Writer-director Armando Iannucci, who created HBO’s political satire “Veep,” has with “The Death of Stalin” created a period satire that shines a light on the scrambling, flailing, and power grabs of the political cockroaches and cronies in Joseph Stalin’s inner circle, immediately following his death. It feels pretty timely in light of our current political chaos.
The events surrounding the 1953 death of Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin)—the second leader of the Soviet Union—starts off with a scene in a concert hall, where a piano concerto has just been performed.
Stalin, who‘d been listening to it on the radio, calls up the concert venue and demands a recording. However, nobody’d thought to make a recording, so the horrified sound engineer rushes out and bullies the departing crowd back into their seats, and wheedles, cajoles, and threatens the pianist (Olga Kurylenko) to re-do the whole concert. Saying “no” to comrade Stalin would, of course, mean immediate execution. On his watch, death squads are perennially rounding up “enemies” and shooting them.
Best positioned to replace Stalin is Lavrentiy Beria (Simon Russell Beale), chief of the secret police. The sadistic (and pedophiliac) Beria’s snide and bullying behavior does not endear him to the rest of the Stalin administration, and he’s soon targeted for a takedown.
No Russian Accents
The entire cast use their natural accents, which range from posh British to Cockney to Tambor’s and Buscemi’s American, with no attempted Russian accents anywhere, which puts it all somewhat in a Monty Python milieu, a feeling that is heightened, naturally, by the presence of Python emeritus Michael Palin in the cast.Iannucci doesn’t take the tragedy of the story lightly; we do hear gunshots galore. But all the gunshots combined with the constant, bumbling attempts of politicians to feign woe and grief about Stalin’s death while being secretly delighted, and the constant attempts to avoid saying anything that can be misconstrued by colleagues in the insidious way that communism loves to misconstrue—it all eventually functions, again, as a running gag with a distinctly Python-ian flavor, thereby highlighting the absurdity of communism.
The following bit of Python-ism, reworked slightly, could have easily fit in the script:
Dennis (Eric Idle): “What I object to is you automatically treat me like an inferior.”
King Arthur (Graham Chapman): “Well I am king.”
Dennis: “Oh, king eh? Very nice. And how'd you get that, eh? By exploiting the workers. By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society.”
Compare it to the real script:
Field Marshal Zhukov: Want a job done properly, you call the army. Take his belt off. It’s hard to run away with your pants falling down.
Nikita Khrushchev: (to Malenkov) If you want to talk to General Zhukov, now’s your opportunity.
Zhukov: Spit it out, Georgy. Staging a coup here.
Georgy Malenkov: He’s got a knife by his ankle.
Lavrentiy Beria: You’re a disgrace!
Lazar Kaganovich: Give his head a good kicking. Make you feel better.
Vyacheslav Molotov: All in good time.
Lavrentiy Beria: Oh, I’m gonna enjoy peeling the skin from your self-satisfied face.
Zhukov: (holds up the little knife and scoffs) Not with that, you won’t.”
Did It Go This Way?
The real death of Stalin most certainly didn’t go like it’s portrayed here, but who really knows how much backstabbing went on? How many of his supporters instantaneously morphed into power-addicted madmen?For those unfamiliar with the extent of Stalin’s dedication to the staggering death count of his fellow countrymen and women, “The Death of Stalin” is a painless way to take this bitter pill of knowledge. Basically, if Russians weren’t being arrested or shot dead in the streets, they were on one of Stalin’s lists to either be executed or sent to the Siberian Gulags.
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