Imagine if Donald Trump were half the autocrat he thinks he is. Imagine if his life were actually about power and not satisfying his comically fragile ego. Imagine if his tools were not populism, the Fox network, and Twitter, but instead an actual private, untouchable, secret, lethal police force. Who would be left? Don’t get me wrong, Trump is a natural at power consolidation – mostly because he doesn’t understand how government works – but what if power consolidation were his life’s focus? What souls would remain after his daily purges? It would be down to a handful of toadies and stooges, no? After destroying the two-party system, the media, and anyone willing to resist, his clown-car cabinet would be whom exactly? I’m guessing Betsy DeVos, Rudy Giuliani, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Ben Carson, Rick Perry, and … Mayor McCheese. [I’m told His Honor McCheese can be bought cheap, but for a limited time only.] OK, now one last frightening thought: imagine all of these idiots fighting for control of the entire United States upon Trump’s death.
This is the Soviet Union in 1953: Chaotic, pathetic, and under the rule of frightened gerbils. Geez, how did we ever consider these guys a threat? Oh yeah, Joseph McCarthy.
There is a point at which paranoia is so out-of-control, the results are unintentionally hilarious. For instance, were I not American, I’m certain I would find the ideas of keeping Mexicans out with a big wall or combating school shootings by arming teachers a laugh riot. I would happily conclude Americans were the greatest morons on the planet. Similarly, The Death of Stalin opens with paranoia-inspired comedy: a local concert hall hosted an event and then broke up for the night. Ring-ring! “What’s that, Comrade Stalin? You want a recording of the show?!”
“Quick! Get everybody back, including the audience! Get this thing on tape or it’s my head! What do you need to make this happen? 20,000 rubles? Done! Just get out there and play! You! Scour the Borscht District! Find me replacement audience members, now!”
I wish I were making that scene up, but I’m not, and it sounds exactly true to the Soviet Union we only knew through rumors.
Josef Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin) had gotten to the stage in which his lackeys had long since abandoned their search for empathy. Future Premier Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi) has the right idea: every night, he goes home –exactly when Stalin tells him to- and dictates his conversations from memory. If every day is a test of loyalty, you’d better come prepared. What he doesn’t come prepared for is the stroke that leaves Stalin paralyzed and clinging to life. As the appearance of loyalty is precious to Stalin, Khrushchev sacrifices proper attire for quick arrival time and promptly loses face in front of all the other lackeys.
Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor), as Stalin’s #2, assumes command of the Soviet Union. Imagine Malenkov, not Stalin, as Trump – a weak, insecure man who cares only for his reputation. The most brutal and comic moments in the stroke aftermath involve indecision and unwillingness to make a non-group sanctioned move – Malenkov, for instance, seeing his boss on the floor with the Grim Reaper holding a deli number by the doorjamb, refuses to get a doctor “until the committee arrives.” If Stalin recovers, but didn’t want a doctor, that’s a fatal move. Malenkov ain’t takin’ a bullet –literally- for anything. Then, of course, there’s the moment where Stalin’s own paranoid purge has eliminated all the decent doctors in Moscow. One has to applaud the irony. Gee, Comrade, how do ya like them beets?
As so often happens, when life closes the door to an iron maiden, it opens a window. One of the toadies, Lavrenti Beria (Simon Russell Beale), has a backbone. The
only thing preventing a Beria coup is if somebody with an ounce of power can suppress his own wishy-washiness and stand up to that weasel. HA! Good luck with that! You’re all alive precisely due to your sycophantic personalities.
It’s striking how much The Death of Stalin reminds me of an extended Monty Python routine. It doesn’t help that Michael Palin shows up as one of the stooges, Vyacheslav Molotov. Excusing the pure politics of the endeavor, I think of this entire movie as what would happen if the Python gang were actors first, comedians second. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of any of this biographic farce, of course. And, quite frankly, I doubt anybody really can. Nobody close enough to Stalin to know his personality ever got to tell an unfiltered, objective history of the man, even after the fact. Thus, this film is a grand poke at Russian politics of the 1950s, and from my perspective a fair one, but I cannot say you’ll agree if your surname ends in “-sky” or “-ov.”
♪I’ve never seen you looking so pallid as you did tonight
Looking like you’d die of fright
I’ve never seen so many men shit themselves just from one glance
They’re unwilling to go freelance, don’t want to take a chance
And I’ve never seen this mess you’re making
Or the terror in the mix caught by surprise
They all are blind
The melee in red is coming for thee, (Bolshe)-vik to -vik
There’s nothing but fear, that much is clear
A spectacle to see
But I hardly know this panic by the score
I’ll never forget Josef laid on the floor♫
Rated R, 106 Minutes
Director: Armando Iannucci
Writer: Armando Iannucci and David Schneider and Ian Martin and Peter Fellows
Genre: Hey! That looks like … us.
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Political analysts
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Anybody who lived in the Soviet Union in the 1950s
♪ Parody Inspired by “The Lady in Red”
