“The Death of Stalin” is a precarious comedic experiment

By N.P.B.

THE men guarding Josef Stalin at his dacha in the suburbs of Moscow were under strict instructions not to disturb him under any circumstances. The Soviet dictator would often watch Westerns into the small hours, reappearing at lunchtime the next day. He was also known to sleep on any one of a series of futons located in random bedrooms and offices throughout the building, supposedly to frustrate a would-be assassin.

So when he failed to emerge on March 1st 1953, nobody looked for him. By the time he was discovered, he had spent hours on the floor of his study in a semi-conscious state, having succumbed to a burst blood vessel in the brain. A year earlier, Stalin had decided that warnings about his health were part of a Jewish conspiracy to kill members of the ruling praesidium. A revolution, two world wars and three decades of scheming against his comrades had clearly taken its toll on the general secretary’s grip on reality.

The backdrop of suspicion and paranoia acts as a perfect playground for the comedic talents of Armando Iannucci, the creator of “The Thick of It”, “In the Loop” and “Veep”. His new film, “The Death of Stalin”—adapted from a French graphic novel by Fabien Nury—follows the dictator’s last hours. As a mute and moribund Stalin drifts in and out of consciousness, his petrified praesidium starts planning for what might follow.

In the ensuing Machiavellian match, it quickly becomes clear that the murderous Lavrenti Beria (Simon Russell Beale) represents the greatest threat. As head of the secret police (NKVD), he has the power to arrest and execute his enemies. Beria has looted Stalin’s private records, destroying evidence of his own cruelty while clinging on to the documents indicating the complicity of his colleagues in the USSR’s numerous atrocities. Now he has the muscle and the dirt to destroy his rivals and take power.

When Stalin finally dies, an ethereal Georgy Malenkov, played by Jeffrey Tambor, attempts to fill his shoes. But he utterly fails to stamp his authority on the situation, coming across as an overwhelmed supply teacher charged with controlling a chaotic inner-city classroom. If Beria’s despotism is to be prevented, aspiring reformist Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi) will have to be the man to do it—but not before organising the funeral of the century in Red Square.

The subsequent farce plays out as an intriguing and precarious comedic experiment. Filmed and written with the same cinematic style and tone of “The Thick of It”, Mr Iannucci’s adaptation collects more than enough of the story’s low-hanging fruit to please its audience. As the characters hunch over the ailing Stalin, they are worried about what might happen if their fallen demigod dies—and are equally terrified of what he might do to them if he wakes up. As they prepare for his funeral, they all appear eager to move away from the barbarism of the dictatorship while struggling to openly acknowledge that Stalin ever did anything wrong. The cognitive dissonance reaches its peak when Vyacheslav Molotov (Michael Palin) is awkwardly reintroduced to his wife, whom he had been forced to denounce as an enemy of the people.

The writing and acting do well to combine the humanity of the characters with the absurdity of the situations unfolding around them. The cast is at its best during the meetings of the praesidium, as contenders for power lean on Malenkov to force a vote for their agenda. Every decision has to be unanimous, which leads to characters reluctantly voting against their own self-interest.

The material is frequently jarring. Unlike the provocations of Malcolm Tucker, the splenetic and foul-mouthed political adviser in “The Thick of It”, the barbarity of Stalinism was genuine. Beria was a murderer and rapist with real victims. His history, in particular, might leave a few audience members conflicted when the script invites them to laugh along with Mr Beale’s undeniably entertaining performance. Perhaps the senselessness has gained some comic currency over time. Playing a purge for laughs can constitute a guilty pleasure, especially when the victims depicted are ordinary Muscovites, and their killers were working for fear of their own lives.

Nevertheless, “The Death of Stalin” prevails as a rewarding, uniquely black comedy. Like most of Mr Iannucci’s work, it is essentially concerned with ambition and how it must be disguised from the public. Messrs Beale and Buscemi are consistently amusing as they attempt to outmanoeuvre one another while trying their best to appear solemn and mournful after the tragic loss of their leader. The result is a sharp satire of how and when intelligent people feel the need to justify acts of violence for “the greater good”.

As the story approaches its climax, it quickly becomes clear that the clumsy effort to avert the next reign of terror is strikingly reminiscent of the tyrannical behaviour that Khrushchev and the praesidium were trying to escape. At one point, during an improvised arrest outside the Kremlin’s men’s toilet, Molotov smiles, remarking that “Stalin would be loving this.” Perhaps against their better judgments, audiences will be too.