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Originally Posted by snootchiebootchies
Death of Stalin - Pitch black comedy. Not for everyone. Reminds me when after watching a handful of episodes of the TV series Succession, I had loved it so much that I got my wife to watch it as well. She detested the show. She didn't see the point of watching amoral greedy a-holes lying and backstabbing each other so they can become even more filthy rich. This was what I was thinking about while watching Death of Stalin. Funny stuff but everybody is so amoral and detestable. There was one scene in Death of Stalin that satirized the excellent execution scene in The Pianist in which a dozen or so Jewish men were lined up and a Nazi officer casually goes down the line and puts a bullet in each victim's head until he reaches the last person in line and he runs out of bullets. The Jewish man shows a glimpse of relief but the Nazi officer casually replaces the clip in his gun and shoots the man in the head. In the Death of Stalin version, a Russian officer was putting bullets in the heads of "counter-revolutionaries" lined up in a row when another officer comes running into the scene announcing all executions were cancelled. The prisoners thought they were saved but while the two officers are arguing the semantics of the order, he keeps shooting these prisoners one by one in the head. The scene is played for laughs and I thought it was very funny but I'm pretty sure my wife wouldn't.
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I had pretty much the same reaction. It's funny, and there are big laugh moments along with the great satire, and yet, you find yourself cringing with every laugh. As with you, my wife did not find it funny, and normally she likes satire, but it's just such an example of gallows humor that it's hard for some to appreciate it. Myself, I thought it was brilliant.