Expertly done, wickedly funny black comedy

Rating: 8/10 (8 April 2018)

I see that some other reviewers really don't like the idea of pulling black humor out of a real historical event -- in this case, the jockeying for power in the inner circle of the Central Committee of the Soviet Union immediately after the death of one of the most brutal dictators in history. Fair enough, it's a personal response. Most entries into the black-comedy move genre are just completely fictional, so it's an extra step into riskier territory to base it on real events. I can imagine certain setups that I might offensive if they were used as the basis of dark humor (Hitler, or Jesus? but there are examples out there of those too, like Inglourious Basterds). However, Death of Stalin didn't bother me at all, and I'm (almost) old enough to have lived through the actual period. Pulling wry humor out of intrinsically bleak situations is, frankly, yet another human ability.
The entire success or failure of such films is in how well they're done. In comedy, timing of dialog and plot details is key, and the timing in this expert production is right on the mark. The ensemble cast delivers: the centerpiece is the competition between Beria (Simon Russell Beale, playing him as a power-hungry control obsessive who ultimately loses to his own overconfidence) and Krushchev (Steve Buscemi, playing yet another version of Steve Buscemi) but the work turned in by the other leads is first rate: Jeffrey Tambor as Malenkov, a somewhat spineless figure who nevertheless wants to be a Big Player; Michael Palin as Molotov, speaking inscrutable dialog that refuses to uncover his real beliefs (if indeed he has any); Andrea Riseborough as daughter Svetlana Stalin, forceful and peripatetic yet oddly powerless, along with Rupert Friend as her wacko brother Vasily; Adrian McLoughlin as Stalin himself, a sort of low-class careless thug; and Jason Isaacs as Zhukov, the no-nonsense field marshal who holds real military power is cheerfully unafraid of any of these crass politicians. A big key is that all their personality types are radically different from one another, so the main driver for the plot is to see how all of them bounce off each other. All were real historical figures and no one is safe from the satirical takes in this production. Adding to the ambience are the sets and settings, which accurately get across the time and place.
And yes, it is both black and funny. In one little scene Beria and a colleague are walking along a corridor talking while behind them a body bag rolls down a stairwell, unnoticed. In another, a firing squad interrupts its work halfway through as 'new orders' arrive to spare the political prisoners. The first man NOT to get shot looks down perplexedly at the previous one in line dead on the ground, then over to his equally stunned fellows. Lots more like this.
There wasn't a dull moment from beginning to end. Go see it, you'll have fun and even learn a lot about the actual era.