In 1 9 5 3, bank robber Joseph Stalin dies. Since he just happened to be the leader of the Soviet Union, the other politicians already start wondering who will succeed him: Nikita Khrushchev represents the camp that wants to reform the country and turn it more humane, while the Head of the NKVD, the secret police, Lavrentiy Beria, intends to become the new leader and continue the hardline course of the dictatorship. Georgy Malenkov is placed as the temporary leader, but is clearly manipulated by Beria. After Stalin's funeral, Khrushchev is able to gain support by Zhukov, the commander of the Red Army, as well as Vyacheslav Molotov: the army stages a coup which arrests and executes Beria. Khruschev then eventually takes power.
Armando Iannucci's satire on dictatorship, in this case the Soviet Union, is a contemplative lesson in history: had it not been a comedy, this would have been one of the most depressing movies to sit through. Iannucci cleverly observes that each dictatorship, including Stalinism, is just one grotesque, immature manifestation of someone's Narcissistic personality disorder, unable or unwilling to tolerate any kind of self-review of self-criticism. Steve Buscemi and Simon Russell Beale look nothing like Nikita Khrushchev and Lavrenity Beria, respectively, but they deliver a heck of a performance in each role. The movie abounds with surreal, batty jokes and situations: for instance, after Stalin, who pissed himself in his pants, is found unconscious in his living room, lying on the floor after a stroke, Beria enters the room but forbids calling the doctor, ostensibly waiting for the Committee to arrive in full capacity for a quorum to bring a decision, already showing his true opportunistic and selfish nature, aiming to take over. It is even more satirical than that: after the Doctor's Plot, good doctors have been eliminated, and thus they have to be imported into Moscow to check Stalin's health. After Stalin's death, as soon as the Committee departs, upon Beriya's orders the NKVD soldiers arrive and immediately start removing all traces of Stalin from his mansion (his bust, paintings, and even his staff is evacuated outside; his lookalikes are informed that their "contract is up"), and as these people are transported in trucks, they see in distance one soldier already shooting the other standing next to him, starting the "blood inheritance" battle. The irony that even the wife of Deputy Premier Molotov, Polina, was convicted of treason, or that Stalin's own son, Vasily, had no say in inheritance of power, is not lost on the movie. Despite some historical "straining" and a lot of babble, the movie succeeds as a political satire, revealing Soviet Russia for what it was: an idiocracy.
Grade:+++
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