Armando Iannucci on “The Death of Stalin”
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 19 March 2018
⏱️ 23 minutes
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Summary
As the fourth season of “Veep” came to an end, director Armando Iannucci turned from chronicling the foibles of cynical western democracy to something darker still: life under dictatorship. He found his source material in the French graphic novel “The Death of Stalin.” David Remnick compares Iannucci’s new film to “Get Out”—a real horror story that is also a comedy of terror. “I wanted to take myself out of my comfort zone by taking on these themes that involved death, destruction, and paranoia,” Iannucci tells him. As the brutal dictatorships of the twentieth century fade into history, Iannucci wants to remind people—especially those frustrated with democracy—just how horrific totalitarianism really is.
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| 1:11.6 | I'm Dorothy Wickendon On today's Politics and More podcast, David Remnick talks with |
| 1:17.1 | Armando Ionucci, the creator of HBO's Veep. His new film, The Death of Stalin, |
| 1:23.1 | is a comedic look at life under Soviet totalitarianism. |
| 1:29.3 | I'm a pretty big movie buff, and if you were to go about engineering the perfect film for me, |
| 1:34.5 | total remnant bait, it might be a little like this. It would be set in the Soviet Union, |
| 1:39.7 | where I live for four years as a reporter. It would be a dark political comedy because I thrive on that |
| 1:46.1 | stuff. And it would have actors like Steve Bouchemy and Simon Russell Beale. And at the same time, |
| 1:52.6 | it would be so foul-mouthed that I'd be embarrassed to take my kids even though they're in their mid-20s. |
| 1:58.9 | Now, that happens to be more or less an exact description of the death of Stalin, directed and co-written by the great Armando Ionucci. I'm not going to pretend to be impartial here. I've loved everything I've ever seen by Ianucci, the thick of it, and in the loop which he made in his native Great Britain. Hi, fittest boy, lesson one. I tell you to fuck off, what do you do? F off? You'll go far. And Veep, which he created for HBO, starring Julia Louis Dreyfus. Jonah, don't talk, don't stay. You need to fuck off and go back to Westworld. But, ma'am. But, ma'am, I say fuck off. Three fucks, you're out. Yes, ma'am. Yeah. In the death of Stalin, Ianucci shifts his focus from the grubbier precincts of Western democracy and takes a look at one of the most brutal regimes in history. And like Get Out, it's a horror movie that's absolutely hilarious at the same time. |
| 2:56.6 | And maybe one that cuts a little too close to home for some since it's currently banned in Russia. |
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