The Death of Stalin

The Death of Stalin is a 2017 political satire black comedy film written and directed by Armando Iannucci and co-written by David Schneider and Ian Martin with Peter Fellows. Based on the French graphic novel La Mort de Staline (2010–2012), the film depicts the internal social and political power struggle among the members of the Soviet Politburo following the death of leader Joseph Stalin in 1953.
The French-British-Belgian co-production stars an ensemble cast that includes Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Paddy Considine, Rupert Friend, Jason Isaacs, Olga Kurylenko, Michael Palin, Andrea Riseborough, Dermot Crowley, Paul Chahidi, Adrian McLoughlin, Paul Whitehouse, and Jeffrey Tambor.
The film premiered on 8 September 2017 at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was released theatrically in the United Kingdom by Entertainment One Films on 20 October 2017, in France by Gaumont on 4 April 2018, and in Belgium by September Film Distribution on 18 April 2018. It received critical acclaim and various accolades, including nominations for two British Academy Film Awards, one of which was for Outstanding British Film, and 13 British Independent Film Awards, four of which it won. There was fierce opposition to the film in Russia, where it was seen as "anti-Russian propaganda", and it was banned there, as well as in Kyrgyzstan, for allegedly mocking the Soviet Union and its past.
On the night of 1 March 1953, Joseph Stalin calls the Radio Moscow director to demand a recording of the live recital of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 soon after its conclusion. The performance was not recorded; not wanting to anger Stalin, the director hurriedly refills the half-empty auditorium, fetches a new conductor to replace the original one, who has passed out, and orders the orchestra to play again. Pianist Maria Yudina initially refuses to perform for the cruel dictator, but ultimately is bribed to comply.
Stalin is hosting a tense, but rowdy, gathering of Central Committee members at his home, the Kuntsevo Dacha. As Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov leaves, NKVD head Lavrentiy Beria reveals to Nikita Khrushchev and Deputy Chairman Georgy Malenkov that Molotov is to be part of the latest purge. When the concert recording arrives, Stalin finds a note Maria slipped in the record sleeve, admonishing Stalin and expressing hope for his death. He reads it, laughs, and suffers a cerebral haemorrhage. Despite hearing him fall, Stalin's guards do not enter his office, fearful of being punished for disturbing him.
Stalin's housemaid discovers him unconscious the next morning. The members of the Central Committee each learn about the situation through their own networks and rush to the dacha. Beria, the first to arrive, finds Maria's note. Once Malenkov, Khrushchev, Lazar Kaganovich, Anastas Mikoyan, and Nikolai Bulganin arrive, the Committee finally decide to send for a team of doctors. Most of the best doctors in Moscow have been arrested for being part of the "Doctors' plot" and so the doctors who can be found are not impressive. After a brief bout of terminal lucidity, Stalin dies. As the members of the Committee return to Moscow, Beria orders the NKVD to take over the city's security posts held by the Soviet Army.
Beria and Khrushchev vie for the support of Molotov and Stalin's children, Svetlana and her unstable, alcoholic brother Vasily. Beria has Molotov removed from the list of those to be rounded up, and has Polina Zhemchuzhina, Molotov's wife, released from prison. The Committee names Malenkov chairman. A puppet of Beria, Malenkov further exerts control by hijacking Khrushchev's proposed reforms, such as releasing political prisoners and loosening clerical restrictions. Khrushchev is relegated to planning Stalin's funeral.
After Beria learns that Khrushchev and Maria are acquainted, he threatens Khrushchev with Maria's note. To create problems for the NKVD, Khrushchev reverses Beria's order to halt all transport into Moscow. When 1,500 arriving mourners are killed, the Committee wants to blame junior NKVD officers. Beria angrily dissents, believing that would amount to blaming him, and threatens his colleagues with documents detailing their involvement in various purges.
Irate over the supplanting of the military by the NKVD, Marshal Georgy Zhukov agrees to support Khrushchev in a coup against Beria, provided it occurs after Stalin's funeral the next day and Khrushchev can get the rest of the Committee on board in time. Khrushchev fails to find time to discuss his plan with Malenkov but he tells everyone else that the decision is unanimous, and they commit themselves. Khrushchev gives Zhukov the greenlight, and the Soviet Army reclaims its posts from the NKVD. Zhukov, assisted by a group of soldiers led by Kiril Moskalenko, storms into a meeting of the Committee and arrests Beria.
Malenkov does not intervene and reluctantly signs Beria's death warrant, horrified at what Beria had done to his victims. At Beria's emergency trial, Khrushchev accuses him of counter-revolutionary activities, sexual assault, and paedophilia, and immediately declares him guilty after evidence of the final accusation is delivered by the Soviet Army. Beria begs for his life but is summarily shot in the head, and Zhukov has his body burned in the courtyard. Despite Svetlana's protests, Khrushchev sends her to Vienna, while keeping Vasily in Russia, where he can be watched. He concurs with Kaganovich that Malenkov is too weak to lead. In 1956, Maria is once again performing the Mozart concerto. Having triumphed over other members of the Committee to become the new leader of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev attends. Leonid Brezhnev, who will succeed Khrushchev in 1964, eyes Khrushchev from his seat.
The film's credits reveal that several other historical figures are depicted in the film in small roles, among them Zhou Enlai (played by Dave Wong) and Marshal Ivan Konev (played by Daniel Fearn).
During the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, it was announced that production on the film was set to begin in June, and that Jeffrey Tambor, Steve Buscemi, Olga Kurylenko, Timothy Dalton, Toby Kebbell, Michael Palin, Simon Russell Beale, Paddy Considine, and Andrea Riseborough were in "advanced talks to join the project." By the time filming started on June 20, Adrian McLoughlin and Paul Whitehouse had joined the cast, and Jason Isaacs had replaced Dalton as Georgy Zhukov, while Rupert Friend had replaced Kebbell as Vasily Stalin. Production wrapped on 6 August 2016.
Scenes were shot on location in Kyiv (exterior scenes and the exteriors of the Public Enemies building and the NKVD building), Moscow (the Red Gate Building), and the United Kingdom (Blythe House, Battersea Park, Mansion House, Fulham Town Hall, Goldsmiths' Hall, Shoreditch Town Hall, Freemasons' Hall, Alexandra Palace, and Hammersmith Town Hall in London, Mongewell Park in Oxfordshire, Black Park in Buckinghamshire, and Wrest Park in Bedfordshire). The film's score was composed by Christopher Willis, who tried to write in the style of Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich.
The Death of Stalin was screened in the Platform section at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival. It was released in theatres by eOne Films in the United Kingdom on 20 October 2017, and by IFC Films in the United States on 9 March 2018. The film grossed $8 million in the United States and Canada and $16.6 million in other territories (including $7.3 million in the UK), for a worldwide box office total of $24.6 million.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 94% based on 254 reviews, with an average score of 8/10; the site's critics consensus reads: "The Death of Stalin finds director/co-writer Armando Iannucci in riotous form, bringing his scabrous political humor to bear on a chapter in history with painfully timely parallels." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 88 out of 100 based on 43 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film 5/5 stars, writing that "fear rises like gas from a corpse in Armando Iannucci's brilliant horror-satire" and that it "is superbly cast, and acted with icy and ruthless force by an A-list lineup. There are no weak links. Each has a plum role; each squeezes every gorgeous horrible drop." Sandra Hall of The Sydney Morning Herald gave the film 4.5/5 stars, describing it as "a devastatingly funny dissection of power politics, stripping the mystique from it and those who worship it." Donald Clarke of The Irish Times gave the film 4/5 stars, writing that it "starts in a state of mortal panic and continues in that mode towards its inevitably ghastly conclusion".
Tim Robey of The Daily Telegraph also gave the film 4/5 stars, writing: "Depending on your point of view, The Death of Stalin is either a sly, wintry satire on Armando Iannucci's usual theme of squawking political idiocy, or an insidious attempt to destabilise the Russian establishment with relentless dagger-blows." Peter Howell of the Toronto Star gave the film 3.5/4 stars, writing: "Shifting eastwards from the Anglo-American japes of In the Loop and Veep, director/co-writer Armando Iannucci doesn’t stint on brutal truth — or lethal legend."
Christopher Orr of The Atlantic praised the film's humour and performances and wrote that it "seems precisely attuned to the current moment: a capricious, unpredictable leader, basking in a cult of personality; the introduction of 'alternative facts'; the swift, party-wide swerves on subjects as various as negotiating with North Korea, paying off porn stars, and even Russian efforts to subvert a U.S. election." Anthony Lane of The New Yorker wrote that the film was "ten times funnier, by my reckoning, than it has any right to be, and more riddled with risk than anything that Iannucci has done before, because it dares to meet outrage with outrage."
Raphael Abraham of the Financial Times wrote: "As this coven of vampiric apparatchiks feasts on the remains of Stalinism, the unremitting blackness of the situation at times threatens a full comedy eclipse. But the discomfiting balancing act of humour and horror is precisely Iannucci's game—and only he could pull it off with such skill." Thomas Walker, in The Objective Standard, agreed, adding that the film "dives deep into the psychology of those living under such a system and lays bare the self-destructive mind-set of those who grasp wildly for power."
Matthew Norman of the Evening Standard gave the film 3/5 stars, writing: "For all [Iannucci's] dream-team cast and assured direction, despite capturing the laughable sycophancy of the apparatchik the film isn't that funny." Peter Debruge of Variety wrote: "If only the end result were as funny as the idea that anyone would undertake a film about the turmoil surrounding the Soviet despot's demise."
Former U.S. President Barack Obama included The Death of Stalin on a list of his favourite films of 2018.
Nikolai Starikov, head of the Russian Great Fatherland Party, called The Death of Stalin an "unfriendly act by the British intellectual class", and part of an "anti-Russian information war". In September 2017, the head of the Public Council of the Russian Ministry of Culture said Russian authorities were considering a ban on the film, alleging that it could be part of a "western plot to destabilise Russia by causing rifts in society". Russian online newspaper Vzglyad called the film "a nasty sendup by outsiders who know nothing of our history". The Communist Party of the Russian Federation called the film "revolting", and Alexander Yushchenko, a spokesman for the party, said it was an attempt to spark discontent.
On 23 January 2018, two days before the film's scheduled release in Russia, a screening was attended by State Duma MPs, representatives of the Russian Historical Society, members of the Ministry of Culture's Public Board, and film industry members. Two days later, the Ministry of Culture withdrew the film's distribution certificate. Several cinemas screened the film in late January, and, though they claimed they had not heard the exhibition license had been revoked, the Ministry sued these theatres.
According to the results of a poll conducted by the state-run Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTSIOM), 35% of Russians disapproved of the Ministry of Culture's decision to keep the film from Russian screens, while 30% supported the ban and 35% were neutral. 58% of Russians said they would be willing to watch the film in cinemas if the ban were lifted. According to Iannucci, by January 2019, the film had been illegally downloaded 1.5 million times in Russia.
A group of lawyers from Russia's Ministry of Culture; Era Zhukova, the daughter of Marshal Zhukov; cinematographer Nikita Mikhalkov; Vladimir Bortko; and Alexey Levykin, head of the Russian State Historical Museum, petitioned Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky to withdraw the film's certification, saying: "The Death of Stalin is aimed at inciting hatred and enmity, violating the dignity of the Russian (Soviet) people, promoting ethnic and social inferiority. We are confident that the movie was made to distort our country's past so that the thought of the 1950s Soviet Union makes people feel only terror and disgust." The authors said the film, set to be released on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the end of the Battle of Stalingrad, denigrated the memory of Russian World War II fighters, with the Russian national anthem accompanied by obscene expressions and offensive attitudes, and historically inaccurate decorations.
In addition to Russia, the film was banned in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Armenia and Belarus were the only members of the Eurasian Economic Union to allow its release: in Armenia, it premiered in two cinemas in Yerevan on 25 January 2018, while, in Belarus, it premiered after an initial delay. In Kazakhstan, the film was only screened at the Clique Festival.
Several academics have argued there are historical inaccuracies in The Death of Stalin. Iannucci has said "I'm not saying it's a documentary. It is a fiction, but it's a fiction inspired by the truth of what it must have felt like at the time. My aim is for the audience to feel the sort of low-level anxiety that people must have [experienced] when they just went about their daily lives at the time."
The historian Richard Overy wrote that the film "is littered with historical errors", and called it "entertainment, but poor history". Among his examples are,
Overy wrote that those killed in the Great Purge or sent to Gulags "deserve a film that treats their history with greater discretion and historical understanding". Iannucci said he "chose to tone down real-life absurdity" to make the work more believable.
The Radio Moscow portion of the film is a retelling of an apocryphal story first recorded in Solomon Volkov's book Testimony (1979), which Volkov claimed were the memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich. In Testimony, Maria Yudina is awakened in the middle of the night in 1943 or 1944, not 1953, and brought in to record, and the recording brings Stalin to tears, moving him to pay Yudina 20,000 roubles in appreciation. The story served as the loose basis for The Stalin Sonata, a 1989 BBC radio play by David Zane Mairowitz. While, like the film, the original story has Yudina send a letter to Stalin, its contents are different, as she supposedly wrote to thank Stalin for the money, adding that she would donate it to the restoration of a church and would be praying for his sins to be forgiven. While the real Yudina was fired on one occasion for her ideological disagreements with Stalin's regime, her family was not killed.
Dr. Lydia Timashuk is described in the film as a willing accomplice in the Doctors' plot, which is discussed as a past, rather than current, event, and is portrayed as an eager agent in the arrest of Moscow doctors for Stalin's care, who, in a deleted scene, dies in a minefield around Stalin's dacha after her sexual advances to Beria are rejected. In reality, she had no involvement in the events surrounding Stalin's death, and was an unwilling pawn in the Doctors' plot, after which she became embittered by the labels of informer and anti-Semite that followed her until her death in 1983.
Bogdan Kobulov is depicted in the film as being shot dead during Beria's arrest by officers acting under orders given by Zhukov. In reality, he was arrested and killed with Beria months later.
In the film, Vasily Stalin and Anatoly Tarasov are seen at a practice of the Soviet Union national ice hockey team, which has been depleted by a recent plane crash. There really was a plane crash in which 11 players on the VVS Moscow ice hockey team died, and star player Vsevolod Bobrov really did survive because he missed the flight, but the crash happened on 5 January 1950, more than three years before Stalin's death.
The NKVD was superseded by the MVD in 1946, almost seven years before the death of Stalin.
Samuel Goff of the Department of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge, though opining that the film's historical discrepancies could be justified as helping to focus the drama, wrote that turning Beria into "an avatar of the obscenities of the Stalinist state" missed the chance to say "anything about the actual mechanisms of power", and argued that Iannucci's approach to satire was not transferable to something like Stalinism, and the film is "fundamentally ill-equipped to locate the comedy inherent to Stalinism, missing marks it doesn't know it should be aiming for".