A one-two punch of two feature films from Scottish satirist Armando Iannucci, THE DEATH OF STALIN is an irreverent satire of the power struggle between the party leader Nikita Khrushchev (Buscemi) and the chief of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), Lavrentiy Beria (Beale) in the aftermath of Stalin’s demise in 1953, mustering an Anglophone ensemble to play Russians and retaining each player’s distinctive accent, TDoS is openly ahistorical and scramble a hodgepodge of historical events to show up USSR Communist party’s treacherous political intrigues and draconian executions, with mockery as its ballast, after all the film’s source is a French graphic novel rather than any orthodox biography.

THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD, on the other hand, is Iannucci’s revisionist take on the famous novel and its Victorian milieu, corralling a colorblind cast and enlivening the palette even when our hero is in his absolute rock-bottom, its uncharacteristic comical tone and striking brightness are anything but Dickensian.

Mordant wits and biting repartees are Iannucci’s forte, and in TDoS, they are aplenty, the whole Politburo is made up of the targets of ridicule and contempt: Tambor’s deputy chairman Georgy Malenkov is a tinpot dunderhead; Beria, a sadistic wheeler-dealer who are prone to hectoring; Khrushchev has that particular political acumen, and cunningly adept in conniving and conspiring; Palin’s Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov is a party maximalist, but barely has any say-so in the game. As for Stalin’s two heirs, Svetlana (Riseborough) is at the end of her tether, and the plastered Vasily (Friend), a lost cause liable to nonsensical babbling, they are not veritable successors of their father’s legacy.

The movie is irrefutably offensive to the people of USSR by omitting any humane traits of the erstwhile powers that be, portraying the whole polity of communism and collectivism as a laughing stock, it only betrays Iannucci and co.’s nationalistic mean-spiritedness of squeezing every inch of laughter out of harrowing events to entertain their core audience, and they can easily get off the hook by claiming artistic licenses, those events were factual what they have done is to coax them together to represent an occidental, pejorative outlook on Western democracy’s old adversary.

That said, Both Beale and Buscemi are fantastic thespians, their at-loggerheads political gamesmanship is immensely gratifying to watch, Beale acts like a savage porcupine, those quills are bristling with venom and cruelty whereas Buscemi has a weasel-like disarming facade, but he can be equally ruthless in a pinch. Also Issacs’ Marshal Georgy Zhukov enters the feeding frenzy late but he has that panache to impress, not least with his umpteen bedazzling decorations.

Iannucci shows his shortcoming in scenes of action, the Moscow massacre sequences are rather sloppily wrought, and his control of an ensemble piece isn’t exactly can be called fluid or artistic, especially when things pan out in a fanatic commotion, audience may feel being manhandled just to keep up with the ongoing mess.

Things are ameliorated in TPHoDC, for one thing, the fabulous period art production is a remedy for sore eyes, and young David’s (Patel) misadventure is often offset by the quirkiness of supporting characters, like Capaldi’s buoyant Mr. Micawber, or Laurie’s certifiable Mr. Dick. Everything is arranged in a fairy-tale fashion, like the dainty boat house or the liberating kite-flying expansiveness, tragedy is merely a plot devise, it crops up and vanishes in the next breath.

Patel has grown up to a more competent leading man stature, he can be credibly romantic and sensibly virtuous, his David holds on his own against a kaleidoscope of scene stealers, my preference is a delectably sinister Whishaw as Uriah Heep, whose slapping bouts with Swinton’s auntie Betsy is a humdinger of cartoonish delight.

David’s to-be-a-gentleman-cum-author rite of passage could be written off as a stiff and insular idée fixe, but Iannucci and Blackwell’s script updates it with a more universally appealing, like his irrational infatuation and final realization of who is a more suitable match of matrimony, the whimsical and ladylike Dora Spenlow (Clark, who also moonlights as David’s mother Clara), or Agnes Wickfield (Eleazar), the unassuming but courageous daughter of Mr. Wickfield (Wong), a tippled lawyer.

Collectively, TPHoDC reaches a much happier coda than the novel with David’s extended family grows and settles down with a big hearty smile, the “personal” in the title indicates Iannucci’s own predilection for finding a different color in existent materials, if TDoS is a tad off-color in its taste, TPHoDC, conversely, is a glowing tonic that re-introduces a timeworn classic.

referential entries: Iannucci’s IN THE LOOP (2009, 7.1/10); Garth Davis’ LION (2016, 7.1/10).

Title: The Death of Stalin

Year: 2017

Country: UK, France, Belgium, Canada, USA

Language: English

Genre: Comedy, Drama, History

Director: Armando Iannucci

Writers: Armando Iannucci, David Schneider, Ian Martin, Fabien Nury

based on the comic book by Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin

Music: Christopher Willis

Cinematography: Zac Nicholson

Editing: Peter Lambert

Cast:

Simon Russell Beale

Steve Buscemi

Jeffrey Tambor

Andrea Riseborough

Jason Isaacs

Michael Palin

Olga Kurylenko

Rupert Friend

Paul Chahidi

Dermot Crowley

Paul Whitehouse

Adrain McLoughlin

Paddy Considine

Nicholas Woodeson

Diana Quick

Jonathan Aris

Roger Ashton-Griffiths

Rating: 6.3/10

Title: The Personal History of David Copperfield

Year: 2019

Country: UK, USA

Language: English

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Director: Armando Iannucci

Screenwriters: Armando Iannucci, Simon Blackwell

based on the novel by Charles Dickens

Music: Christopher Willis

Cinematography: Zac Nicholson

Editing: Peter Lambert, Mick Audsley

Cast:

Dev Patel

Tilda Swinton

Hugh Laurie

Ben Whishaw

Peter Capaldi

Morfydd Clark

Daisy May Cooper

Aneurin Barnard

Rosalind Eleazar

Benedict Wong

Jairaj Varsani

Gwendoline Christie

Darren Boyd

Aimée Kelly

Anthony Welsh

Bronagh Gallagher

Anna Maxwell Martin

Paul Whitehouse

Nikki Amuka-Bird

Victor McGuire

Peter Singh

Sophie McShera

Matthew Cottle

Rating: 7.3/10