The Death of Stalin: A Near-Perfect Attempt to Pull Comedy From Horror
Armando Iannucci’s comedy is brutally funny. It’s also unsettling and violent in ways that don’t completely mesh.
I haven’t seen Armando Iannucci’s previous film In the Loop, or his HBO series Veep. The Death of Stalin is my introduction to Iannucci and his brand of comedy. Before I go any further, let me say for the record…
I would never have the balls to make a comedy out of the end of Stalin’s reign in the former Soviet Union. The biggest astonishment of The Death of Stalin is not that Iannucci has the balls to make the attempt. The biggest astonishment is that he nearly pulls a Dr. Strangelove-level black comedy out of all the horror.
The film opens with a concert being played and broadcast on Radio Moscow. Unbeknownst to the people attending, playing, or broadcasting the concert, Stalin is listening. He demands a vinyl record of the concert immediately. Stalin assumes the concert has been recorded — when in fact it hasn’t.
Thus, the opening is a brilliant and hysterical commentary on the fear that Stalin’s regime has instilled in its citizens. The man in the broadcast booth (Paddy Considine) has to recreate the concert as closely as possible. To accomplish this, he has to bribe a pianist (Olga Kurylenko) who refuses to play again in retaliation for Stalin’s crimes against her family. He has to replace the conductor who’s passed out in the booth. He locks the doors to prevent patrons from leaving yet adds new patrons to replace the ones who’ve left. It’s a perfectly played sequence, frantic and funny, with dread hanging in the concert hall’s air like a malignant perfume.
Shortly after Stalin receives the re-recorded concert at his dacha, he suffers a cerebral hemorrhage and collapses, incapacitated. He dies a little while later, surrounded by his most trusted advisors and children.
Much of what follows is a highly condensed version (several months are reduced to days and hours) of what actually happened in the post-Stalin USSR. Stalin’s inner circle is finally free of the old man’s toxic gravitational pull and many want to end his most repressive policies, but also can’t help but nurse old grudges and rivalries in a competition for power.
The best elements of the film involve these members of Stalin’s inner circle, which include Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi), Laventri Beria (Simon Russell Beale), Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor), Vyacheslav Molotov (Michael Palin), and Marshal Zhukov (Jason Isaacs) continuing their bureaucratic fighting and petty grudges, while trying to manage the USSR in the wake of Stalin’s death, and also dealing with Stalin’s spoiled, entitled children Svetlana (Andrea Risebourough) and Vasily (Rupert Friend).
One of Inannucci’s best decisions is not asking his performers to adopt faux-Russian accents and behaviors — as a result, all the performers speak in native accents. It establishes a air of unreality which helps sustain the comedy while also distinguishing the characters. Iannucci also casts smartly, and the performances are superb. Buscemi brings a feeling of decency to Khrushchev while also underplaying the conniving weasel waiting for the perfect moment to strike. As the head of the NKVD (the state police force), Beale’s Beria is a diseased bulldog, always ready for a fight, cavalier about asserting and using force, and too willing to alienate everyone in his quest for power. Tambor’s Malenkov is a man who kissed Stalin’s ass for decades to gain his position and who has absolutely no clue of how to actually wield power or maneuver between competing powers; his hangdog uselessness is both endearing and terrifying. Isaacs’ Zhukov is a swaggering bully who’s learned over time exactly when and how to fight.
Throw these combustible characters together, played by skilled comedic performers, and then mix in Iannucci’s strong writing. The result is some classic (or near-classic) moments; the concert, the running joke of Stalin having soiled himself, Stalin’s final movements while bedridden, the autopsy, the state funeral, arguments over Vasily’s speech, the reunion of a long separated married couple. There’s also several throw-away moments involving soldiers, aides, maids, & families which are all highly amusing.
Yet it’s the kind of humor that leaves you uneasy — like you’re not sure if you should be laughing or not — because Iannucci never hesitates to show you the monstrous evil of Stalin’s regime.
I don’t think showing these terrible acts of state-sponsored violence is the problem. In fact, I think ignoring and/or underselling the violence would make the film offensive. However, the depiction is very heavy-handed, which is a problem for comedy (even a pitch-black comedy).
There are many scenes of people (often the same soldiers, aides, families) being arrested and/or executed in the background, while the verbal skirmishes between the main characters happen in the foreground. These tonal changes are tough for any director to pull off, and Iannucci isn’t always adept at moving from comedy, to horror, and then back to comedy.
I think this problem is especially pronounced in the film’s climax, when a major character is subjected to the same crimes he’s perpetrated against untold numbers of his fellow citizens. The sequence is not played for laughs (though maybe it should be); it plays instead like verite horror and it feels like the one moment in the film where Iannucci’s caustic nerve fails him. Instead of leaving the theater simultaneously appalled and giddy, I left The Death of Stalin feeling somber and downbeat. It’s the major issue I have which keeps me from hailing the film as a masterpiece.
The Death of Stalin is a nasty and mostly splendid piece of work. When the film stays focused on Stalin’s inner circle, their bureaucratic infighting and scheming amongst each other, it’s caustic, vulgar, and hysterical. It proves big laughs can be mined from the most appalling situations and moments, if you have the stomach and nerve for it.
My rating:
