"Pyl" is made with incredibly low budget(they said,3000 USD),but much more interesting than some recent Russian "comedies" or "melodramas". They are sometimes well-made,but don't surprise those who knows old Russian popular films in Soviet period.
The story develops around a young, not at all attractive, quite ordinary man Alyosha,whose troubles(including dangerous experiments on innocent citizens in the name of Nation) and simple desires can be understood by everybody in the world. But there is nothing "dramatic" between him and people around him. All that makes this film funny,expressive and critical is his inner vision and his lonely struggles for his own self-image. Probably no one has ever took such a story for a full-length fiction film after 1930s, when cinema began to depict people and its surroundings mainly from outside,to gorily, cherish or criticize visible world only by showing or reconstructing it more expressively than it really is(Sometimes filmmakers added voice-over narration for the same purpose).
In "Pyl", on the contrary, visible world looks boring,banal and hiding nothing spiritual behind it.Alyosha feels its total meaninglessness better than anybody because of his inferiority complex and the sense of powerlessness in it.But when this boring world is reflected in Alyosha's nightmare,it obtains strange charm of absurdity. So his choice of his own vision(ideal self-image)is not only psychologically justified,but also logical from aesthetic point of view. "It's an overall Hell",says the professor to him,warning the risk of death or getting madness. But our ordinary hero chooses his meaningful illusion than meaningless desert called "reality".
Director Sergei Loban,probably, doesn't approve Alyosha's regressive choice. So he added very interesting "postscript" when credit titles flow. Victor Tsoi's famous rock of Perestroika time "We're waiting for changes" sounds with the illustration of sigh languages by an unknown young man.
The story develops around a young, not at all attractive, quite ordinary man Alyosha,whose troubles(including dangerous experiments on innocent citizens in the name of Nation) and simple desires can be understood by everybody in the world. But there is nothing "dramatic" between him and people around him. All that makes this film funny,expressive and critical is his inner vision and his lonely struggles for his own self-image. Probably no one has ever took such a story for a full-length fiction film after 1930s, when cinema began to depict people and its surroundings mainly from outside,to gorily, cherish or criticize visible world only by showing or reconstructing it more expressively than it really is(Sometimes filmmakers added voice-over narration for the same purpose).
In "Pyl", on the contrary, visible world looks boring,banal and hiding nothing spiritual behind it.Alyosha feels its total meaninglessness better than anybody because of his inferiority complex and the sense of powerlessness in it.But when this boring world is reflected in Alyosha's nightmare,it obtains strange charm of absurdity. So his choice of his own vision(ideal self-image)is not only psychologically justified,but also logical from aesthetic point of view. "It's an overall Hell",says the professor to him,warning the risk of death or getting madness. But our ordinary hero chooses his meaningful illusion than meaningless desert called "reality".
Director Sergei Loban,probably, doesn't approve Alyosha's regressive choice. So he added very interesting "postscript" when credit titles flow. Victor Tsoi's famous rock of Perestroika time "We're waiting for changes" sounds with the illustration of sigh languages by an unknown young man.