The Death of Stalin

In 1953, after Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin) suffers a cerebral hemorrhage, his inner circle vies to replace him. Interior minister Lavrentiy Beria (Simon Russell Beale), the brutal head of the secret police, vies to consolidate power with deputy premier Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor) as his pliable puppet. They are opposed by ambitious reformer Nikita Krushchev (Steve Buscemi) while foreign minister Vycheslav Molotov (Michael Palin), Stalin’s beloved daughter Svetlana (Andrea Riseborough), drunken buffoon son Vasily (Rupert Friend), and others are caught in the middle.

Written and directed by Armando Iannucci, The Death of Stalin has a divisive premise: Soviet atrocities as black comedy and nary an attempted Russian accent to be found. Some will see this as a tasteless and inaccurate attempt to make light of atrocities. However, a truer-to-history take may very well have been unbearably depressing. For those who can stomach Iannucci’s idiosyncratic approach, The Death of Stalin offers an equal amount of amusement and discomfort delivered by a capable cast.

Performances here are deceptive: many characters initially come across as exaggerated caricatures only to later reveal a more genuine (for better or worse) core. Buscemi plays Krushchev as mercurial and power-hungry yet also human enough to be disgusted by his more barbarous foes: essentially, this is his Boardwalk Empire character born again in Moscow. Tambor is hilariously ineffectual as the pliable, indecisive Malenkov, who nevertheless recognizes the impossibility of his position. Beale’s Beria makes for an inviting target for the enmity of political opponents and the audience alike: a scheming sadist and rapist who was somehow even worse in real life. Among the supporting roles, Jason Isaacs stands out as the medal-chested Marshal Zhukov, whose defeat of the Nazis emboldens him to troll everyone with aplomb while Olga Kurylenko lends steely defiance to Maria Yudina, a dissident musician.

This cast is given no shortage of quality material to work with, some invented and some only seeming as if it was. There’s Stalin commanding his cronies to join him in watching a Western, a room full of the political elite bumbling to decipher his dying gesture of pointing to a painting, Zhukov punching a drunk and ranting Vasily, and rival factions trying to literally outrun each other to appear at Svetlana’s side. The comedy is tempered by the realization that people were killed for the “crimes” of being in the general vicinity when Stalin expired, something the film acknowledges but relegates to a background event.

In keeping with history, the end of the movie finds Krushchev triumphant and his opponents vanquished albeit with an up-and-coming Leonid Brezhnev looking over his shoulder, ready to start the cycle of scheming and betrayal anew. This futility helps imbue the The Death of Stalin with a biting, fatalistic edge. Ultimately, it makes for questionable history but a darkly amusing look at ruthless politicians trying to out-bastard one another to victory.