Finding Stalin finds laughs in a Soviet nightmare

Never a comfortable watch, but delightfully cruel in its dismantling of authoritarian regimes

Jason Isaacs (left) with the cast of The Death of Stalin, including Michael Palin and Jeffrey Tambor (second from right and far right)

Cinema

The Death of Stalin: Directed by Armando Iannucci, Nationwide, 15A,Rating:****

Brawl In Cell Block 99: Directed by S Craig Zahler, Light House, no cert,Rating:****

How fine is the line between a gasp of horror and a belly laugh? Both have their origins in the same phenomena: transgression and absurdity. Sudden surprises can elicit guffaws, or screams. We laugh when a character does something inappropriate, but in another context it might raise the hair on the back of our necks. The two tend to cancel each other out – humour banishes fear, thankfully – but that doesn’t mean they cannot co-exist for a while in an uneasy truce, as in Armando Iannucci’s black comedyThe Death of Stalin. Both hilarious and horrifying, the film follows the paranoid intrigue in the corridors of the Kremlin following the communist leader’s demise in 1953.