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Khrustalev, the Car! (1998)
I'll say it right away, without unnecessary preambles and lengthy introductions: the film is garbage. But since I've already started writing this, I should elaborate a bit. A long time ago, I watched a review of the film "It's Hard to Be a God" by the same director, Alexei German. And if the review is to be believed, that film is also garbage in every sense – the actors are covered in shit, they throw shit everywhere, and so on. And after looking at some reviews and other materials, I realized that "Khrustalev" is roughly the same in content. Therefore, watching it was never on my list. However, it was shown, and I decided to watch it, just to get an idea of what such trash looks like. So, I started watching it half an hour after it began, constantly getting distracted by anything and not really trying to follow what was happening – generally not the best way to watch media content, which usually ruins the experience. However, I firmly believe that there are exceptions – like this one – where such a viewing method is quite justified. So, let's get to the film itself.
The film's cinematography is unconventional, "as if" naturally immersing us in what's happening. For example, a character walks somewhere, and the camera follows him, without changing shots, without anything, just as if "peeking" at him. Or, for example, there's a scene where a bunch of people are doing something, and they don't try to show them all at once or change shots, switching from scene to scene; the camera just lazily moves back and forth, and the people are already in the middle of certain actions or dialogues. The meaning of these dialogues is often unclear, much like when walking down the street, we might accidentally overhear snippets of conversations and have no idea what they mean or who they're about. And if we stop here, it seems like there's nothing wrong with it – just an original way of storytelling, a cinematic language, and so on. However, this narrative becomes simply unbearable and impossible to follow due to two factors:
1) The sound design. The trick here is quite simple and straightforward: if something is important for understanding the overall plot, it's mumbled by the character under his breath in 95% of cases, making it barely audible. If, on the other hand, something is completely meaningless and doesn't carry any weight, it's heard so clearly, loudly, and distinctly, as if it were an important announcement to all citizens of the country. For example, the phrase that's in the film's title sounds like "KhyrfuurshovSHINA" at a crucial moment, meaning it's extremely difficult to make out. German also loves to overlay important lines with extraneous sounds, such as a whistling kettle, other household noises, a barking dog in apartments, a rooster crowing, a pig grunting outside – in general, there's a noise that drowns out the characters' lines. But even if there are no lines, it still feels like an attack on your nervous system because any noise doesn't just sound once; it repeats again and again, almost rhythmically, like a throbbing in your temples. In fact, rereading this, it might even seem like it's just a continuation of the original storytelling method, as if we're not in a movie but in real life, where not everything has a continuous plot. However, I'll note that even without these distractions, it was already difficult to follow what was happening, and the sounds themselves are so aggressively made that you can confidently say that they were intended to cause a headache. But the final blow is the second factor:
2) The complete absurdity of what's happening. The characters behave strangely and speak very strangely, especially the secondary and tertiary characters, and as I mentioned earlier, it's their lines that are given the most clarity and distinctness. For example, there's an important dialogue that's barely audible, and next to it, some guy (who can't be identified in the plot) is saying: "bzdynyk. Bzdynyk. Bzdynyk." It sounds innocent enough, but imagine someone sitting next to you and constantly making that sound. Or – again, an important dialogue is loudly drowned out by the most annoying squeal of a kid: "AMERICAN STUCK A FINGER IN HIS ASS! AMERICAN STUCK A FINGER IN HIS ASS! AMERICAN STUCK A FINGER IN HIS ASS!" And again, I only wrote this three times to avoid cluttering the review, but in the original, it's repeated many, many more times. These characters, when they're loudly saying something nonsensical, also like to start laughing or howling loudly. In general, I hope I've managed to convey the overall impression.
As a result, due to these two factors, everything that happens looks like delirium – a lingering, unpleasant, viscous half-sleep with a fever. Most likely, that's what German intended, and it turns out that he should be praised for successfully achieving the result, but instead, I want to tell him to go to hell. Oh yeah, another feature of the film, which is mentioned by almost everyone who talks about it, is the group homosexual rape of the main character. I can't really praise or criticize this scene – it's not shown very realistically, not very scary, just tedious and boring, like the rest of the film. The only thing that interested me was the moment when one of the prisoners (the scene takes place in a prison) picked up an object that looked like a mop – apparently, German took the staging of the scene seriously and researched the topic thoroughly.
When a film is garbage, I like to add at the end, "don't watch it under any circumstances," but if, after this description, you feel like watching this film, then I'll say – go ahead, watch it. My words won't stop you anyway.