One might not expect the death of Josef Stalin and the subsequent maneuvering of his cronies to make for a savagely funny movie, but that is exactly what writer-director Armando Ianucci has accomplished in in The Death of Stalin. In his Veep and In the Loop, Ianucci has proved himself an expert in mocking the ambition, venality and flattery of those reaching for power. In The Death of Stalin, he adds terror to his quiver of motivations, and the result is darkly hilarious.
Serving Stalin was a high-wire act. By the end of Stalin’s Great Terror, everyone still standing in the Soviet leadership had survived by flattering Stalin and by loyally carrying out every Stalin command, no matter how misguided and/or murderous. Given that the slightest misstep – or even a wholly imagined fragment of Stalin’s paranoia – could lead to a summary bullet-in-the-head, this was no small achievement. These may have been the most powerful men at the very top of a superpower, but they have all been traumatized into extreme caution by years of fear.
For example, when Stalin suffers a cerebral hemorrhage and falls to the floor, his guards are afraid to burst into his room. When Stalin is discovered on the floor by his housekeeper, the regime’s top leaders gather around him and decide on next steps. The first question is whether to call a doctor, because they fear that if Stalin wakes up and finds that someone else has made a decision, he will have them executed. (Once they get past that, they must work around the fact that Stalin has already killed or exiled all the competent doctors in Moscow.)
Of course, it would be absurd for Stalin’s inner circle to refrain from calling a doctor for hours and hours. But it really happened. So did all of the other key occurrences in the movie, although the events were compressed from the real six months into a three-day movie plot.
This cast is brilliant. Steve Buscemi is cast as Nikita Kruschev and proves to be an inspired choice. Jason Isaacs, with a ridiculously broad (but historically accurate) chest full of medals, is especially delightful as Field Marshal Zhukov. Michael Palin, as Molotov, has one of the best bits as he deadpans political correctness while figuring out whether he can admit that the sudden release of his imprisoned wife is really good news. Each one of the actors – Simon Russell Beale, Olga Kuryenko, Paddy Considine, Jeffrey Tambor, Andrea Riseborough – gets to shine with Ianucci’s dialogue.
This is gallows humor from the highest of scaffolds. The Death of Stalin is an insightful exploration of terror – and hilarious, too.