The Death of Stalin

Watched this at the cinema last night and although I was looking forward to it and was expecting it to be good I was still pleasantly surprised.

Firstly: the actors all put in very believable and impressive performances. A joy to behold. Secondly: the plot is as intruiging as it is funny and really keeps you glued to the screen. Thirdly: this made me laugh out loud at least five times during it's run-time. You know: the sort of laughs you just can't hold back even if you try.

In essence this is a very dark film that makes light of the crimes against humanity all these people were actually guilty of comitting. Some people might find it offensive that they are portrayed as quite funny and engaging characters. But I think Iannucci does such a good job reminding the audience of the nature of these people that he keeps a balance and really succeeds with this movie.

Very enjoyable. One of the best movies of the year. I really enjoyed this - and if you like whitty dialogue, good acting and an intelligently unfolded plot - you will too.

You might think The Death of Stalin was a parody or a black comedy or a farce. We know that the actors are playing actual people some of whom lived until the late 1980s. The weird thing is the actual events depicted in the movie happened in some form.

In real life, when Stalin was lying on the floor in his soiled pajamas after he suffered a stroke. They needed to call a meeting to decide whether to call a doctor. Stalin's personal physician was unavailable as he was being tortured at the time for suggesting Stalin needed more bed rest.

Armando Iannucci mines comedy gold in an absurd, surreal, darkly violent tale of who wants to be the next leader of the Soviet Union. It is not a historical tale, it is a story of what can happen in any society where dogma and the bullet become the main currencies.

A dark comedic depiction of the terror inflicted by Stalin and those around him. As utterly bizarre and bad taste as that sounds, this is utterly fantastic. The cast as incredible as you'll see in any film, Buscemi and Beale especially, but really, everyone is flawless. The dialogue is hysterically delivered without even the hint of a Russian accent and the whole thing has an air of farce, but one surrounded with firing squads, power struggles and gulags. Only Simon Russel Beale as Beria really terrifies, with back stabbing, double crossing and a plot as twisted as the deceptions on screen, but really it's Jason Issacs that steals the show, his entrance and performance is nothing short of majestic! Hello!!

8/10

This is not the film I was expecting. Knowing that it was both written and directed by the British Armando Iannucci who gave us the outrageous delights of "In The Loop", "The Thick of It" and Veep", I thought that I was going to encounter a full-blown, satirical comedy (and the trailer had confirmed this impression), but instead - while there are certainly plenty of laughs from a sharp script - this is an altogether darker work, full of foreboding, terror and casual slaughter, than I was anticipating. It is not just the tone that is off-kilter; the brilliant cast makes no attempt to effect a Russian accent but offers everything from a Yorkshire accent to an unashamedly American one.

Several of the characters (the dictator himself played by Adrian McLoughlin) and his eventual successor Khruschev (Steve Buscemi) are known to everyone, but others - like war hero Zhukov (Jason Isaacs) and spy chief Beria (Simon Russell Beale) - will be less-known and still others - such as Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor) and Molotov (Michael Palin) - will be unfamiliar to many viewers, so you need to be something of an enthusiast for Soviet history to pick up on all the allusions. And real historians will rightly challenge some of the detail because there are some major errors (although these might rather be deliberate distortions to enhance the plot). Iannucci has moved from contemporary Whitehall and Washington to take us to Moscow in 1953 but, if we were expecting "Carry On Up The Kremlin", we have something much more gut-wrenching and all the more effective.

A few weeks before the release of this film, I was in Georgia and visited Gori, the town near where Stalin was born. The year after Khruschev denounced Stalin, a museum was opened in the town to venerate Stalin's leadership and essentially (and astonishingly) the messaging remains unchanged to this day. Oh, how I wish they could show this chilling movie at that museum.

"The Death of Stalin" is a somewhat fact-based film. In other words, it tries its best to recreate the events around the time of Stalin's death, though the sources aren't exactly unbiased or 100% truthful....and sometimes the writers needed to infer what was said and done behind closed doors. Look at it as the best guess as to the events instead....and in this sense and many others the movie is marvelous and very well made.

The story begins shortly before Stalin's death from a cerebral hemorrhage. The machinations before and especially after are what is intriguing about the story....and how various evil scum surrounding Stalin all vied for power after his demise. It culminates with a very vivid and bloody scene...of a man who truly deserved his fate but watching it is NOT for the faint of heart.

Apart from a bit of violence that might be off-putting (after all, the Stalinist regime was one of the most brutal and bloody in history), the film is a delight to watch. Excellent acting, amazing makeup and an interesting story all work together to make a really exciting film...well worth seeing.