Armando Iannucci
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Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Directed by Terry Jones
influenced The Death of Stalin (2017)
There’s an attention to period detail reminiscent of Monty Python and the Holy Grail or Life of Brian (Michael Palin also pops up in the cast) and none of the stiffness or hindsight of bad historical storytelling.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
influenced In the Loop (2009)
Themes
A Wag the Dog, or maybe even a Dr. Strangelove, for the Iraq War, it goes behind the scenes at 10 Downing Street and in Washington, DC, to show how non-existent data and deceptive semantics can be twisted into the deaths of thousands by the ruthless and feckless.
Imagine a mashup of Dr. Strangelove and Wag the Dog, and you've got the general idea.
Drawing upon Wag the Dog, Dr. Strangelove and This Is Spinal Tap, this sardonic tale is adapted from the critically acclaimed BBC series The Thick of It.
But Iannucci, bless him, made the same realisation that Stanley Kubrick did when he was making Dr. Strangelove : when something is too absurdly awful to even contemplate realistically, the only way to treat it is as a colossal black joke.
Showing how politicians, in all their petty ambition and narrow self-interest, can be every bit as dangerous as Weapons of Mass Destruction, this is Dr Strangelove for the post-9/11 era.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)
Directed by Michael Radford
influenced The Death of Stalin (2017)
Themes
Presenting… Monty Python’s production of George Orwell’s 1984.
There is real grotesquerie too in the early scene of Stalin and his closest comrades, eating, drinking and chest-bumping together, behaving like the senior pigs in George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
From Tucker’s baroque threats of violence (“You'll find yourself in some medieval war zone in the Caucasus with your arse in the air”) to his radioactive sarcasm (“I'm sweating spinal fluid here”) to his creative cussing, beanpole Capaldi is as ferociously curdled as Richard E. Grant in Withnail & I, and just as much a legend in the making.
Shot in a style akin to one of Armando Iannucci’s satiric mockumentaries, the film replicates the simple aesthetic humor of In the Loop in its fly-on-the-wall observation and use of editing as a means of hammering home the most devastating punchlines or crafting jokes out of cutting away from arguments as they reach fever pitch.
Jojo Rabbit (2019)
Directed by Taika Waititi
influenced by The Death of Stalin (2017), In the Loop (2009)
Themes
Jojo Rabbit is billed as a “satire,” but true satire sticks to its guns, either by exploding language and logic altogether, as in Duck Soup , or by icily juxtaposing small-minded, egotistical clowns and large amounts of horror, as in Armando Iannucci’s The Death of Stalin .
(Though Veep creator Armando Iannucci did something similar last year with The Death of Stalin , to largely positive reviews).
The material is equal parts grim and hysterical (especially the debate over which of the Allied forces are worse to humans and dogs – Americans, Russians or the British), and folk will likely seize on comparisons with “The Death of Stalin” (2017) due to the era, comedic style and subject.
Unlike true satires, such as Dr. Strangelove, In The Loop, or The Great Dictator, Jojo rarely points the humor at the villains of the film.
Perhaps not since Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 satire The Great Dictator has a filmmaker taken on such awful personalities and events and attempted to make us laugh about it all.
This is just the opening movement to a grand satire driven by profound cynicism about self-obsessed leaders — “Duck Soup” with real dictators.
Yet its bleakness is offset by its anarchic spirit, which summons up the ghosts of Duck Soup, Million Dollar Legs, and other screwball skewerings of authoritarianism.
So The Death of Stalin is akin to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, then?
Great Expectations (1946)
Directed by David Lean
influenced The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019)
Themes Visuals
Imagine his eyes widening, first in mystification and then with a dawning delight, at Magwitch in the moldy graveyard, in “Great Expectations” (1946); at the sight of the famished boys who troop to their benches and their gruel, at the start of “Oliver!” (1968), chanting “Food, Glorious Food”; and at the matchless Murdstone of Basil Rathbone, in “David Copperfield” (1935), whose hatchet face all but cleaves the screen as he prepares to thrash David like a dog.
The film lacks the atmosphere of David Lean's Great Expectations or the weighty iconography of any one of a number of Christmas Carol s, but a sincere affection for and understanding of the source material shines through in its wit and good nature.
Underworld (2003)
Directed by Len Wiseman
influenced The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019)
In other words, pay attention, and who knew that the woman portraying a vampire in the “Underworld” series could wildly rule over a comical, sarcastic period piece.
Oliver! (1968)
Directed by Carol Reed
influenced The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019)
Themes Plot
Imagine his eyes widening, first in mystification and then with a dawning delight, at Magwitch in the moldy graveyard, in “Great Expectations” (1946); at the sight of the famished boys who troop to their benches and their gruel, at the start of “Oliver!” (1968), chanting “Food, Glorious Food”; and at the matchless Murdstone of Basil Rathbone, in “David Copperfield” (1935), whose hatchet face all but cleaves the screen as he prepares to thrash David like a dog.
Awarded the director’s first PG rating by the BBFC, it has more in common with Carol Reed’s 1968 family musical Oliver!
But movies adapted from Dickens — and there are too many to count — struggle with this dichotomy; perhaps the best evidence is “Oliver!” (1968), an upbeat Oscar-winning musical about starving orphans and whores getting beaten to death.
It tries to do for the Dickens classic what the Best Picture-winning musical Oliver! did for its somewhat more famous source material in 1968, offering a facelift to a story that might otherwise struggle to connect with younger audiences today while maintaining the playfulness that underlines much of Dickens’ book.
It’s not easy to find humour in the horrible, but if the definition of comedy truly is tragedy plus time then the likes of The Producers can illustrate that when barbarity is made to look ridiculous it’s a powerful political statement.
It’s the difference between “Richard III” and “The Mouse That Roared,” where tragedy proves far more damning than farce.
…the dark comedy social satire of The Death of Stalin or Sorry to Bother You…
From Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar to Oliver Stone’s JFK to Oliver Hirschbiegel’s controversial Hitler flick Downfall (poor Adolf, in that bunker and everything), the sudden exit of an iconic political figure, be they benevolent or tyrannical, offers rich material for storytellers.
Already the premier political satirist of his era, In the Loop director and Veep creator Armando Iannucci pulls off his most impressive feat yet, turning the corpse-strewn power struggle that followed Joseph Stalin’s sudden death into a lacerating and disturbingly relevant farce.
He also starred in other films like “Get Shorty,” “In The Loop'' and “All The King's Men.”
But what’s especially jarring about the film is that it comes from director Armando Iannucci, best known for such profane and satirical works as The Thick of It, In the Loop, Veep and The Death of Stalin.