Andrea Riseborough as Svetlana was amazing, and the dynamic between the two of them was somehow central to the film in a way I haven't yet parsed.

[selenak]

Re: Svetlana, I thought Andrea Riseborough played her always on the edge of a nervous breakdown but one that had nothing to do with hysteria and everything with Svetlana being aware in just what kind of world she lives in. When she asks Beria to "bring Alexis back" and he promises to but later has to admit to her he can't, it's the first defeat he has to admit; his fall has started.

[rydra_wong]

Yes, and, hrm. Thinking out loud here: possibly they're the only two in the core cast who are aware of and (to some degree) speak openly of the nature of the world they're in? In Beria's case because he's wholly monstrous.

[sovay]

Incidentally, I'd only add one name to your list as for comedies/farces dealing with the Third Reich directly, and that's a theatre play: George Tabori's Mein Kampf.

I have read about that, but never read or seen it. I will keep an eye out for it and remember I might only be able to do it once.

If we add comedies that aren't set in during the twelve years themselves but deal with some of their aftermaths, then I'd also add Helmut Dietl's movie Schtonk! (which takes its title from the nonsensical exclamation Chaplin's Hynkel yells into the microphone), which uses the rl event of the Hitler Diaries fraud for a biting satire.

That sounds amazing.

But, for example: this is why a show like Hogan's Heroes doesn't work for me.

Hogan's Heroes seems to have been cathartic or otherwise useful for the percentage of its cast that were Jewish and had fled the Nazis (or survived the camps), so on that level its existence makes sense to me. It does not actually work for me as comedy, though, so.

Re: Collaborators, I hope it's staged somewhere I can watch, it sounds fascinating.

I hope you get a production! I kept hoping there would be a DVD, but it never materialized. Maybe the popularity of The Death of Stalin will bring it back.

[avrelia]

Thank you for the review!

I've read some Russian reviews of the movie - from bootlegged copies. Some like it, for some satire and real-life horrors didn't work well together.
I was hoping to see it for myself - but even though it was officially out in March is States, no movie theater close enough to me was showing it. Will have to wait for dvds, I guess.

[sovay]

I forgot, because I was returning to this conversation after a week and a half, to ask if you have ever seen (or if have recommended to you) Anthony Mann's The Black Book (1949)? It's not a comedy, although it knows what to do with irony, but may be the oddest movie I've seen set during the French Revolution [edit: importantly, that actually works]. The themes of atrocity and power reminded me.

[selenak]

No, I haven‘t watched it, but from the descriptions it sounds highly relevant to my interests!

[sovay]

No, I haven‘t watched it, but from the descriptions it sounds highly relevant to my interests!

I believe the YouTube link I used is still live (and I hope still valid in your country). Enjoy!