How to milk a historical crisis for a barrel of laughs
The Death of Stalin 15 cert, 104 min ★★★★★
Dir Armando Iannucci Starring
Simon Russell Beale, Steve Buscemi, Jeffrey Tambor, Michael Palin, Jason Isaacs, Rupert Friend, Andrea Riseborough, Paddy Considine, Olga Kurylenko, Adrian Mcloughlin
Depending on your point of view, The Death of Stalin is either a sly, wintry satire on Armando Iannucci’s usual theme of squawking political idiocy, or an insidious attempt to destabilise the Russian establishment with relentless dagger-blows. Such, at least, is the opinion of a high-ranking official in the country’s culture ministry, who has called for it to be banned. Even 64 years after Stalin’s actual death in 1953, the whole business is still, apparently, no laughing matter.
By all means, then, don a stony face as the film unfolds, resisting the gags and treating the demise of our great comrade, and preparations for his funeral, with the terrifying gravity they merit. Keeping this up even for a matter of minutes would defeat most English-speaking viewers, but might make the inevitable surrender to guffaws even more explosive when it comes.
Adapting the absurdist graphic novel by Fabien Bury and Thierry Robin, Iannucci and his writing team have run off with history and made a delicious mockery of it, not least by handing the roles of Stalin’s headlesschicken cronies to a multinational cast whose range of incongruous accents – American, British, in one case a riotous South Yorkshire – only add to the fun. If you can resist Jason Isaacs recasting the feared Red Army General Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov as a kind of banterous Sheffield hard case – basically Sean Bean, barging into the Kremlin and kicking up a stink – you have the fortitude of a missionary.
The film gets into its stride fast, with a concert-hall prologue that promptly turns into a hostage situation, when the still-living Stalin (Adrian Mcloughlin) phones in to demand a recording of the Mozart piano concerto he’s just heard. As Radio Moscow’s suddenly panic-stricken director, Paddy Considine is just the right degree of pitifully harassed while trying to keep his eye on the ball: it’s a small part, but sets the tone beautifully for the morose farce to follow.
The question of whether Stalin is or is not dead, when he keels over in his office after a Theresa-may-esque coughing fit, preoccupies everyone from execution-master Beria (a brilliantly grubby Simon Russell Beale) down. All the good doctors are out of town, and an anxious gaggle of amateurs are sent in to deliver whichever prognosis is least likely to have them killed.
Jeffrey Tambor’s pained Malenkov, the deputy named as Stalin’s successor, is a scream in his off-white suits and toupee, trying to muddle his way into the middle of a power vacuum with no idea what he’s doing. As Stalin’s children Svetlana and Vasily, weeping Andrea Riseborough and enraged Rupert Friend drop in on the crisis for a few quick scenes, venting emotions no one can handle, and becoming targets for transparently insincere shows of fellow feeling.
Iannucci has proven time and again, with The Thick of It and its US spin-off, Veep, his ability to uncover the vanity of power-grabs and the ways weak, grasping personalities expose themselves in politics. Quip for quip, the face-offs here match those shows in speed and finesse, while heading towards an altogether more chilling conclusion: the laughs are fully intended to stop dead at a certain point, as the actual import of the backstabbing and table-turning sinks in.
Steve Buscemi’s gloomy, calculating Krushchev manages more sour put-downs in a minute than most of us take breaths. It’s a smashing, substantial part for an actor who is both unanimously appreciated and often understretched these days. In terms of his film work, the same might be said for Beale, given far and away his juiciest screen role to date. His muttered instructions on specific murder methods are an offhand joy; so, too, his hissy fits when the manipulation isn’t going his way.
Perhaps Iannucci’s at his soaring finest when imagining the worst happening rather than dancing along the outlines of historical fact, as here. Still, the inspired casting and especially those accents – just wait for Isaacs, sprung as a midway treat – inflect this dense material with plenty of his own inimitable vision.
There’s a truly priceless bit of pure physical comedy right at the foot of Stalin’s coffin – a mesmerisingly awkward shuffle-dance – which brings The Death of Stalin’s gonzo pleasures to a peak, before this scrabble for supremacy tips, as it must, into a ghoulish horror show. If you were expecting a thigh-slapper of an ending, say hello to the upshot of Stalinism.