[SPOILERS BELOW]
An hilariously frenetic comedy, that also works as an insightful, if satirical and purposefully inaccurate look into the period after Stalin's death.
The Death Of Stalin is utterly fantastic. While it is predominately focused on being a dark comedy film, it still functions, quite clearly, as a political thriller - with the mind games that each individual makes to curry favour with another being fascinating to watch.
Needless to say, the positives of this movie far outweigh the negatives. First of all, the brilliant and varied performances of each member of the cast makes every character memorable, even if their names don't stick in your head as much. Secondly, the cinematography is equally powerful with many great sweeping shots that show off the impeccable set design and costume work, as well as pretty clever uses of scene blocking here and there - although, in all fairness, the cinematography isn't completely consistent throughout with many shots merely being adequate. Thirdly, there were a lot of clever metaphors and usage of symbolism throughout the film; most notably, with the orchestra at the beginning being inter-cut with the removal of Russian citizens to Gulag prison camps - showing the "orchestration" of the governmental forces behind the scenes.
This also hints at the aforementioned mind games that are about to begin. Furthermore, the use of "Articles" as pre-scene title cards to show governmental proceedings and what is about to take place in the scene complements the Totalitarian and systematic nature of the Soviet Union government - juxtaposed by the fact that, with the death of Stalin, everyone is naturally in a frenzied panic (either vying for control or looking for what to do next) climaxing with a political coup to ""remove"" Beria from trying to assert any more power, something which he has been carefully building over the course of the film (And of course, by removal, I mean being found guilty in a kangaroo court and being shot in the head. What do you expect? This is the Soviet Union, after all).
My only major criticisms of the film is that, as stated previously, the cinematography can be occasionally iffy, and that the editing in some areas could have done with a bit more polishing (e.g. the slow-mo audio effect in one scene is poorly inserted and you can hear the audio cut off when the character is done speaking, due to a noticeable amount of noise in the audio clip).
Still, if you're looking for a great comedic political thriller, this might be the film for you. It certainly was for me.
9/10
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