The Death of Stalin
starring Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Paddy Considine, Rupert Friend, Jason Isaacs, Olga Kurylenko, Michael Palin, Andrea Riseborough, Paul Chahidi, Dermot Crowley, Adrian McLoughlin, Paul Whitehouse and Jeffrey Tambor
screenplay by Armando Iannuci, David Schneider and Ian Martin
directed by Armando Iannuci
Rating: ♦♦♦♦♦
I learned about this 2017 movie by watching a YouTube clip of a March 2018 interview with Steve Buscemi on the American late night comedy show The Late Show with Steven Colbert. Buscemi is one of the most interesting (or weirdest) actors of recent decades, so I was intrigued to watch him in what sounded like a straight role.
The Death of Stalin is based on the two-volume set of French satirical-biographical comic books La Mort de Stalin by Favien Nury, published in 2010 and 2012. When I recognized Michael Palin in the film, I felt sure it was an English film because the humor in it sounded and felt so English. It’s like, one moment the Great Man is alive and fearsome, and the next moment it’s “What do we do with the body?” It’s like killing a cockroach: one moment you’re angry and terrorized by the horror of it, and the next - after spraying it to death - you feel sad for its pathetic smallness. It’s the sort of English comedy I’d expect to see Peter Ustinov in.
I suppose that’s what happens when you translate comic book satire into a movie. The film is funny. I thought the humor was ridiculous in the way of English comedy. The clothes were drab and deliberately baggy, making these 1965 Russian communists look like vaudeville clowns. The behavior and interaction of the Politburo members was childish, selfish, petty and extremely dangerous - in other words, exactly like the contemporary Trump White House. Conspiracy and treacherous double-dealing were the game as Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi) immediately began competing with NKVD head Lavrentiy Beria (Simon Russell Beale), to push aside the party Deputy Chairman Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor) to claim supreme power for himself. Terror and extra-judicial executions of untold numbers of citizens were so common in Stalinist Russia that lethal danger lurked everywhere. The NKVD was known for its role in political repression and for carrying out the Great Purge under Stalin. It conceived, populated and administered the Gulag system of forced labor camps. Beria was a ruthless psychopath. How weird is it that so many crazy nut-jobs rose to exercise executive power in the 20th century? Hitler and Stalin were only the tip of the iceberg in that regard.
It’s like, one moment the Great Man is alive and fearsome, and the next moment it’s “What do we do with the body?”
The film has been called a “comedy of terror.” To clean house after Stalin’s death, people - household staff, military guards - were being executed on the spot left, right and center. And then their executioners were immediately executed on the spot.
The film portrays Georgy Malenkov as ineffectual, naïve and slow after Stalin’s 1953 death. I read a little about Malenkov on the internet, because I knew absolutely nothing about him. There seems to be a sound opinion that his character in this film was unfair, and that the real man himself (he died in 1988 at the age of 86) was intelligent and capable. He governed the Soviet Union as the Chairman of the Council of Ministers for a little less than two years - 1953-55 - before Khrushchev pushed him out and exiled him to a remote province.
The real competition for the top job was between Khrushchev and Beria. As head of the NKVD (precursor of the KGB) Beria had his own paramilitary force at his disposal. Khrushchev did not.
It seems that Khrushchev prevailed because he had the backing of Red Army commander Gen. Georgy Zhukov (Jason Isaacs). Resentment and competition between the men meant that the one didn’t hesitate to use his resources to eliminate the other - eliminate with extreme prejudice. Beria’s play depended on timing and surgical use of force, while Khrushchev’s play depended simply on overwhelming force and the secret consensus of the other Ministers in the Council of Ministers. This is the only role I’ve ever seen Isaacs performing outside of the Harry Potter franchise.
Beria’s downfall came because he was Stalin’s dog, and with Stalin gone he lost his master and his patron. The other Council of Ministers hated and feared him, so they eliminated him. Good thing, too, I think. Beria’s trial and execution were like Romania’s Nicolae Ceaușescu.