On satire and monsters

Rating: 7/10 (13 April 2018)

Armando Iannucci's political British and U.S.-set comedies have shown how systems encourage the worst people and incentivise the most perverse of behaviours. In 'The Death of Stalin', he takes his sharp eye to Russia, and tells the story of the power struggle between Beria and Khrushchev that followed Stalin's death. As usual with Iannucci, the comedy comes through everyone acting always in character, only worse. There's certainly no whitewashing here, although Beria, who was purged, is shown as more competent and maybe even more human than his rivals. But the film doesn't feature Russian actors or dialogue, and Iannucci's best work speaks specifically of the delusions of the countries in which it is set; aside from Jeffrey Tambor's Malenkov, the other characters feel more drawn from the traditions of countries from which their actors hail. And only in 'The Thick of It' has Iannucci ever made me love his awful creations. Perhaps the limitation here is that few people today have any remaining illusions about Stalin and his cronies; it might have been more subversive (although not more accurate) to show them in a warmer light.