The Death of Stalin - This Week At The Movies

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Directed by Armando Iannucci (The Thick Of It, In The Loop, Veep, Alan Partridge), The Death Of Stalin chronicles the backstabbing Soviet power struggles brought about by the death of communist dictator Joseph Stalin in 1953. Based on the French graphic novel of the same name, it stars such acclaimed comic talents as Steve Buscemi, Michael Palin and Jeffrey Tambor.

Pros:

• It’s very funny, albeit in a dark, dark, dark, dark way. Seeing all these names from the history books – Georgy Malenkov, Nikita Khrushchev, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lavrentiy Beria, you know the ones – coming to sweary, treasonous, bloodthirsty life is a joy, in so much as any comedy with the backdrop of genocide, murder, racism and general abuse of power can be. It’s a biting, sharp, bitter satire, with its dissection of ‘thinkspeak’ and propaganda feeling worryingly relevant today.
• The actors truly relish their roles, giving the impression they are having the time of their lives barking and hissing lines, full of the typically elaborate Iannucci-esque insults – ‘flesh lump’ is a personal favourite – and seeing the cast bicker with such vigour really is a treat. A special commendation to Jason Isaacs, whose General Georgy Zhukov (using a bizarre Northern accent for some reason) steals scenes whenever he pops up and bellows at everyone and everything.
• You may accidentally learn a thing or two. To call it “factually accurate” would be a flat-out lie, but there’s enough there to get you poking around a Wikipedia page or two when you get home. “Did any of this really happen? It did? A lot of it did? My word…”

Cons:

• When I say it’s dark – dark, dark, dark, dark, in fact – well… it really is appallingly dark at times. Well-bottom black humour delivered this well is a pleasure… if you can stomach it. Some scenes, particularly the ones involving Simon Russell Beale’s psychopathic spymaster Lavrentiy Beria, will almost certainly put you off your dinner.
• It’s a nit-picky point, but Iannucci is tackling real-life historical figures with this film, and while that helps deliver more of a punch in one way, in another, it detaches you from proceedings as you realise – of course – that obviously what did happen didn’t happen quite like this.
• Has Iannucci’s Thick Of It ‘n’ Veep shtick of people-in-power-behaving-like-children-but-swearing-like-sailors started to wear thin? It’s bound to stop working completely one day soon, and here you occasionally can see the cracks showing.

Three word review: Despicably dark comedy

The Death of Stalin is in cinemas 20th October 2017.