The death of post-modern satire

Rating: 3/10 (19 November 2017)

I can't say I'm disappointed because it was exactly as expected. While I like most of Iannucci's comedy this particular subject I felt might not really work, and in an interview about the film he outlined his efforts to treat the subject of the Stalin era with the due care and attention it deserves, but in his capacity as a film director I fear he lacks the emotional maturity and imagination to give this important period proper consideration.
The performances were generally good (some very), it was the overall tone of detached irony which brought the film down. In rendering a period of such horrific injustice I think it is hugely important to become immersed in the era and it's people and to find the story through an emotional connection to something/someone that jumps out during the research process. That for me is where the tragedy and comedy begins.
From what I could see the jumping off point of the film (and perhaps the graphic novel though I haven't read it) came from a story about Stalin's favourite pianist, but this was changed to be less interesting than the reality and hammered into a niche to get the story going. Iancucci's emotional detachment hovers over this film like an irritating puppeteer, careening away from real stories into farce and randomised stereotyping in order to shoe-horn cross-cultural parallels into it. Having Stalin as a cockney Guy Ritchie style linchpin for example, when I suspect Stalin would have had a keen understanding of history and his place within the sociopolitical environment which would have driven him to such farcical self-aggrandisement, and in that respect could be more interesting and funnier to explore.
Above all though, I just didn't get the feeling Iannucci knows how to care that much anymore. A man of the people he isn't (at least not anymore), and in this film it's nearly impossible to get purchase on any of the characters and truly follow them because the director isn't connecting with them either. There's also a whiff of blokey camaraderie about the ensemble cast which makes me think the set might have been a nauseating daily churn of egotistical one-upmanship.
Without spoiling it, people die in this film, and nobody cares, not even the director. I no longer want to watch post-modern satire fumbling through world events with a sardonic detachment reserved for those unaffected by those events. In this era of absolute farce governed by mass hysteria what I want is an almost zealous commitment to a story and it's people. The world we currently live in has been labelled post-truth, but I regard it as more of a post-trust world. In this respect I'd like to see artists that defy this cynicism and immerse themselves in the real and the tangible (and us with them).
Dig deep, that's all I ask for. Please.