Trudno byt bogom (2013)

In the distant future, a space traveler from Earth breaks a special law and interferes with the history of another, Medieval-like, planet.

Director:

Aleksey German

Writers:

Arkadiy Strugatskiy (novel), Boris Strugatskiy (novel)

Stars:

Leonid Yarmolnik, Aleksandr Chutko, Yuriy Tsurilo

10 wins & 11 nominations.

Cast

Credited cast:
Leonid Yarmolnik	...	Don Rumata
Aleksandr Chutko	...	Don Reba
Yuriy Tsurilo	...	Baron Pampa
Evgeniy Gerchakov	...	Budakh
Valentin Golubenko	...	Arata
Leonid Timtsunik	...	Arima
Natalya Moteva	...	Ari
Nikita Strukov	...	Kusis
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Gali Abaydulov
Yuriy Ashikhmin	...	Rab
Remigijus Bilinskas	...	Voin (as Remigiyus Bilinskas)
Valeriy Boltyshev	...	don Ripat
Vasiliy Domrachyov	...	vozchik Rumaty
Lev Eliseev
Valeriy Guryanov	...	Monakh

Storyline

A group of scientists are sent to the planet Arkanar to help the local civilization, which is in the Medieval phase of its own history, to find the right path to progress. Their task is a difficult one: they cannot interfere violently and in no case can they kill. The scientist Rumata tries to save the local intellectuals from their punishment and cannot avoid taking a position. As if the question were: what would you do in God's place? Director's statement Aleksei wanted to make this film his entire life. The road was a long one. This is not a film about cruelty, but about love. A love that was there, tangible, alive, and that resisted through the hardest of conditions.

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Plot Keywords:

middle ages | medieval times | dystopia | male full frontal nudity | fictional war | 

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Genres:

Drama | Sci-Fi

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Did You Know?

Trivia

Voted the 14th best film of 2015 in 'Sight and Sound' magazine's annual critics poll. [Nov. 2015]

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Connections

Referenced in WatchMojo: Top 10 Films That Took Forever to Make (2018)

User Reviews

Two Parts Tarkovsky, One Part Gilliam

Based on a novel by Arkadiy Strugatskiy, Hard to Be a God, is an incredibly radical sci-fi film that stretches the meaning of all possible descriptors. This film is not for contemporary popular audiences. This film's audience (if you could say it has one) are the squirrelly, anti-social filmophiles that are too deep down the rabbit hole to be brought back. They're the people who have spent half their lives in darkened rooms and use film as a reference point for life itself. In other words, it a movie just for me.

Knowing Hard to Be a God's production history automatically creates a modicum of goodwill towards the film. Director Aleksey German shot the film over six years and took another seven years to edit it before succumbing to heart failure at the age of 73. Yet even before his last film, his career is littered with long-gestating movies that in some cases were put on hold for years due to Soviet censorship. While the USSR ultimately crumbled 27 years ago, German's insistence in making movies his way is still met with accusations of impenetrability and art cinema navel-gazing.

Hard to Be a God's narrative is not a concern here but for the sake of cogency I'll summarize. Our protagonist Don Rumata (Yarmolnik) is a human, one of many living on another planet stuck in the middle ages. It's never made clear if he's there to help the planet's fledgling culture but what is clear is everyone seems to have a fundamental distrust of intellectuals and a hatred towards science. Perhaps because of this, Rumata has assimilated himself as a noble with God-like powers and thus is feared by all.

These God-like powers by the way include having the ability to swat spears away from his face to the gasping amazement of dim-witted centuries. It appears that Rumata has given up on logic long ago choosing instead to abuse his most loyal subjects in an attempt to make them understands the basic truths about germs, economics and whether or not fish like milk. Yet to designate Rumata a classic anti-hero would be far too simplistic. He, like the rest of the idiots populating the screen is wholly unlikable but in a drastically different way.

Hard to Be a God, to put it succinctly is two parts Andrei Tarkovsky, one part Terry Gilliam and a tiny bit of Idiocracy (2006); though summarizing German's mis en scene through text is completely impossible. His images are so textured, so grotesque and so bizarre that it is unlike anything I have ever seen let alone anything I can describe. World-building seems to be German's biggest strength. We not only see the chaos happening around the characters, we feel the coarse mud, smell the putrid bile and rotting corpses and taste the blood and sinew on the half cooked chicken they consume.

If one were to point to a glaring problem with the film it's that at nearly three hours, the film is simply too long to endure more than once. Scenes of little consequence could have easily been cut to make way for a tighter story and an ending that sticks the landing with devastating aplomb. However, say what you will about the film's leisurely pace, the constant injection of intense medieval grotesqueness supplies the film's audience with enough imagery to fill several nightmares.

While illustrating the problems of a faraway planet, Hard to Be a God is a damning condemnation of humanities struggle with its own ignorance. While certainly not for everyone, the film's warped, layered and visceral vision of medieval life is rivaled only by Marketa Lazarova (1967). Hard to Be a God is a must-watch contemporary classic whose reputation will only grow in the years to come. If you're on its wavelength, I recommend you check it out.

Details

Official Sites:

Official site [Japan]

Country:

Russia

Language:

Russian

Release Date:

27 February 2014 (Russia)

Also Known As:

Hard to Be a God

Filming Locations:

Tocnik Castle, Central Bohemia, Czech Republic

Box Office

Budget:

$7,000,000 (estimated)

Gross USA:

$28,608

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$1,299,035

Company Credits

Production Co:

Sever Studio, Telekanal Rossiya, Lenfilm Studio

Technical Specs

Runtime:

177 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1