Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Victor Khomenko (M) on September 16, 2015 at 06:25:08

In Reply to: RE: 'Hard to be a God' = Hard to be a viewer . . . posted by Billy Wonka on September 15, 2015 at 23:04:30

It's been widely recognized, that the old definition of Dark Ages did not apply correctly to the Middle Ages, but more to the time before it. So I would dispute that 800 years number as inaccurate. However, to a dark Russian mind this hardly matters - anything before the Proletarian Revolution had to be very, very dark. :)

There is a term in video engineering: Blacker than Black, and I think it describes aptly the director's vision. The historic records lead to believe that the life in those times, hard as it was, still was not endless sitting under the garderobe.

So the question is - why do it this way?

Perhaps it would help us understand the rationale behind it, if we realized that the drunken delirium was not something out of ordinary for a typical Russian citizen... in fact it was such a common occurrence that people would hardly pay much attention to it.

I think here we have indeed the product of such an inflamed mind. And perhaps switching from cheap high-alcohol swill to moderately priced red wine would cure this "Russian Disease" effectively.

Such dark vision is nothing new in Russian cinema... one can find plenty of it in many other works, and certainly many films by Sokurov and Zviagintsev (Leviathan) carry that seal of approval.

So I see plenty of good ammo wasted here. There is no doubt that the director has tremendous talent, so I just wish his next work will reflect other sides of a human mind. Enough of that darkness already.

As far as the director is concerned - oddly enough, his previous film dates from 1998 - huge seemingly idle period of time... but his prior work does deserve a lot of attention, so I wholeheartedly recommend his earlier films.