I just saw this movie this afternoon and OMG it’s fucking hilarious. 
I didn’t even realize it was a comedy going in; I saw a poster for it yesterday when I saw Blockers and thought it a period drama. They take some liberties with the timeline, but other stuff is actually toned down from real history. Anybody else see this? Apparently it came out in the UK last year.
Caught it on a flight just last week, loved it.
Iannuci is a comedy god so he can do no wrong in my eyes but even so, it is beautifully done. Hilarious, brutal and depressing in equal measures. I saw a poster for it and noticed that Beria (Simon Russel Beale) wasn’t on it. Strange seeing as he and Kruschev are the central planks but then…I realised…this was Stalin’s Russia.
Jason Isaac’s Zhukov has to place pretty highly on the “best entrance in a film”
The black, deadpan humour really brilliant!
When you’re finished laughing, you are left with a feeling of horror and disgust for the Soviet regime, and contempt for Stalin and the whole leadership. A more serious movie couldn’t have achieved that so well.
No wonder it’s banned in Russia.
It’s in a class of its own. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one as good on film.
It was a great entrance, but for the rest of the movie I was puzzling over where I’d seen Jason Isaacs before. It wasn’t until I was leaving the theater that I realized he was Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films.
It’s also one of the few movies I’ve seen where people in the audience were laughing consistently at different parts of the film than others. The acting was terrific, especially Simon Russell Beale as Beria.
It was great. It’s quite difficult to make comedy about such dark matters. There’s high potential for payoff but you have to know what you’re doing. Which leads me to wonder how they went about playing it just right.
I was surprised that the actors playing Beria and Khrushchev seem to have been switched physically. Could that have been intentional and if so, what might it mean?
If you liked this movie, it’s worth checking out Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa by the same guy. I hear In the loop is also good.
Why do you think that would be?
I finally got to see it this weekend, and was not disappointed. Jason Issacs was fantastic as Zuchov. Historically, the whole thing was a mess, and it deviated significantly from the original graphic novel, but as a black comedy it was superb. I liked Palin’s Molitov, (Since we’re here, may as well spend a Kopec!) but the graphic novel mined some pitch black humor out of him turning against Beria because he disobeyed a direct order from Stalin- by sparing his wife!
I would love a film about Svetlana Stalin, too. She had a remarkable life- Daughter of Stalin, became a teacher, fell in love with an Indian diplomat, was refused permission to marry him and defected to America after his death, became a bestselling writer, fell in with the quasi-cult surrounding Frank Lloyd Wright,…
Vasily, on the other hand was truly as pathetic as depicted in the film. Died of Alcoholism at 40.
It was a great film, both riotously funny and completely horrific.
I loved the closing credits - with the “disappearing photos”. That was truly the crowning touch.
It was excellent on all fronts. Simon Russell Beale and Steve Buscemi were spectacularly good, Beale especially.
Just got back from seeing it. Just about the perfect definition of ‘dark comedy’. I doubt a historian would approve of it and there are more than a few changes to time, but as the confusion and double-dealing that happens when a paranoid, murderous autocrat unexpectedly dies is a tangled tale well-told. The end, with Brenzhev (sp) looming in the background, was gold.
So yeah, if it’s in your area, go see it.
Buscemi was hilarious. His scenes trying to arrange Stalin’s funeral cracked me up. “You spend all day dealing with little Hitler over there!” Rupert Friend was also terrific.