People often accuse me of being a moralizing killjoy when I come after edgy trash for being edgy trash. (You have no idea how much good sense I had to deploy to avoid potholing that sentence with something popular.) My go-to defense is that I actually really like Black Comedy when it's not Dead Baby Comedy, and my go-to example is The Death of Stalin.
Set in the Soviet Union before, during, and after the titular event, The Death of Stalin isn't necessarily 100% historically accurate, but you knew that. Everyone knows not to trust movie history, or at least they should by this point. What it is is a great political dramady about power and authoritarianism.
There are some weighty themes here too, about how governments let style get in the way of substance, appearing to be capable and competent taking priority over actually providing good governance, about how even seemingly invincible and dangerous people are just people in the end, and about how even trying to do the right thing and reform a corrupt system can involve getting your hands very dirty with more than just dirt. It is a rewarding film as well as an entertaining one.
But I'm mostly here to talk about the entertainment value. A key difference between The Death of Stalin and a lot of other black comedy is that most of the central cast, even protagonist Khrushchev, are various shades of loser, and the film runs with that rather than try to make them cool, edgy assholes other assholes are presumably supposed to see as wish fulfillment. (Had to roll a save vs. pothole again just now, by the way!) When they screw each other over, have ridiculously skewed priorities, or suffer general misfortunes, we freely laugh at them rather than with them, and when they come out on top we're secure in the knowledge that, with a few pointed exceptions that are not played for comedy, at least the people losing out deserve it too.
Speaking of, this brings me to another key detail: the times when the film knows not to be funny. With, again, another few pointed exceptions, the joke is almost never "And then a bunch of innocent people had awful things happen to them! Laugh nervously because you can't believe we did that, that's the same thing as actual black comedy right?!" When Beria is implicitly engaging in sexual assault, or when the secret police are hauling away victims to likely terrible fates, or even when people who do richly deserve it are being subjected to show trials and executions, the movie knows when to let the comedy take a back seat and the drama take a forward seat. It even helps separate the bad people we still root for from the worse ones we don't; at least some of them have the good grace to be disgusted by the death and oppression their society engages in, to see it as a bug to be fixed not a feature to be expanded on in later patches.
If you just don't have it in you to appreciate this level of Black Comedy, that's perfectly fine. My own parents couldn't get past some parts of this film. But if you can, and if you like political and/or historical drama (while having a reasonable stomach for artistic license), give it a try. Between the star studded cast, the witty script, and the rewarding themes under the hood, it's a great time at the movies.
Film The Yardstick for Black Comedy
People often accuse me of being a moralizing killjoy when I come after edgy trash for being edgy trash. (You have no idea how much good sense I had to deploy to avoid potholing that sentence with something popular.) My go-to defense is that I actually really like Black Comedy when it's not Dead Baby Comedy, and my go-to example is The Death of Stalin.
Set in the Soviet Union before, during, and after the titular event, The Death of Stalin isn't necessarily 100% historically accurate, but you knew that. Everyone knows not to trust movie history, or at least they should by this point. What it is is a great political dramady about power and authoritarianism.
There are some weighty themes here too, about how governments let style get in the way of substance, appearing to be capable and competent taking priority over actually providing good governance, about how even seemingly invincible and dangerous people are just people in the end, and about how even trying to do the right thing and reform a corrupt system can involve getting your hands very dirty with more than just dirt. It is a rewarding film as well as an entertaining one.
But I'm mostly here to talk about the entertainment value. A key difference between The Death of Stalin and a lot of other black comedy is that most of the central cast, even protagonist Khrushchev, are various shades of loser, and the film runs with that rather than try to make them cool, edgy assholes other assholes are presumably supposed to see as wish fulfillment. (Had to roll a save vs. pothole again just now, by the way!) When they screw each other over, have ridiculously skewed priorities, or suffer general misfortunes, we freely laugh at them rather than with them, and when they come out on top we're secure in the knowledge that, with a few pointed exceptions that are not played for comedy, at least the people losing out deserve it too.
Speaking of, this brings me to another key detail: the times when the film knows not to be funny. With, again, another few pointed exceptions, the joke is almost never "And then a bunch of innocent people had awful things happen to them! Laugh nervously because you can't believe we did that, that's the same thing as actual black comedy right?!" When Beria is implicitly engaging in sexual assault, or when the secret police are hauling away victims to likely terrible fates, or even when people who do richly deserve it are being subjected to show trials and executions, the movie knows when to let the comedy take a back seat and the drama take a forward seat. It even helps separate the bad people we still root for from the worse ones we don't; at least some of them have the good grace to be disgusted by the death and oppression their society engages in, to see it as a bug to be fixed not a feature to be expanded on in later patches.
If you just don't have it in you to appreciate this level of Black Comedy, that's perfectly fine. My own parents couldn't get past some parts of this film. But if you can, and if you like political and/or historical drama (while having a reasonable stomach for artistic license), give it a try. Between the star studded cast, the witty script, and the rewarding themes under the hood, it's a great time at the movies.