Death of Stalin Why Each Character Has a Different Accent

Death of Stalin: Why Each Character Has a Different Accent

Every character in The Death of Stalin has a different accent, to make the comedy flow naturally and show how big and varied Russia really is.

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Death of Stalin Why Each Character Has a Different Accent

Despite taking place in Moscow in 1953, The Death of Stalin not only has a complete lack of Russian accents, but every character in the movie has a different accent. Based on the French graphic novel La Mort de Staline by Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin, The Death of Stalin was directed by Armando Ianucci and released in 2017 in the United Kingdom and in 2018 in the rest of the world.

The Death of Stalin’s title may make it sound like it should be a more serious drama, but the movie is instead a black comedy. It focuses on the days shortly after Joseph Stalin’s death, where there was a power vacuum in the Soviet Union. Charting the lengths other powerful figures in the USSR went to in order to be the one in charge when the dust settled, it’s the kind of political satire perfect for the creator of Veep. But while the film’s impressive cast – which includes Steve Buscemi, Paddy Considine, and Jason Isaacs – all play an array of Soviet statesmen and that’s where the movie is set too, there aren’t any attempts at tackling the accent.

The Death of Stalin cast instead speak with their native accents, or put on English ones. Buscemi uses his Brooklyn accent; Isaacs is from Liverpool, but speaks with a Yorkshire twang; Stalin himself (Adrian McLoughlin) is a Cockney. The lack of Russian accents in was far from an oversight, however but a specific decision made by Ianucci. Speaking to Metro, he said that felt having his cast speak with Russian accents would “kill the comedy dead” and make people watching the movie “feel like [they’re] not there.” It also worked out to avoid a problem many Russians had, as there are a variety of accents and dialects across the country (which is to be expected given its considerable size), but only one is really shown in movies. Ianucci added: “I didn’t want to go down that route at all, I thought it would just kill the pace and spontaneity of it. I wanted a range of English accents, to indicate the geographic spread of this Empire.”

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None of the actors in The Death of Stalin speak naturally with Russian accents, so they’d have to put on an accent for the movie. That would make things harder on the cast, and it was a better decision in this case to instead focus on giving the funniest performances possible, rather than trying to give authentic-sounding accents. It’s much easier for someone like Steve Buscemi to concentrate on just being hilarious, rather than being funny and getting Nikita Krushchev’s accent down at the same time, and this applies to everyone else in the movie.

While that’s an important part of the process, it’s Ianucci’s second point that makes the case that this choice was more than just a way to make shooting the movie easier. The Soviet Union was a very large country, like Russia still is today, and having a variety of accents helps represent just how big the country is. The characters don’t all just have the same accent from one place, making it feel much larger in scope. That doesn’t just end at Russia, but works in a global sense too. These events happened in the Soviet Union, and if everyone speaks in the typical movie Russian accent, it feels like it only happened then and there. The range of accents heard in The Death of Stalin makes it feel like this could happen anywhere and at any time.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/death-stalin-movie-characters-different-accents-not-russian-reason/

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