Fleapit Revisited:The Death Of Stalin.

"If the leader is incapacitated, the committee must convene"

Armando Iannucci's 2017 political satire The Death Of Stalin (which I finally got round to watching last night) is, on the surface, a black comedy/farcical satire about the infighting, bargaining, and plotting that follows the death of the Soviet leader in Moscow in 1953. But also, surely, Iannucci is trying to make points about the modern world of politics too.

Something he does very well. I've long been an admirer of Iannucci. Time Trumpet and The Armando Iannucci Show are vastly underrated series, he worked on Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, and he co-created the character of Alan Partridge with Steve Coogan which is enough already to make up an impressive CV before you add in The Thick Of It, Veep, and On The Hour.

Set against the backdrop of 'the great terror', mass executions, and crippling paranoia, Iannucci's pulled off something of a master stroke by not having any of the actors involved attempt a Russian accent. Steve Buscemi's Nikita Khruschev speaks like a New York wise guy, Michael Palin portrays Vyacheslav Molotov with Palin's own soft Sheffield accent, and Simon Russell Beale's Lavrentiy Beria commands every scene with the confidence of the plummy thesp that Beale appears to be.

It seems unlikely that Joseph Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin) would make jokes about people shitting their pants but having him do this, and Beale's Beria describing Stalin's office as smelling like "a Baku piss-house", underlines how ridiculous political chicanery really is and how these people, despite their elevated positions in Soviet society, are really no different to anyone else.

But then Iannucci pulls the rug from under us as, not longer after his trouser soiling gag, Stalin turns to violent, and very real, threats as surely as Tommy DeVito, Joe Pesci's character in GoodFellas, famously did - "you think I'm funny?". These are politicians who will affect to appear normal, pose with babies, and grieve with relatives, but will stop at nothing in their quest for power.

Beria personally tortures his enemies, Paul Whitehouse's Anastas Mikoyan seems more interested in the cut of his suit than the cutting of people's throats, and Buscemi's tiggerish Khrushchev talks endlessly about the battle of Stalingrad (he's so hyper you can't help wondering if Jim Carrey was considered for the role), while Palin's poor old Molotov, a company man through and through despite having had his wife Polina (Diana Quick) disappeared, had been lined up for assassination by Stalin.

He was on "the list". Though he didn't seem to know it. Jeffrey Tambor's Georgy Malenkov, his white suit and ludicrous make up make him look like Marilyn Manson's dad, doesn't seem to know it. As deputy he's due to take over but, aware of the weakness of his character and ability to be played, the other leading members of the committee soon get round to bickering and bargaining their way into power.

Once they're certain Stalin's dead that is. They don't do a lot to help him survive. There's no love for Stalin, only fear, and it's obvious from the start of the film they can't wait for him to die so they can begin jostling for position (treating him like a safety car for a rolling start in the Indy 500) but they know they must be seen to at least pretend to care about his passing.

With this lot in control of his fate Stalin didn't stand much of a chance but as the line "all the best doctors are in the Gulag - or dead" deftly illustrates, he's the one ultimately responsible for the lack of care he receives. His children Svetlana (Andrea Riseborough) and the vodka soaked ice hockey fan Vasily (Rupert Friend) are called in and in a film that's dryly amusing, satirical, and peppered with smart dialogue, but thin on actual laugh our loud moments, Vasily and Jason Isaacs' army head Georgy Zhukov provide the lion's share of them.

"You're not even a person. You're a testicle" snorts Vasily to one of Stalin's medics and Isaacs is brilliant, flashing his medals, demanding a drink, and acting to all of the Kremlin like some Russian/Scouse hybrid of Rik Mayall's Lord Flashheart in Blackadder. There's some good toilet humour, jokes about pissing and fingering, but some of the slapstick (hardly Iannucci's greatest skill as a comedy writer), banging heads on fire buckets and the like, doesn't really come off and adds nothing to the film.

Nor does the story of the Mozart recital by pianist Maria Yudina (Olga Kurylenko) overseen by Paddy Considine's Yuri Andreyev. They're both excellent, Considine always is, but they're given pretty thin borscht to work with. But, despite these misgivings, The Death of Stalin is an enjoyable satire, farce, or even a romp about how powerful men conspire both with and against each other to ensure their own survival. Less the survival of the fittest and more the survival of the shittest. Not too unlike the UK right now.