Simply not true. It is an exaggerated Western stereotypical view of it. Stephen Kotkins book offer a much more informed view of him and his inner circle.
"Simply not true" suggests it's all a fabrication. But it isn't. It's sped up, and there are some minor changes, and several events have been merged into one. That's it. And even then it doesn't show the full idiocy of the regime. The paranoia, the arrests, the prisons, torture and rape, the scheming, the show trials, even the westerns, it's all true.