Peter Bradshaw (Notebook, 26 October) says the new film The Death of Stalin is not knockabout comedy, but a satire. Oh. What exactly is it satirising? As far as I know, this is the first time a mass-market film has dealt with this event.
We may be saturated with serious drama and documentary material on the Nazis and the end of Hitler, but the equivalent evils of the Stalin nightmare have not received anything like the same treatment. For most who see the film, it will be the first time they have ever heard of these strange events. And what do they see? An intensely serious moment in human history played for laughs, with extra lavatory humour and plentiful use of the failed comedian’s standby, the F-word.
We are so free and safe that we can hardly begin to imagine a despot so wholly terrifying that his subordinates are even afraid of his corpse. This trivial and inaccurate squib does not help us to do so. Perhaps it is the comedians who need to be satirised, by some fitting seriousness about a serious subject.
Peter Hitchens
London
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