Reddit reviews The Death of Stalin

To those really arguing the historical merits of The Death of Stalin, there are two things to remember:

-It's a comedy, so they're obviously going to exaggerate or downplay aspects for comedic timing.

-The source material for the film is based off a French comic book, so the film was already pop history at its inception: https://www.amazon.com/Death-Stalin-Fabien-Nury/dp/1785863401

https://www.amazon.com/Death-Stalin-Fabien-Nury/dp/1785863401#

https://m.comixology.com/The-Death-of-Stalin/comics-series/92326

This is my attitude towards The Death of Stalin. While I tend to have a prejudice against Western depictions of Soviet history, I found I enjoyed the original bandes-dessinée far more than the film adaptation. In the BD the comedy was rooted in the events surrounding Stalin's death, highlighting the absurdity of the whole situation. By contrast, the movie rooted its comedy in the characters, and by so doing turned them into clowns. (You can feel however you want about people like Molotov, Khrushchev, and Beria, but they were not clowns.) Additionally, the BD had a far better handle on how to integrate terror into the story without diluting its impact, and it also had little humanizing moments with the characters worrying about what is going to happen now that Stalin, the guiding force in their lives, their nation, and their whole worldview, is gone. The movie never knew how to make the Terror terrifying and omitted the humanizing moments entirely, and was the lesser for it.