Khrustalyov, My Car!

An uncharitable review would claim that it's a warm up to the main event (Hard To Be a God) with its grotesque characters behaving bizarrely in long takes captured by German's roving camera, but that would be unfair as it works on its own terms as an over the top farce of Soviet paranoia. Some knowledge of the 'doctor's plot' is necessary to avoid getting completely lost in its labyrinthe 'plot', but German conjures an effectively bleak and claustrophobic atmosphere spiked with corrosive comedy.

This is technically great and the scenes are often compelling, but for whatever reason I found it extraordinarily difficult to follow what was going on. If not for the preamble, I think I would have been totally lost, but even that didn't help much. I felt like I do when I watch a movie and am kind of half paying attention, even though I was paying full attention. It might just be lack of historical/cultural knowledge on my part. So much spitting.

Was expecting a comedy but got depressing realism with violence. Fav scene: the end.

On the simultaneous putrefaction of a nation and its leader, and a literal incarnation of the incomprehensibility of the Soviet narrative from the Doctors's Plot to Beria's first step. While filmed in an extremely impressive way, the relentless scattergun barrage of characters, events and actions is both confusing and wearing, but after the first hour, things settle slightly and it becomes possible to follow along this recounting of history as simultaneously tragic and farcical. Brace yourself.