The Death of Stalin
The Death of Stalin is a British-French comedy film by the Scottish director Armando Iannucci from 2017 , which depicts the events surrounding the death of Josef Stalin in 1953 and the intrigues surrounding his successor with black humor . The film, which is prohibited from showing in Russia, was released in Germany and Austria on March 29, 2018. In French-speaking Switzerland it started on March 28th, and performance in German-speaking Switzerland was on April 12th, 2018.
The film is based on the French graphic novel La Mort de Staline (Eng .: The Death of Stalin ) and its sequel by author Fabien Nury and illustrator Thierry Robin. It is about the power struggles that broke out in the Soviet Union after Stalin's death in March 1953 in the closest leadership of the party and state.
action
After a radio broadcast of a Mozart concert by Radio Moscow , Josef Stalin calls for a recording. However, since the concert was not recorded, the recording is re-enacted hectically under absurd conditions. Among other things, in order to achieve identical acoustic conditions, passers-by are taken from the street to replace viewers who have already left the broadcasting hall. The conductor, passed out from excitement, is replaced. The pianist Marija Judina , whose relatives were murdered by Stalin's regime, can only be persuaded to play again by bribing over 20,000 rubles.
In the record case, which is sent by courier to Stalin's dacha , Yudina puts a slip of paper accusing the dictator of leading the country into the abyss. When Stalin found the note, he began to laugh violently, suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and fell paralyzed to the ground. Since nobody dares to enter his room without being asked, he is only found unconscious the next morning. Among the summoned members of the Central Committee of the CPSU (Central Committee), the head of the secret service Lavrenti Beria arrives first , who discovers Yudina's notice and takes it before he hastily takes several documents. Shortly afterwards, the deputy general secretary of the Central Committee, Georgi Malenkov , who panics about Stalin's imminent death, appears. But Beria advises him to take the lead, hoping to influence the weak Malenkov like a puppet .
With the exception of the former Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov , whom Stalin had spontaneously put on a death list the previous evening, all the members of the Central Committee finally arrive, including its secretary Nikita Khrushchev . Only now do they carry Stalin out of the room together and arrange for medical attention, which is not at all easy, as they recently had almost all doctors arrested . The secret service is then frantically rounded up with doctors. These explain that there is no prospect of a cure.
A covert power struggle is now breaking out between Khrushchev and Beria. The head of the secret service had the transport connections to and from Moscow interrupted and assigned the security of the capital to the NKVD, which he controlled, instead of the Red Army . Beria arbitrarily pardons Molotov, who seems useful to him, and now has unpopular people arrested. Stalin's daughter Svetlana and his choleric, alcoholic son Vasily also arrive at the dacha, where Khrushchev and Beria wrestle for their attention, as they hope they will gain additional influence by controlling Stalin's children.
When Stalin dies, the members of the Central Committee return to Moscow, while NKVD agents, on Beria's orders, immediately plunder the dacha and murder all eyewitnesses, including the doctors. Khrushchev visits Molotov in his apartment in order to win him over as an ally, which the latter rejects because, as a staunch Stalinist, he rejects a split in the party. Beria also tries to get Molotov on his side by releasing his wife Polina , who had been arrested by the NKVD a few years earlier and who believed Molotov to be dead.
The Central Committee appoints Malenkov as the new head of government and, at Beria's instigation, assigns Khrushchev the apparently meaningless task of organizing Stalin's funeral. Beria, on the other hand, improves his public reputation by releasing political prisoners and ceasing reprisals against the church . It looks like Beria will manage to win the power struggle. But a dispute breaks out between the arrogant Beria and Georgi Zhukov , war hero and chief of the Red Army land forces, who is angry that the NKVD is supposed to guarantee Moscow's security instead of the army. When Beria learns that the pianist Yudina is a distant friend of Khrushchev's because she gave his niece piano lessons, he threatens them both by pointing out the note he found next to Stalin.
Khrushchev then meets with Zhukov. He, who fears that the army will be disempowered by the secret service, assures him that he will support a coup against Beria if the Central Committee unanimously supports him. In order to undermine Beria's popularity, Khrushchev now orders that the train service to Moscow be resumed. Admirers of Stalin then flock to the capital to say goodbye to the dead man. NKVD agents guarding the funeral hall deny people entry and eventually open fire, causing a mass panic that kills a total of 1,500 people. The Central Committee then proposes punishing some NKVD officials, which Beria rejects, as this would fall back on him. He furiously threatens the members of the Central Committee with incriminating information that he has collected about all of them. Molotov, too, now agrees to a coup against Beria, on condition that Khrushchev is approved by all Central Committee members, including the Malenkovs.
On the day of Stalin's funeral, Khrushchev told Zhukov and Molotov that Malenkov supported the coup. At the subsequent Central Committee meeting, Beria is taken by surprise. The Red Army then overwhelmed the NKVD agents present, and Zhukov and his men arrested Beria. Malenkow, taken by surprise, is confronted with a fait accompli and reluctantly gives his consent. Khrushchev and his allies accuse Beria of high treason , immediately read out the pre-formulated judgment and have him shot. His body is still being cremated on the spot. Khrushchev lets Stalin's daughter Svetlana leave for Vienna and assures her that he will take care of her brother; between the lines it becomes clear that he will have the unstable Wassili imprisoned permanently.
The film ends with a shot in which Khrushchev - who has since been appointed leader of the Soviet Union - attends a concert by Maria Yudina. He is observed by Leonid Brezhnev , who will overthrow him eleven years later.
reception
The film received mostly very positive reviews. At Rotten Tomatoes , 96 percent of the 237 reviews are positive with an average rating of 8.09 / 10.
The film service criticizes that “there is hardly any room for the victims of the Stalinist terror”. In return, "the mixture of horror, cruelty and dialogue wit through their brilliant cast and the lack of illusion, with which the time after Stalin is indicated barely any optimism."
Alexander Menden saw in the Süddeutsche Zeitung a “timeless ensemble comedy about evil people who are up to evil and do evil at every opportunity”, and particularly emphasized the performance of the actors: Iannucci had “for the Soviet apparatchiks who watched each other a technically heterogeneous group of American and British actors who worked fantastically in the ensemble. "
Prohibition in Russia
In Russia, various parties called for the film to be banned early on , as it was an attack on Russia's honor. At the time of the premiere in England, the intended distributor in Russia, Volga Film , had not yet submitted an application for a license to the Ministry of Culture; the license granted shortly thereafter was revoked on January 23, 2018 following an announcement by the Minister of Culture. Since then, the film has been banned from showing in Russia. A cinema did not stop ticket sales, showed the film a total of five times from January 25 to 27 and was sentenced to heavy fines for this in the first instance.
Vedomosti reported in February 2018 that the ban had inadvertently made the film well known in the country. In comparison with the film Matilda it has been shown that the "dishonor" of Stalin is more provocative for many Russians than that of the tsar.
Historical facts
Quite a few of the grotesque film scenes actually played out like this or similar, even if not always in the context shown. The storyline mixes fictional material with actual events from different years and compresses them to a few days after Stalin's death.
For example, the improvised piano concerto, which was only given to press a record for Stalin, took place a few years before the events described. At that time, Stalin had the pianist Marija Yudina handed over 50,000 rubles as thanks, which she is said to have sent back to the dictator with an accusing letter. In this case, the film makes use of real events and anecdotes, which it reproduces slightly modified. The recording of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 with Marija Yudina at the grand piano was on the record player in Stalin's room when he was found.
The film exaggerates the circumstances of his death in a satirical way, but depicts them largely oriented towards historical reality. Stalin was actually only found many hours after his stroke, as nobody dared to enter his room without being asked. It is also a fact that no doctor was called until all Politburo members were gathered in Stalin's dacha in Kunzewo . The dying scene in which Stalin briefly opens his eyes and threatens to raise his finger was witnessed by some of those present. Likewise, it is historical facts that some of the best medics in the Soviet Union had been arrested for an alleged medical conspiracy shortly before Stalin's death .
The court martial of the Central Committee members and the immediate cremation of Beria's body follows a description of his son. Some western newspapers also reported this at the time. Historically, this representation is no longer considered tenable today. In 2010, the Chief of Staff of the Russian Air Force, Lieutenant General Vadim Volkovitsky , confirmed that Beria was not shot until December 23, 1953 . Although Beria was actually arrested at a central committee meeting at the end of June 1953, it was not until December that he was brought to justice and executed.
Awards and nominations
- Award in the Best Comedy category
- Nomination for the audience award
- Award in the Best Comedy category
The German Film and Media Assessment (FBW) in Wiesbaden awarded the film the title valuable .
Web links
- The Death of Stalin in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Death of Stalin at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- Official website of the German rental company
Individual evidence
- ^ Certificate of Release for The Death of Stalin . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 176778 / K).
- ↑ The Death of Stalin. In: synchronkartei.de. German dubbing index , accessed on September 15, 2019 .
- ↑ FAZ Online from January 29, 2018
- ↑ a b The Death of Stalin. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed February 22, 2020 .
- ↑ The Death of Stalin. In: Falter.at . Retrieved September 15, 2019 .
- ↑ The Death of Stalin. In: Movies.ch. Retrieved September 15, 2019 .
- ^ Fabien Nury, Thierry Robin: The Death of Stalin , Splitter Verlag, Bielefeld 2018
- ^ The Death of Stalin (2018). Rotten Tomatoes, accessed September 15, 2019 .
- ↑ Evil people who do evil. Süddeutsche Zeitung, accessed on March 31, 2018 .
- ↑ In Russia, nobody's laughing at Iannucci's The Death of Stalin , The Guardian, October 14, 2017
- ↑ Russia Bans Stalin Film Satire , Spiegel Online, January 24, 2018
- ↑ Pioneer cinema fined for showing The Death of Stalin , Vedomosti, February 22, 2018
- ↑ The Ministry of Culture advertised the "death of Stalin" well , Vedomosti, February 20, 2018
- ^ Matthias Vetter: Conspiracy of the Kremlin doctors . In: Wolfgang Benz (Ed.) Handbook of Antisemitism , Vol. 4: Events, Decrees, Controversies . de Gruyter Saur, Berlin / New York 2011, ISBN 978-3-598-24076-8 , p. 417.
- ↑ The Death of Stalin. In: FBW. Retrieved September 15, 2019 .