Thoughts on The Death of Stalin

Yesterday, my roommate Christopher Kain invited me to see The Death of Stalin at the West Newton Cinema.

Co-written and directed by Armando Iannucci, the film is a black comedy about the struggle for succession following the death of Josef Stalin in 1953 with Steve Buscemi portraying Nikita Khrushchev, Jeffrey Tambor cast as Georgy Malenkov, Monty Python alum Michael Palin playing Vyacheslav Molotov with Simon Russell Beale turning in a demonic performance as Laverntiy Beria.

There is something to be said for the film if the subject matter was sufficient for it to be banned in Russia and several other former Soviet Republics. Any film that angers Vladimir Putin has to be a good thing. Nevertheless something bothered me about the film. Specifically, it was the comic manner in which Soviet citizens were murdered to which I could not bring myself to laugh. Somehow I cannot imagine people murdered by the Nazis being depicted in this manner.

Of course, the Nazis have been depicted in a comic manner going back to Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator, a decision he would later come to regret. But I cannot recall a film that portrayed the murder of Jews in concentration camps so flippantly as The Death of Stalin did with those murdered in the gulags. When it comes down to it, Stalin is perceived as being not as evil as Hitler even though his regime was responsible for the deaths of millions of civilians. It's true that the Allies aligned themselves with Stalin during WWII and Hitler might very well have triumphed if they had not done so. Needless to say this alliance did not survive the end of the war and for good reason.

A case could be made that the depiction of killing of Soviet citizens represented how arbitrary and capricious life was in the USSR (and indeed how life is in Russia now). Yet when it came to the execution of Beria at the conclusion of the film it was treated as no laughing matter. I believe those who died under Stalin's reign deserved the same consideration.