Movie of the Week: The Death of Stalin.

….Speaking of which.

When they first announced The Death of Stalin (plot synopsis: just what it says on the tin) as a dark comedy I was, I think legitimately, wary.  Turns out it was very good.  No romanticizing of the Stalin regime here: everybody important in the film is awful, none of them are particularly heroic, and you root for Khrushchev in the end because he’s the least bad option and Steve Buscemi (the guy who plays him) is an all right fellow.  Oh, and the actual Marxists out there in the review world hated, hated, hated this flick.  Some of the angrier reviews are worth tracking down.

5 thoughts on “Movie of the Week: The Death of Stalin.”

  1. Also, while I haven’t seen it myself, I’m glad that they were able to set it up as a successful comedy. It would be great if society were to view Communists with the same derisive scorn that we view Nazis.

  2. It’s banned in Russia because they thought the film’s portrait of Marshal Zhukov made him look like a fool. Not sure what movie they saw, he’s literally the Deus Ex Machina that totally shook up the narrative when he shows up. Very much bigger than pretty much everyone else in the film (except of course Stalin).

    1. To be fair, Zhukov may be the least-completely-evil character to come out of that era(Low bar, I know. That’s the point). I see why they’d want to hang on to him.

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