Perhaps it is hard to be a god, according to the title of this sprawling Russian epic. But everybody else looks miserable, too. We are in a world called Arkanar, invented by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky for a speculative 1964 novel that must be easier to understand than this film. Arkanar is a pigsty, a horror show, a decadent party at James Franco’s house. It resembles the muddier years of Earth’s Middle Ages, but we are told it is a planet where the society has developed more slowly than ours. We are also told—and this is important to grasp in the movie’s swirl—that our main character, Don Rumata (Leonid Yarmolnik), is actually a visitor from Earth. He pretends to be a god in Arkanar, passing through the squalid society and observing it.
The film’s 170 minutes are oozing with bodily fluids, casual brutality, and complete disdain for anything like conventional suspense or storytelling. Director Aleksei German uses black-and-white and an incredibly complex soundtrack to immerse us in this unpleasant world, his camera snaking around cramped interiors and muddy hillsides. It would be no exaggeration to claim Hard to Be a God as one of the most densely designed movies ever made; somewhere in the world Terry Gilliam is weeping in despair at ever approaching its level of beastly creativity. German (who died in 2013, before completing post-production) was some kind of visionary, and labored for many years on this project. His previous movie, Khrustalyov, My Car! (1998), is arguably more connected to recognizable reality, but is just as baffling in its refusal to submit to audience expectations.
Presumably German is showing us human existence refracted through his cracked lens. But the film seems less about ideas than about creating a troubling experience, one in which the viewer is constantly assailed by things being thrown at the camera: birds, weapons, excrement. As a fully imagined carnival, Hard to Be a God is astonishing, but it’s hard either to discern how it sheds light on mankind’s backward character or guess for whom it’s intended. “I’m speaking to you,” says a character in the film, “but that doesn’t mean we’re having a conversation.” We are shown that the world is a cesspool, in repetitive detail, for three hours. It’s an incredible-looking and -sounding immersion, but not quite a conversation.
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HARD TO BE A GOD Runs Fri., Feb. 20-Mon., Feb. 23 at Northwest Film Forum. Not rated. 170 minutes.
