Movies |
The Death of Stalin
By
Published: Feb 05, 2023
Category:
Comedy
It’s not the best time to be Russian. The war in Ukraine is not a success. As the Times reports, Moscow has been sending poorly trained recruits, including convicts, to the front lines, where as many as 200,000 have died. Here’s the headline of a Newsweek piece about dead oligarchs: “Russians Keep Mysteriously Falling from Windows to their Deaths.” And now we’re starting to see pieces about one way the war might end — with Putin’s death, and not from natural causes. Malcolm Nance is a retired naval officer, a bestselling author and a commentator with expertise in counter-terrorism. In the spring of 2022, he became a soldier with the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine – the foreign legion. Nance outlines some scenarios.
All of this makes me think there’s no better time to stream the funniest movie I saw in 2017: “The Death of Stalin.” Few saw it here. It played to sold-out crowds in Moscow — until it was banned. Big point in its favor: it’s a comedy. A dark comedy.
It begins with music. In 1953, a Moscow orchestra performs a Mozart piano concerto. Stalin has been listening to the radio broadcast. He calls, requesting a copy of the performance. There is none – the orchestra must restage the performance. The conductor has knocked himself unconscious. The soloist hates Stalin and refuses. A replacement conductor arrives, in pajamas. The pianist complies. Stalin gets the recording.
Stalin has a stroke. He needs a doctor. Good luck — he’s purged them all. He dies. The political maneuvering — and the fun — begins.
Ah, the fun. The movie is funny, and not. The underlying reality here can’t be ignored — it drives every minute of life in Stalin’s Russia: fear. From the Times review:
The fear is so overwhelming, so deeply embedded in everyday life that it distorts ordinary expression, utterances, gestures and bodies. It has turned faces into masks (alternately tragic and comic), people into caricatures, death into a punch line.
So what’s funny? No Russian accents. Everyone is constantly plotting. The actors don’t look like the historical figures they’re representing — you’ll do a spit-take when you first see Steve Buscemi as Nikita Khrushchev. The director is the incomparable cut-up, Armando Iannucci. (“For me, it’s a tremendous compliment when Russians who have seen the film say to me, ‘Where in Moscow did you film this?’ And I say, ‘In London.’”) And… the dialogue. Again, from the Times:
The laughs come in jolts and waves in “The Death of Stalin,” delivered in a brilliantly arranged mix of savage one-liners, lacerating dialogue and perfectly timed slapstick that wouldn’t be out of place in a Three Stooges bit.
To watch the trailer, click here.
To watch another scene, click here.
To rent the stream from Amazon Prime, click here.
The first time I saw the movie was in a small Long Island theater, with maybe a dozen people in the audience. They watched in unhappy silence. I laughed to the point of tears. As a result, I missed some lines. Better to see it at home — you can rewind and catch the lines you missed.
