IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB () review
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (G. Kenny) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review
Death of Stalin [2017] (directed and screenplay cowritten by Armando Iannucci along with David Schneider and Ian Martin with additional material by Peter Fellows, based on the comic book [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin, original screenplay by Fabien Nury) presents A FITTINGLY _INGLORIOUS_ COMEDIC "TRIBUTE" to the end of the life of one of the most brutal people of the 20th Century, Joseph Stalin [wikip] [IMDb] (played in the film by Adrian McLoughlin).
Indeed while certainly Stalin, MURDERER of tens of millions of Ukrainians during the imposed Terror Famine of the 1920s, murderer of tens to hundreds of thousands of Christian Orthodox priests and religious (there was "no room for Christ" when Stalin was busy building a Cult to himself), as well as tens to hundreds of thousands of his own Communist Party Members (again, they started to "get in the way"), DEPORTER of _entire nations_ to Siberia -- the Tatars of Crimea are _still_ largely there in an artificial "Republic of Tatarstan", the Chechens managed to return -- and large portions of others, including Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians, certainly deserves all the scorn that could possibly be heaped upon him, one still kinda felt "sorry for him" and his hapless sycophant "advisers" on HIS Politiburo (in the same way that one's "sorry for" Hitler in the Downfall Parodies).
And so it was, what _should have been_ "just another late night of drinking, watching "American Westerns" / signing death-lists for the NKVD (each night they were tasked to kick down doors and arrest potential enemies of his dragging them away to never be seen by their loved ones again) and smiling, no LAUGHING, at Stalin's jokes ... THIS NIGHT proved "different" ... After his Politiburo "guests" were finally allowed to go home, Stalin had a stroke, and since his guards were too afraid to check on him after they heard a "thump" ... he DIED.
What to do? Well, the rest of the story unfolds, LARGELY based on the historical record. And as is often the case with dictators such as Stalin, ONE COULDN'T INVENT THE CHARACTERS HERE EVEN IF ONE TRIED ;-).
Field Marshall Zhukov (played in the film by Jacob Isaacs) who comes into the story near its end to finally knock heads and get things moving (including getting rid of the smarmy and terror-master-in-chief Ministry of the Interior head Lavrenti Beria played in the film by Simon Russell Beale) is simply hilarious. He comes into the Kremlin buff, decked with all his medals, and basically with the attitude: "Look I took down Hitler, survived (repeatedly) the insanity of Stalin's purges and there's simply NO WAY that I'm going to let MY LIFE or the lives of MY OFFICERS to _continue_ to be at the mercy of this charisma-less and now Stalin-less band of stooges." (Fellow WW II vet...) Khrushchev (played in the film by Steve Buscemi) "stepped up," which was helpful, but there was simply NO WAY that Zhukov was going to leave Stalin's Funeral without _some things_ definitely (and definitively...) resolved ;-).
Again, it's a fitting "tribute" to the end of a Monster that a great uncle of mine, just like a pianist in this film (played by Ukrainian born actress Olga Kurylenko), had actually cursed to death for the crimes that he perpetuated both directly against loved ones (an uncle of mine, after whom I was later named was jailed by the Communists at the time) and against entire peoples including my parents' own, and humanity in general.
Yes, the film makes the Russians (or at least its leadership) look like idiots, but with Putin trying to "Make Russia great again" in good part by trying to Resurrect (!) the "Glories of Stalin," THIS FILM DESERVED TO BE MADE. NO we shouldn't want to bring _that_ era back again.
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