The Death of Stalin finds humor in very dark places
Dark comedies always a risk. As The Office’s Michael Scott once said, “There is no such thing as an appropriate joke” and despite the character’s general tone deafness, in this case, he’s right.
Humor is rooted in the unexpected, in surprise, and this can take many forms. Most Hollywood comedies aim for the lowest bar—for the sight gag, the gross out, the mistaken identity.
It takes talent to turn misery into hilarity. If comedy is tragedy plus time, the horrors of the world must get exponentially funnier as the year go by. At least they do if done correctly.
Good comedy is never at the expense of a true victim. Comedy may target the unwitting, but it works better if the clueless are that way due to their own hubris. This is the challenge of the dark comedy. Very Bad Things isn’t funny because someone dies. It’s bitterly amusing to watch things get worse.
The Death of Stalin is a dark comedy, to be sure. The height of the Soviet Union was a very dark place. The comedy therein is found in its absurdity. We aren’t laughing at the blood and tears. We’re laughing in spite of them.
The film takes excellent care to set up the very imposing presence of Josef Stalin, the titanic dictator responsible for atrocities similar to Adolf Hitler while somehow avoiding the universal hatred (you’ll find his image all over the former Soviet Union).
Not only are we introduced to the interpersonal relationships, full of groveling and position jumping, but we also see the lengths people go to in order to avoid embarrassment and death. If the man with the mustache asks for a recording of a symphonic production, he gets it, even if the entire event has to be restaged.
The story begins here, with a pianist refusing to replay a concert for the leader of the party, being bribed into it, and then sneaking a note to Stalin accusing him of destroying the country. Stalin finds the note so amusing that he suffers a deadly cerebral hemorrhage, which throws the entire country into disarray.
His ministers begin their individual plots, scraping and crawling to grab power and win the hearts and minds of the people. Everyone wants to be a reformer, if in name only. There are very few true believers.
Ultimately, the film is about what happens in a power vacuum. The humor here is situational; the characters must work within an absurd system designed to create death and destruction for the lower classes at the benefit of those at the top.
The film is smartly crafted by writer and director Armando Iannucci, who is no stranger to pointing out the absurdity of a system. Iannucci is better known for his work on the HBO comedy series Veep about the misadventures of American Vice President Selina Myer.
Veep is a brilliant take down of our own political system and Iannucci brings the same wit and cynicism to the Soviet Union, with a bit more gallows humor thrown in. As in Veep, the dialogue is exceptional and hysterical, delivered by actors at the top of their game.
The cast is absolutely impeccable, with names like Jeffery Tambor (Malenkov), Steven Buscemi (Khrushchev), Michael Palin (Molotov), and Simon Russell Beale with a brilliant performance as Laverenti Beria.
The film is not a documentary, of course. Iannucci has mentioned that he toned down the “real life absurdity” in order to make the film more believable. The Soviet Union is a character unto itself in The Death of Stalin, with its own quirks and mannerisms.
This is nothing new—comedian Yakov Smirnov made a career out of it. However, there’s a significant amount of beauty worked into the carefully crafted script. Within a few spoken words, the entirety of a character is revealed. It’s truly masterful.
Of course, with any film that’s political in nature, comparisons to current politicians are thrown about. Without a doubt, there is no shortage of sycophants in the Trump administration.
That’s true of any job. Russia itself has not responded well to the release of the film. Indeed, it is banned in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. To me, that’s reason enough to see it.