THE DEATH OF STALIN
★★★★

OUR very own Armando Iannucci, the comedic mastermind behind the likes of The Thick Of It, Veep and In The Loop, brings his pointed satirical touch to this riotous post-war farce that shines a hilariously bright light on a dark period in 20th-century history.

Based on the French graphic novel by Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin, we find ourselves in the heart of paranoia-riddled Moscow in 1953. While in the middle of reading a hate-filled letter, the Soviet Union’s leader Joseph Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin) suffers a massive stroke, left in a puddle of his own urine for hours because his staff are too frightened to enter his room.

Any of the decent doctors who could have helped save his life have already been sent to the gulag. When he does die some hours later, the scrabble for power begins between his bumbling deputies. Who exactly will take over, how will they handle the transition of power and what does it mean for a nation so long ruled over by Stalin’s authoritarian leadership?

Iannucci once again exhibits his power to carry an audience along a precise track of scalpel-sharp satire – this time he has a murky historical era of Eastern European power grabs to play with rather than the circus of modern day British and American politics – that can have you holding your gut in laughter even as it takes us to some dark and uncomfortable places. The tension in scenes of starkly presented executions, for instance, is cut by irreverent one-liners that move things along.

“Am I supposed to be laughing here?” is a phrase that may repeatedly cross your mind. And yes you are, wholeheartedly. Armed with a script co-written by Iannucci alongside regular collaborators David Schneider, Ian Martin and Peter Fellows, it’s a film that forces us to confront horrors of the time viewed through a heightened, absurdist lens while at the same time holding a pertinent mirror up to the power-grabbing shenanigans of today’s world.

There has always been a wealth of talent at the ready to deliver Iannucci’s peerless lampooning and here is no different. He has assembled the cream of the crop who inflate the egos and personalities of the crucial figures in Stalin’s regime to hilariously buffoonish and larger-than-life effect, conspicuously non-Russian accents included.

An almost unrecognisable Steve Buscemi as the shrewd Nikita Khrushchev, who would rather turn up with his pyjamas still on under his suit than not at all. Jeffrey Tambor as the joyfully mindless Georgy Malenkov, who is more interested in how his hair appears in a photo than anything else as he is poised to take over from Stalin. And Jason Isaacs thunders into the room well into the film as Georgy Zhukov, venomous head of the Red Army and amplified personification of the iron fist of Stalin’s rule. It’s a veritable grab-bag of comedic talent brilliantly utilised.

Quick-witted and savagely cutting to the core, Iannucci invites you to stare into an abyss that not so much makes light of monstrous people committing heinous acts as it does make sure you can heartily chuckle at the absurdity of it all. It’s his darkest comedy yet in all the best ways.