The Death of Stalin sees TV satirist Armand Ianucci do to 1950s Russian politics what he did with the modern English and American versions (Veep, The thick of it).
The timing of The Death of Stalin’s release seems rather fortuitous, though writer-director Ianucci is adamant any similarity with the current state of Russian or American politics is purely coincidental.
But even if that were true, the fact is most authoritarian governments work the same way – and none more so than that of Joseph Stalin, who ruled Russia with an iron fist, and Lavrentiy Beria’s fearsome secret police.
The story opens with the titular expiry of Stalin, and the first problem occurs when it’s necessary to find a doctor to pronounce Stalin dead.
Finally a collection of near-enough doctors are brought in to sign the paperwork, to the disgust of Stalin’s children – the capable Svetlana, played by Andrea Riseborough, and the incapable Vasily – Rupert Friend.
But Stalin’s family are merely set decoration. The key decisions have to be made by the Central Committee, who are as shifty, self-serving and unscrupulous as any other pack of gangsters whose boss has recently been rubbed out.
The obvious successor is the vain and vacillating Deputy Chairman Malenkov, played by Jeffrey Tambor in the world’s worst toupee.
But everyone knows he’s a mere place-holder until the real thing turns up. Another unlikely candidate is the venerable Molotov – inventor of the fiery cocktail and Stalin’s longest-serving and most loyal associate – played by Michael Palin.
Ironically Molotov himself was on Stalin’s last, unactivated death-list. He may have been reprieved, but he’s clearly yesterday’s man now.
The real power struggle is between Beria – of secret police infamy – and the rat-cunning schemer Nikolai Khrushchev.
Playing Beria as the most sinister, lovable uncle imaginable is Shakespearean star Simon Russell Beale.
Even in this sinister company Beria stands out. He was the one of who drew up Stalin’s murder-lists, who personally raped and killed many of his victims, and who now knows where all the bodies are buried – often literally.
Beria may be a hard man to topple but Khrushchev – played by the always watchable Steve Buscemi – might be the man to do it.
Khrushchev gains our sympathy early - mostly by simply not being Beria - but as the film progresses it’s clear he’s no snowflake himself. And he’s got powerful friends.
Not least Field Marshall Zhukov, Russia’s greatest war hero, and a man with the whole Red Army behind him.
But, as The Death of Stalin points out early and often, never underestimate people’s stupidity and greed particularly when the losers get not merely fired, but killed often in unspeakable ways.
Director Ianucci – who despite his exotic name hails from Glasgow – is also one of British TV’s most gifted writers and satirists.
He treats these events as the blackest of black comedy. The end result is not only very funny, but it captures the tone of a country that had been terrorized for over 20 years. You had to laugh or you’d go crazy.
In fact, watching Steve Buscemi and Simon Russell Beale jousting to the death, egged on by the likes of Michael Palin, Paul Whitehouse and Jason Isaac – the cast is as brilliant as it is eclectic – you suspect the original events might have been almost as funny. So long as you were at a safe distance from it all.
When television was first invented, some cynics welcomed it. At last the movies have got something to look down on, they said. Since then, of course, more low-life art-forms have come to the fore – some more successful than others. But the lowest remains most attempts to turn a video game into a movie.
Video games themselves are huge – they’ve been making more money than the movies for years – but it doesn’t stop them dreaming of a little respect.
The latest attempt – a reboot of the clunky Lara Croft films starring Angelina Jolie, now called Tomb Raider – once again underlines the fact that video games may look like movie stories, but they’re not really.
Like most of them, Tomb Raider – which offers nice pay-packets to Alicia Vikander, Dominic West, Kristen Scott Thomas and Sir Derek Jacobi – starts well enough, then gets more and more lost in the jungle.
The trailer for Tomb raider is a good indication of what happens, as the attractive Alicia Vikander finds herself shedding clothing, subsidiary characters, any distinctive personality and the last vestiges of logic as the movie progresses.
As usual, the ‘movie’ part of Tomb raider got trapped and devoured by the ‘computer game’ part.
The good bits of Tomb Raider – stolen from the good bits of the likes of Indiana Jones – would work far better if it didn’t also have to accommodate all those video game elements. But of course if they did that they wouldn’t get those nice pay-packets.
You can’t help thinking that the film Mary Magdalene is a story whose time has come. Most so-called Biblical epics of the past have been very male-centred, particularly those dealing with Jesus.
Mary – one of the few female speaking roles in the New Testamant, apart from Jesus’s mother Mary – was sidelined by the Church over the centuries, often unfairly.
For instance, the idea that she was some sort of fallen woman was actually offered by an Eighth Century Pope, and seems to have stuck. Until now.
But she is one of the most important female characters in The Greatest Story Ever Told – and frankly we’re told very little about her. Even the one thing we thought we knew about her turns out not to be true.
