Disclaimer first: this review is written by a Russian speaking person, who both read the book and saw the movie in their original language.
***
I came in just to rate the movie I've just finished watching - an act that makes me feel as though I'm back in the olden days, when Internet actually made sense for me. And by accident I saw a few lines of one of the reviews - claiming the movie to be pointless and stupid.
So do people change? Here's our answer: right there, in that opinion.
As here we are, almost a hundred years after Nazi Germany disaster, Stalin's Gulag, China's events etc: having our latest history in front of us and all means of studying it. And yet someone doesn't even recognise the ideas of this movie, laden in front of them so simply and in such full view. How do we expect people to be able to coherently analize the world around them then? The world that is not only more complex and less cinematographically clear, but also much more real and painfull, full of their own interests, worries and fears, both little and existential?
Spoiler alert now due for the next part:
The movie shows two people fully destroyed by the system so powerfull that the only salvation possible is in their dreams, the dreams one of them creates and the other one escapes to, and even in those dreams the only hope they muster is for the Satan to come and rectify the world himself. If you can not imagine that amount of sorrow and dispair to abondon even faith in God or Gods in the end - good for you, you've been lucky so far. But their context is clear. As is the end they come to.
***
I thought this attempt tells the story better than Bulgakov managed to: the movie opens the story up and makes it raw and painfull, but also obvious and eye-opening. Just as a good movie should.
I had my reasons to believe that: for one, it has had a huge success in Russia both among critics and the crowd, for another - I myself never really got the book, and found the people who did almost exlusively reading it as a fairytale or farce with no further meaning - now I do.
Seeing opinions like that, however, I reailise that even such a strong statement can be so utterely misregarded and misunderstood.
"They're ordinary people, in fact they remind me very much of their predecessors" W.
***
I came in just to rate the movie I've just finished watching - an act that makes me feel as though I'm back in the olden days, when Internet actually made sense for me. And by accident I saw a few lines of one of the reviews - claiming the movie to be pointless and stupid.
So do people change? Here's our answer: right there, in that opinion.
As here we are, almost a hundred years after Nazi Germany disaster, Stalin's Gulag, China's events etc: having our latest history in front of us and all means of studying it. And yet someone doesn't even recognise the ideas of this movie, laden in front of them so simply and in such full view. How do we expect people to be able to coherently analize the world around them then? The world that is not only more complex and less cinematographically clear, but also much more real and painfull, full of their own interests, worries and fears, both little and existential?
Spoiler alert now due for the next part:
The movie shows two people fully destroyed by the system so powerfull that the only salvation possible is in their dreams, the dreams one of them creates and the other one escapes to, and even in those dreams the only hope they muster is for the Satan to come and rectify the world himself. If you can not imagine that amount of sorrow and dispair to abondon even faith in God or Gods in the end - good for you, you've been lucky so far. But their context is clear. As is the end they come to.
***
I thought this attempt tells the story better than Bulgakov managed to: the movie opens the story up and makes it raw and painfull, but also obvious and eye-opening. Just as a good movie should.
I had my reasons to believe that: for one, it has had a huge success in Russia both among critics and the crowd, for another - I myself never really got the book, and found the people who did almost exlusively reading it as a fairytale or farce with no further meaning - now I do.
Seeing opinions like that, however, I reailise that even such a strong statement can be so utterely misregarded and misunderstood.
"They're ordinary people, in fact they remind me very much of their predecessors" W.