A sort-of-good film that's really not for everyone

Rating: 6/10 (25 June 2019)

I thought this was going to be similar to The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, in it being a "Art Film", and in a sense it's not too distant. But i liked Scruggs - a little if not much - and didnt like Death of Stalin instead.
There is good and bad about this film; you should know that this is a comedy, about, well, the death of Stalin. Specifically Stalin was a major A-hole and everyone around him lived in a climate of fear, but the reason why people were even around him in the first place is because they were all power-hungry maniacs in the first place; so, not really nice people.
And if you knew the history you would find this far, far more comical as it caricaturizes these otherwise fierce people.
The plot revolves around Stalin dropping #ded and everyone around him scrambles to make the best of a volatile situation, plotting murder, coups, or even just finding a way to stay alive in the oncoming political purges.
Production-wise, they went with talented, known but not immediately recognizable actors, which is good. The only two i could immediately spot were Michael Palin and Steve Buscemi. The sets and historical recreations are on point. Photography is nice but nothing worth shouting about.
Now, on to the bad.
It failed to pull me in in any way. The plot doesn't flow, there are to many primary characters. There is no real protagonist either, which makes it ever so harder to follow.
And the worst problem is, that i do not know the characters. Now, i understand that this is my fault and not the film's, but the main source of "fun" is how each of these historical characters is portrayed. And, well i don't know about you, but im not terribly familiar with what sort of man Nikita Krushchev was, or Georgey Malenkov, so most of the satire is lost on me. And as a comedy, it's not really that funny.
Nicely done film, but lacking in mainstream appeal. Unless you're in college and specifically studying this period of time, or have otherwise intimate knowledge of the post-stalinist period of soviet russia, i would say to give this a miss in favour of something designed for easier consumption.
6.5/10