Review: The Death of Stalin (2017)

Let’s talk about Josef Stalin. Oh, that’s right, kids, it’s going to be nothing but fun and uplifting topics for today.

What is there to say about the man who found Russia with plowshares and left it with atomic stockpiles? Besides, of course, the great real estate development he initiated with sprawls of misery-exploiting gulags? Perhaps it was the grand cultural contribution of ensuring everyone from Berlin to Tallinn would know the Internationale, whether they wanted to or not? Perhaps it was the military genius of ensuring his army was purged of anyone whose skillset exceeded that of saluting his portrait, moments before Panzer divisions would pay their borders a visit? Perhaps it was his fundamental reassessment of the value of human life as demonstrated in the fields of Ukraine, the forests of Katyn, and countless places besides?

Much like what has been done a fair few times with Hitler, it takes a few simple things to cut through the abominable acts of dictators and deny them the only true thing that matters, that of an a legacy to match their egos. Those things namely being shining to the world the absurdity of all they were and all they wrought, through the repayed ruthlessness of satiric comedy. 

That brings us to Amando Iannunci’s 2017 film The Death of Stalin, based on the French graphic novel of the same name. It’s a film that caught my attention quite quickly—the actual death of Stalin is an event my own grandmother remembers vividly first-hand, with all the forced mourning imposed for the ‘father of the nation’ (this was, I stress, in a neighboring nation that he was father to in at best the same way you could call Charles Manson the actual father of his ‘family’). In this case, the film is obviously not focusing so much on Stalin himself, but the system he forged, with all the paranoia, backstabbing, and cults of personality it engendered. And with the likes of Steve Buscemi and Michael Palin involved, it does so in the best way, by bringing the best blackest humor to forever bring down such a ridiculous house of lunacy.

The premise is spelt out by the title—it’s 1953, and after another night of citizens and party officials dancing around his whims, Vissarionovich finally suffers a stroke in his dacha, with his ruling Presidium left rather unsure as to what to do. Very quickly the film shows off its best feature, namely the casting—and the highlight is Steve Buscemi as future chairman Nikita Khrushchev, or at least initially. You can apply all kinds of historical pedantry to some of the choices here—Khrushchev was in appearance and attitude much more of a bulldog than the wiseass sardonic Buscemi—but for the absurdism on display, it works just fine. Not to mention, well, for the lines he’s given, there’s no finer choice for Buscemi, as he proclaims to the befuddled presidium about the ‘general secretary lying in a pool of his own indignity!’

Everyone else is also spot on for the roles given to their characters—like Jeffrey Tambor as an easily manipulated Malenkov, and of course, Simon Russel Beale who perfectly encapsulates the detestable lump of slime that was secret police chief Lavrenty Beria. This is one instance where the script ditches exaggerated comedy for something far closer to the historical record—seeing as Beria was, like Himmler to Hitler, the one who gleefully and willingly executed the whims of a tyrant, which from some angles might make him the worst of all. His becomes the antagonist position, and though none of these other communist party officials are exactly warm and benevolent people, its Beale’s perfectly hateful role that provides the crux of the increasingly farcical yet tragic jostling amid the Soviet government.  

This is, of course, before we get to Jason Isaacs stealing the whole damn show as Georgy Zhukov—a historical figure who, perhaps more than anyone else, broke the supposedly superior Aryan legions of Nazi Germany over his knee, and indisputably had cojones of depleted uranium for being someone who got to talk back to Stalin and live. Even though his screentime is reduced, every moment is about as memorable as someone with Isaacs’ scenery-dominating acting chops can make it. 

But, of course, everything we see is merely a preclude to the ending—which ends with an appropriately less than triumphant note of simply executing someone in a barn, in a very typically Soviet way of resolving things. Even if we see another monster dead, what we’re left with isn’t exactly a new dawn, and that’s the bittersweet note that proves just right to leave on. And, as the final shots show, even this was hardly the end for the political backstabbing rife in a regime where the party was beholden to essentially nothing besides force, and the will to use it. 

Naturally, the film was banned in several countries, including Russia itself, for, I guess, daring to present the 1950s Soviet Union as anything other than a paradise of Young Pioneers eating ice cream. I could rant about the eternally infantilized sensibilities of ultranationalists, but perhaps instead I could write an alternate version just for them, where Stalin gets better from a mere inconvenience like death, like any real leader, and then proceeds to dispel the notions of any ingrate satellite state questioning Russian greatness by shaking magic pixie dust from his mustache. 

So, all in all? The Death of Stalin’s great, and is definitely one of my favorites from the last five years—go see if it you haven’t. Of course, there is much more to think about with the legacy of one such ruler, who is still somehow well-regarded by, I suppose, those severely naive, or those who cling to brutality as their idea of moral supremacy. If only the death of such a man in 1953, after all he had done even to those serving him, would be the final end of such attitudes. 

If only.