Trydno byt bogom

Disgusting, immersive, claustrophobic, cynical, bleak, putrid, extreme avant-garde filmmaking at its finest. Plunging you into the depths of a decrepit society that will not, cannot, evolve beyond cruelty and ignorance, German utilizes non-diegetic sound recording and disruptive frame blocking to tell an indecipherable narrative almost entirely through an assault on the senses. As denizens drift about and gaze into the lens, the sense of being an outsider is aggressively, and accurately, met.

I have this rule always to finish a film once I've started watching it. Sometimes I hate that rule. It's not so much that I'll never get my time back (for this always applies). What's regrettable is the stupidity of stubbornly carrying on when it became apparent immediately that this particular film (no matter the considerable technical feats involved in its making) wouldn't, shall we say, tickle my fancy (I put storytelling first). Thus, I was quite needlessly in agony during three whole hours.

Grotesque and callous filmmaking - a nasty hybrid of nihilism and aphorism that is admittedly physically gorgeous, but (ironically) spiritually vapid. I appreciate its singular design but frankly there is nothing here to embrace; halfway through you get the point, and it is a disappointment, with more on the way.

It's hard to rate a movie that is undeniably brilliant, yet almost unbearable to watch. The movie is supposed to be an adaptation of a novel, but there is no storyline to be discerned. The characters speak in senseless abstractions, and their interactions are structured by obscure rituals. I ended up trying to immerse myself in this murky microcosm of violence and while the movie is visually arresting, there is only so much violence, spit, mucus and mud a person can tolerate.

Possibly the greatest production design and staging I've ever seen.

Properly bonkers. This has a keen fascination to portray as much squalidness and degradation as possible, along with a stream of consciousness narrative and dialogue (that can feel fairly taxing) and plenty of oddities along the way. Cinematographically, it evokes the heights of Andrei Rublev, but in tone, it's more like On the Silver Globe, though this film still maintains its singular quality, especially on this side of the millennium.

Comparisons to Tarkovsky and Fellini are inevitable but beside the point: cinematically this is unique, genuinely remarkable and truly crazy. Highly recommend doing what I failed to do: read the novel first, since the narrative is extremely abstracted and difficult to follow. "After the Grays the Blacks always come", meaning something like: failing a Renaissance, bureaucratic authoritarianism is bound to eventually collapse, leading to the rise of a reactionary and much darker totalitarianism.

That was uhhh yeah

Whether it had to be 3 hours is debatable, but there is no denying the singularity of German's vision; echoes of Tarkovsky, Fellini, Gilliam and even Welles are just that: echoes. German is marching to the insane beat of his own drum, pushing the cinematic form to an extreme to fashion an abstract sci-fi epic that feels both anachronistic and strikingly modern. The camera moves relentlessly, in long intricate takes, and the sense of world building is magnificent and completely transportive.

1.23 cuz 3 hours. 1st 20m still too long. 30m 1.28. 1.5 if reading wasn't important lool barely knew what was going on had to Imdb again. 42m 1.33. Barely happenings. Fuck it 1.5 movie sucks. All I like is he looks like Louis ck. Fuck you harris. 1.63. One of the worst movies i'll ever see. Shoulda focused on the scientists god concept Not this fucking king. FUCK IT 1h35 2x KAIOKEN 1h52 2.17. 2.26 LOL THE KID DIPPED A STICK IN A DEAD MAN'S MUDDY ASS THEN LET IT DRIP INTO ANOTHER DEAD MAN'S MOUTH

Playtime's evil brother.

Considering this basically feels like Tarr-meets-Gilliam, by all accounts i should probably hate it, but it's actually not that bad, although admittedly i still found it pretty hard to follow a lot of the time, and i'd be lying if i said the endless barrage of muck and brutality didn't start to feel pretty one-note after a while. It has a certain Herzog-ian surreal weirdness that at best reminds me of Klimov's Come and See, although it's more abstract and thus feels sort of emotionally inert.

The narrative style is absorbing, but inscrutable and painfully addling at the same time. For a conceptual setting, the attention to detail is completely unparalleled, but every detail is totally stomach churning. It swallows you into the most convincingly disturbing world imaginable, and after being nauseated by the constant stream of depravity, baseness and bodily fluids, you're spat back out and left feeling decidedly more out of sync with the real world.

Pretty clearly an innovative work of art, this tries the patience with repetitious feces, urine, mud, saliva, and snot. I appreciated the film most in its overall visual/sound design, the squelching mud, slurping soup, and crowded frames. This profoundly material vision of humanity remains attentive to the many details of the hard, medieval existence of these people. That the film manages to wrestle with the spiritual question of God via this tangible vision is its primary strength, in my view.

makes UNDERGROUND look like AMELIE.

very strong narration disappointing narrative

An absolute masterpiece of cinematography and production design, seriously just the most impressively relentlessly gross thing I’ve ever seen. Wasn’t so into the story, though - really wanted more glimpses into Rumata’s interiority especially. But good LORD

I don't doubt that it's clever and innovative film-making but it was just too unpleasant (the content and the delivery) and incomprehensible and for too long.

I don't know what the fuck I watched but god damn it was cool.

Absurd the way it refuses to emancipate it's viewer once absorbed in this incredible film design. A vision that seeks to thaw out the tendencies of a dying authority, overruled by it's New Order. So many things that come off as fetish imagery, but then again we are simply visitors in this alternate, medieval universe.

Excellently composed. Almost annoyingly confusing

resmen hiçbir şey anlaşılmasın diye çekilmiş. garipçilik/avangardizm kırmalığı bu mu, bence değil

Incredibly artful and effective at it's atmosphere and design, neither of which help the three hour runtime *snort* *spits*

the film is muddled in its storytelling. i felt as if nobody concerns to carry a deliberate motivation for viewers to understand them. if i was thrown into a planet which is similar in history to ours, i would have exactly felt this baffling way.

I thought I was missing something, but I wasn't. Still cool.

As demanding as it gets

Der letzte Film des russischen Visionärs Aleksei German entwirft eine Welt, wie man sie noch nie gesehen hat. Eine Welt aus Schlamm und Gewalt, in der es ununterbrochen regnet. Die Menschen demütigen sich gegenseitig und schlachten einander ab. Immer wieder fährt die Kamera ganz dicht an ihre porigen verschwitzten Gesichter heran, fast meint man, den Gestank zu riechen... mehr auf cinegeek.de

On the planet Arkanar (essentially Earth in the Middle Ages), an Earth scientist (Leonid Yarmolnik) posing as the nobleman Don Rumata struggles against the brutality and chaos of the world around him. The world of Arkanar is magnificently realized, with top-notch production design and superb cinematography, but at three full hours it becomes a rather trying and repetitive experience, especially as the plot is extremely hard to follow for those unfamiliar with the source novel.

Was it worth watching? Yes. Was it an inscrutable slog? For the most part, yes. It's a movie that's easy to describe but hard to explain. A bizarre combination of madness and tedium. Arkanar seems to be a product of authorities who feel history is over, that evolution is a threat to be squashed like a bug, that it would be better if people remained in misery and ignorance, crawling around in their own shit and piss. Perhaps it serves as a reminder of what could be.

...is it because gods don't use toilets?

33. İstanbul Film Festivali - Rexx: ...