Its title makes it sound more like a grim documentary, but Armando Iannucci’s satire is actually a bitingly funny look at the expiration of the Soviet dictator and the power struggle that followed.
By Debbie Stowe
DIRECTOR: Armando Iannucci
STARRING: Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Michael Palin, Paddy Considine, Rupert Friend, Jason Isaacs, Andrea Riseborough, Jeffrey Tambor
ON AT: Grand Cinema & More, Happy Cinema, Cinema City Cotroceni, Cinema City Sun Plaza, Cinema City Mega Mall
Of course, it’s fictionalized – a point emphasized by the fact that despite being Russian, the main characters (the members of Stalin’s Central Committee) speak English in a variety of accents, from New York, to London Cockney to comedy Yorkshire. The vocal mélange adds another bizarre note to the absurdities that marked Soviet communism, something with which local audiences will be familiar.
Stalin’s high-ranking flunkies exhibit the worst of human nature, as they go from sycophancy while the “Great Leader” is alive – we see them after a rowdy dinner party having their wives make a note of which of their jokes the dictator did and didn’t laugh at – to Machiavellian self-interest, quickly forming factions and jockeying for advantage in the quest to succeed their former comrade as General Secretary.
Iannucci handles deftly the changes in tone – from humorous, as he skewers the devious power grabs and plotting and lampoons the unquestioning loyalty that the system demanded, to dark, as we witness the arbitrary brutality meted out by the Red Army.
Each of the main roles is meaty, and the actors – from Hollywood veterans such as Steve Buscemi as Khrushchev to lower-key Brits like the stage actor Simon Russell Beale as Beria and comedian Michael Palin as Molotov – make the most of them. The effect is a memorable comic portrait of both a vile regime and the depths of greed and ambition.