Monty Python Meets Josef Vissarionovich Stalin

Rating: Null/10 (21 June 2018)

In the bonus track of the DVD of "The Death of Stalin," there was a lengthy segment entitled "Dictators, Murderers, and Comrades." It was revealing that most of the interviews with the film artists focused on the serious implications about the death of Stalin and the power struggle that ensued in the Soviet Union in 1953.
The question that remained unanswered was how exactly this subject could be turned into a biting satire. Monty Python was enormously successful in transforming serious topic into film satires. But the main issues that interested those behind-the-scenes in "The Death of Stalin" were tragic in their implications. One of the main points was that when a leader dies in a totalitarian state, those remaining in control "grapple for power, and it produces the worst in people." An even more chilling theme is that "a small group of men had the power of life and death over millions of people."
So, how did this film fare in turning into the comedy the coup that killed the notorious head of the NKVD security forces, Lavrenti Beria? How successful was the jockeying for power that led to the ouster of Stalin's protégé Malenkov and brought Nikita Khrushchev to power in generating belly laughs?
The answer is that the satirical process was uneven. The first half of the film included some outrageous lines and antics. But by the midstream, the action became so violent and ugly that the laughs were replaced by raised-eyebrows.
Another missed opportunity in the film was not to develop more completely the role of the concert pianist Maria Yudina (Olga Kurylenko). The role had great promise after Maria wrote the note to Stalin that apparently led to his fatal stroke. But Maria only appeared sporadically through the remainder of the film.
This movie needed a spark that would transcend the infighting within a group of power-hungry old men. The role of the Maria Yudina could have provided a new dynamic to a film that never lived up to the work of Monty Python.