MOVIES
A Farce So Dark It Will Make You Laugh: The Death of Stalin
It’s original. It’s hilarious. It’s scary. Kudos to director Armando Iannucci for pulling it off.
Here’s a line from one of the reviews that expresses my initial response to this film: “Nothing better than stumbling on a movie like this one without having a clue what it’s going to be.”
The film is a comic farce and within minutes you know what you’ve gotten yourself into. At the end of an orchestra performance featuring a famous pianist, Josef Stalin calls and asks the concert director if they recorded it. A panic ensues because they did not. The director, beside himself with restrained terror, orders everyone to stay so they can re-create the piece and record it for Stalin. Some have left so he orders others to go out to the streets and bring people in so the symphony hall sounds full. The pianist refuses to play because Stalin killed some of her family. Persuading her to play again becomes yet another life and death crisis.
Satisfying Stalin’s every whim in order to avoid crossing him becomes a critical imperative. You quickly see how stressed out everyone at every level is because at any moment their own names can be put on “the list.” Name…
