The Death of Stalin

It's probably good none of the actors in this movie try to put on Russian accents, but it's still weird to hear Lavrenti Beria cursing like some British gangster from a Guy Ritchie film.

The movie, as the name suggests, involves the death of Stalin. Mostly the political gamesmanship and maneuvering the various possible successors are doing. Everyone wants to be the new man in charge, if only because it keeps them from being sentenced to death as a traitor by the man in charge. The main struggle seems to be between Beria (Simon Russell Beale) and Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi), and for most of it, Beria's seems to have the upper hand. He has the formerly assistant to the general secretary, now the General Secretary Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor) in his pocket, and is stymieing or co-opting all of Khrushchev's strategies to gain popularity.

It's ugly, because people's lives are just toys in their struggle. Free a bunch of people arrested on bullshit pretexts three days earlier, just to score some acclaim. If 1500 people die trying to attend Stalin's funeral because the security forces were ordered to keep people out, well, that makes the person who gave the NKVD those orders look pretty bad, doesn't it?

Really, they're all a bunch of pitiful schmucks who spent the past two decades jumping through whatever hoops Stalin put in front of them, or that they thought Stalin put in front of them. They're really no different from all the everyday people who are so terrified of Stalin they've convinced themselves they love him (every person we see or hear executed in this film yells "Glory to Stalin!" or something like that before they're shot). And now these guys think one of them should run things. Jockeying for favor and to keep their necks out of the nooses, squabbling and backbiting like a bunch of stupid gossipy teenagers. For all the talk of reform, they'll still rely on the methods they have for so long whenever it suits them. It's ridiculous watching them contort themselves trying to figure out how to best give the appearance of honoring Stalin, because one time he said this, but another time he said something else, so. . .

I was legitimately surprised Field Marshal Zhukov (played by Jason Isaacs as being loud, angry, and aggressively pissed off) was still alive in 1953. Actually, he lived until 1973, but I had it in my head Stalin had him killed sometime shortly after the war. In my defense, betting on Stalin to have someone killed sooner rather than later is usually where the smart money is. Zhukov did refuse to take back Stalingrad from the Nazis until he felt certain he had enough men in reserve to win, against Stalin's demands. Even if that was the right call, well, when had that ever mattered with Stalin?