'The Death of Stalin' review: Should we be laughing or running in fear?

Comedy and tragedy have often been said to be linked hand-in-hand. The Death of Stalin portrays such a notion better than any other film in recent memory.

The Death of Stalin is a new comical satire from writer and director Armando Iannucci — best known for serving as a writer on HBO’s Veep. Clearly, this guy has a knack for finding the humor in politics.

This movie is somewhat autobiographical, meaning the events themselves really did happen but it’s pretty same to assume they didn’t happen in quite this way, or at least not in this tone.

The real-life Josef Stalin needs no introduction. He was a Russian Soviet revolutionist who, once he achieved power, was notorious for in-prisoning and killing anyone who dared oppose him. At the end of the day, he wound up hurting a lot of people.

The Josef Stalin as depicted in The Death of Stalin, played by Adrian McLoughlin, heavily plays on that well-known reputation. Stalin is depicted as a mad-man who will be your best friend one minute and then have an order sent to kill you the next.

All of Stalin’s advisors — Director Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor), Lavrenti Beria (Simon Russell Beale), Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi) and Vyacheslav Molotov (Michael Palin) — know this about Stalin and have cautiously placed themselves in positions where they can sneakily and strategically achieve political power of their own.

But all of that, then, is thrown into turmoil when a maid goes to bring Stalin his breakfast one morning, only to find him collapsed on the floor next to a puddle of his own urine (a running gag that shouldn’t have worked nearly as well as it did, I laughed every time).

After summoning the quote-unquote best doctors that Russia has to offer (another gag that killed me, especially when one of the younger looking doctors was repeatedly asked his age), the news is made official: Stalin is dead.

That only means one thing for the comrades — while they have to put on a public face of mourning for the public and all that, they’re all really thinking about who is going to be able to take Stalin’s place.

Technically, the position is supposed to go to the director. The problem with that is Georgy Malenkov is, more or less, an idiot who can easily be manipulated and used. The struggle then comes down to Beria and Khrushchev, as the movie pokes fun of politics, socialism and a whole host of other things — all while telling a lot more truth then we might care to admit.

First and foremost, The Death of Stalin is the funniest movie that has been released in 2018 from now. Except for a ten-minute lull around the start of act three, this movie had me cracking up from start to finish. All of the actor’s timing is on point, as the film presents its dead-pan comedy way that’s similar to that of Arrested Development or The Office.

Only it’s in the political atmosphere, trying to make light of a very serious situation. This was my main concern going into The Death of Stalin, as I was wondering how it was possible to make this movie, not in a way that was in poor taste.

If someone from Russia came up to me and told me that they or some of their families members suffered under the reign of Stalin and they then found this movie offensive, I’m not sure if I’d be able to argue against them (or more like, I maybe wouldn’t want to try and argue against them).

However, Iannucci didn’t make this movie just to poke fun at another country as this doesn’t fall under the same category as The Interview. This is political satire through and through, being extreme and over-the-top in order to depict the terrible truths that lie underneath.

Part of the reason they’re able to achieve this is because The Death of Stalin is based off a true story. Whenever something crazy and absurd happens, we’re left thinking ‘No way something like that could happen’ only to quickly be reminded that that’s exactly what happened. Granted, it definitely didn’t happen in the same manner as the film presents it as, but that’s the whole point. The goal is to make you laugh and then give you a moment of silence to reflect on that laughter. After a minute of pondering, the whole thing may not seem so funny after all.

And it’s worth noting that this movie is just not pointing a finger at a different country and making them the butt of every joke (although they sure seem to think so, as this movie was not surprisingly banned in Russia). There’s a great deal of social relevance here in American politics as well. Iannucci is pointing a finger at us, saying the absurd ways we operate really isn’t all that different from then.

Granted, it’s easy to watch this movie and miss those points altogether, but they’re in there. The end result is a farce-like parody that’s absolutely hilarious and yet pretty disturbing at the same time. How someone can pull off both of those things so well is beyond me, but Iannucci found a way.

Did you see The Death of Stalin? What did you think? Let us know in the comments below.