The Death of Stalin | Little White Lies

The Death of Stalin

16 Oct 2017 / Released: 20 Oct 2017

Man in military uniform adorned with medals and decorations, standing with two other men behind him.
Man in military uniform adorned with medals and decorations, standing with two other men behind him.
4

Anticipation.

We’re extremely down for Iannucci feature film follow-up to In the Loop.

4

Enjoyment.

Mixes hard shocks and big laughs to often dazzling effect.

3

In Retrospect.

Maybe doesn’t have the re-watch factor of some of the director’s past work.

Arman­do Ian­nuc­ci plays post-Stal­in­ist pow­er grabs for laughs in this chill­ing, fre­quent­ly hilar­i­ous his­tor­i­cal satire.

Accents are a fun­ny thing, espe­cial­ly in movies. It’s the sign of a good actor if they’re able to sus­tain an accent and appear as if they’re not think­ing about it too hard. As if the accent has become part of the per­for­mance. Arman­do Ian­nuc­ci plays fun­ny busi­ness with accents in his mor­dant­ly fun­ny new film The Death of Stal­in, as Russ­ian Com­mu­nist par­ty appa­ratchiks are exhumed by a slew of British and Amer­i­can char­ac­ter actors who all retain their nat­ur­al accents.

In a few cas­es, instead of adding an oblig­a­tory Russ­ian lilt (usu­al­ly used in movies to denote evil), they’ll adopt a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent accent – Jason Isaacs, as Red Army Chief of Staff Zhukov, rolls into the plot late game sound­ing like Manc bard John Coop­er Clarke en route to a rug­by match. While it’s the type of dis­tanc­ing effect which may serve to obscure the film’s high­ly spe­cif­ic his­tor­i­cal con­text (the begin­ning of the post-Stal­in era in Rus­sia), it also works to empha­sise that this is not in any way a his­tor­i­cal film, but a barbed polit­i­cal satire that can be trans­posed to any place and any time.

It appears that Ian­nuc­ci has posed the ques­tion: what would be the nat­ur­al next step from the White­hall back­bit­ing of In the Loop? His answer is tak­ing that well-oiled and wordy tem­plate – plus the lib­er­al use of colour­ful invec­tive – and trans­pose it to the world of a mon­strous Euro­pean dic­ta­tor. A vast ensem­ble orbits around the dead-eyed schem­ing of Simon Rus­sell Beale’s Lavren­tiy Beria, who aims to be the last man stand­ing after the sud­den death of (cock­ney) Com­rade Stal­in (Adri­an McLough­lin). The boozy toad­y­ing is now no more as a race for sur­vival is on. But it’s far, far more com­pli­cat­ed than a sim­ple com­pe­ti­tion of per­son­al­i­ties, as lega­cies need to be for­mu­lat­ed, infor­ma­tion manip­u­lat­ed, wrongs right­ed and mem­o­ries of the old régime buried and burned, placed our of sight and out of mind forever.

There is a peri­od while watch­ing The Death of Stal­in where you have to adjust your­self to its near-the-knuck­le provo­ca­tions. How can a movie present some of history’s great­est mon­sters – men whose hands are pos­i­tive­ly soaked in blood – as buf­foon­ish oafs who treat the pop­u­lous with bald con­tempt? It is adapt­ed from a graph­ic nov­el by Fabi­en Nury and Thier­ry Robin, and it actu­al­ly comes across as a pop extrap­o­la­tion of real life atroc­i­ties. But in the end, its sen­si­tiv­i­ties remain in tact, because it still cap­tures the self-serv­ing awful­ness of these con­niv­ing dolts. It nev­er attempts to empathise with who these peo­ple real­ly were, or at least only tries to human­ise them to a lim­it­ed lev­el of acceptability.

Where Beria always retains a sense of polit­i­cal real­i­ty, his key rival Niki­ta Khrushchev (Steve Busce­mi) is the only oth­er savvy oper­a­tor of a bunch which includes Jef­frey Tam­bor, hilar­i­ous as the effete Malenkov, Michael Palin as cheery syco­phant Molo­tov and Paul White­house as tough-talk­ing Mikoy­an. Though it’s hard to think how the plot­line could be more com­plex, with char­ac­ters manoeu­vring at least ten steps ahead of their adver­saries, the machi­na­tions remain entire­ly abstract, as if Rus­sia were a giant chess board whose for­ma­tion is altered at the will of a few iras­ci­ble men.

The film is fun­ny, nasty and relent­less, but sad­ly not as fun­ny, nasty and relent­less as some of Iannucci’s past work. While the script is a thing of con­vo­lut­ed beau­ty, it nev­er real­ly feels like a piece of cin­e­ma, more a grand­ly mount­ed TV spe­cial or, occa­sion­al­ly, a big bud­get stage farce which is being broad­cast live. It’s a lot of peo­ple talk­ing in rooms, and for all the intrigue, in the end, there’s very lit­tle actu­al dra­ma. Yet, this also might be Iannucci’s most com­plete film, a work that dis­pens­es with quotable quips and clas­sic” scenes in order to built hearty, self-lac­er­at­ing laughs while star­ing deep into an abyss of abject horror.

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