
The Death of Stalin
2017movie
People
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Philo
MUBI
Hulu
AMC+
PhiloThe Death of Stalin is Iannucci’s most complex and almost nihilistic rendering of what politics is: A team of bumbling and weak-minded people who lack any real conviction other than a desire for power and position. They aren’t quite in hell; they’re definitely not in heaven. It’s death by middle position, the bleakest version of purgatory on earth with no redemption allowed, and the biggest joke of it all is that they’ve put themselves there on purpose.
The Death of Stalin is about a cult of personality that fights for the right to bend reality to whatever they wish it to be, with a population held hostage by the anxiety that emanates from unstable, self-centered government.Even more overlooked are the equally culpable characters that plotted and schemed their way into the innermost circles of tyranny. That is not the case in Armando Iannucci’s 2017 political satire The Death of Stalin, which understands that the fear and anxiety ingrained in an oppressed society is the greatest asset to the film’s black humor.