Film Review: HARD TO BE A GOD

Hello Again,

Clive Barker, the noted Horror novelist, once wrote:

Nothing ever begins. There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any other story springs... And this story, having no beginning, will have no end!

That quote is from his 1987 novel WEAVEWORLD. The reason I start this review with it, is because it is extremely apt to the film, I am about to review. Aleksei German's three-hour, Medieval sci-fi opus HARD TO BE A GOD (2014) is currently out at cinemas and on DVD/Blu-Ray, and is being touted as a masterpiece of modern cinema. On the UK DVD cover, is a quote, that says:

Possibly the greatest film since the millennium began.

I can assure my readers, that nothing could be further from the truth. HARD TO BE A GOD, is an adaptation of a classic piece of Russian sci-fi literature, by noted authors Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, from 1964.

It is supposedly about a group of scientists who flee Earth, and end-up on a planet that represents the Renaissance age, and is permanently stuck in the Middle Ages. There, one of the scientists, tries to infiltrate the local populace, under the name of Don Rumata, a rich nobleman.Some films you watch. Some you savour. Some you live through, and others you suffer or endure. This is the latter. What follows, is nearly three hours of unnamed characters entering and exiting the screen, eating, jeering, crying, slapping, yawning, screaming, vomiting, winking, grinning, grumbling, sneezing, smoking, shouting, leering, coughing, defecating, whining, whinging, gurning, grimacing and urinating, with no purpose or point whatsoever! Three solid hours! And it's all done, from a first-person perspective, so the film makes you feel like it is you that is being jeered, yawned, spat, winked, shat, and grimaced at! Lovely! Oh, but it is in black-and-white, so that must really make things seem better... No, it absolutely does not!

This is not a science-fiction film, in even the remotest of broadest sense of the term! Not by a long-shot! At best, it's a Medieval fantasy, but it has less in common with the TV fantasy epic GAME OF THRONES (2011 onwards) which it has been likened too, than it does MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam), and even that comparison is unfair to the Monty Python gang.

Imagine, if you will, if Ed Wood, Terry Gilliam, Lars Von Trier and Stanley Kubrick all donated sperm. This film, is the bastard offspring that they would have produced! It's the kind of film that gives World Cinema a very bad name. You know how people who like mainstream, Hollywood Cinema often say "If I wanted to read something, I'd read a book", in relation to subtitled films, then these same people would have their every fear confirmed with this utter train-wreck of a film. It's some of the most self-indulgent bullshit every committed to celluloid.

Last year, there was a Turkish film called WINTER SLEEP by Nuri Bilge Ceylon. That too, was an epic diatribe of nothingness. In that case, the film's 197 minute run-time had just one highlight: a short scene in which a child throws a stone at a truck window, and the window then shatters, bringing the truck to a grinding halt. And that scene, is the most excitement Mr Ceylon dares to include. Bilge by name, bilge by nature!

HARD TO BE A GOD is no better. Characters aren't introduced or named, and even on the odd occasion that they are, we don't know how they relate to one another. The dialogue doesn't help viewers either. It's a mishmash of pseudo, cod-Shakespeare, with the worst in mistranslated Russian. Nothing makes any sense. Much of the dialogue, isn't even full sentences. The acting is awful too. Imagine if Marcel Marceau had infiltrated a Troma film, attempting to put-on a Tolstoy play in Serbo-Croat. This might have been the culmination of many years of their work. The fact that the director, Aleksei German died, and his son, Aleksei German Jnr had to take over says much. Filming started in 2000, and continued for over six years. The rest of the time since then, the film has been in post-production! That should tell you something. Someone died making this piece of grotesque ineptness!

Ironically, the BBFC rated this film an 18. Yes, the film does contain some graphic content, but it's not that shocking, and some people have claimed that you need to be really intelligent to "get" this film, and to truly grasp what it's talking to the viewer about. I say "No". What you need to be is really stupid to think that this rambling mess warrants being labelled a film, and that this should warrant three hours of your life to devoted to it.

In many ways, the film is a three-hour snoozefest that meanders along to its own drumbeat: a drumbeat produced by a baby cluelessly bashing-away on a triangle, completely oblivious to everyone else's musical talents. The word "wretched" doesn't come close to how angry this pile of dung actually is!

If by some miracle, you manage to make it through all three-hours, with your soul and brain intact, then the extras that come with the DVD/Blu-Ray don't help explain what you've just watched. I've seen other reviews, that have said before you watch this film, you should download or read a complete explanation of the book's plot first, so that you will be better able to grasp the film. No one should be having to do this, to understand your film. If they do, then surely that tells you something is fundamentally flawed about the film you've spent more than six years making?

I am so glad that I didn't pay much to rent this film. If I'd have seen this at my local arthouse cinema, I'd have been demanding my money back. Even within the first 20 minutes, it's clear to the viewer that the director(s) really don't know what they are trying to do, what the film is meant to be about, and who they are aiming it at. You do have to have seen it, to experience just how rotten this film is! Nothing will prepare you for how bewildering this film is! In fact, I'm almost tempted to urge you all to rent it, just to see for yourselves, but I don't feel that would be fair. And I certainly don't won't the film-studios who financed, produced and released this work, to get any more money for it!

Simply put: you owe it to yourself to avoid this film at all costs. Do NOT be tempted to try it out, even as a bit of a joke. If anyone recommends this film to you, that person clearly has no taste in cinema! Diabolically poor in every sense!

DVD Review: LIFE IS CHEAP, BUT TOILET PAPER IS EXPENSIVE

Welcome Back, One and All,

It's been a while, but I return with a new and very cult film for you to get your teeth and intellect into. But first, some background for you

Way back in the early 1990's, my local arthouse cinema showed this film, and at the time, I was still a youngster, and thus, there was no way I would ever be able to get in to see it. It was rated 18 and uncensored in the UK, but the MPAA in America were going to award it with the dreaded X rating. The director, Wayne Wang, decided to release it in the US, with a self-imposed "A for Adults" certificate instead.

At the time, the film's title intrigued me, and due to the rarity of information, and the fact that the Internet did not fully exist at this time, all I had was the brief write-up about it in the local arthouse cinema's monthly brochure. That film, was called LIFE IS CHEAP... BUT TOILET PAPER IS EXPENSIVE! Who couldn't love a film with a title like that?!

Director Wang is best known for works like THE JOY LUCK CLUB (1993), THE CENTRE OF THE WORLD (2001) and MAID IN MANHATTAN (2002). However, LIFE IS CHEAP... is one of his best and most unique works. It's also a piece of "extreme" cinema, hence why I am now discussing it on my blog.

The film is about a young Chinese American man in his twenties, (the film's co-writer Spencer Nakasako), who works at a Race Course, and is asked to courier a briefcase with mysterious contents to a gangster known as Big Boss, by travelling from America back to Hong Kong - a country he remembers little about. Big Boss also happens to be a tad ruthless, and extremely tough to meet, to actually hand-over the briefcase too! The film follows the courier's journey, and all the assorted strange and freaky characters he comes to blows with along the way.

Part comedy, part shock cinema, and part cultural diatribe about Anglo-Asian relations, this is an extremely unique film experience. For starters, the film is graphic, though not in ways you'd normally expect! The film certainly earns its X/18 ratings with ease. (In 1990, the MPAA didn't appreciate the scatalogical and adult content. Only when Wang decreed the film to be unfit for an X, did he self-certificate the film for US fans, and it did a small tour of US Independent Cinemas. In the UK, the film was distributed by the ICA - Institute of Contemporary Arts - in London.)

If you are squeamish about seeing documentary footage of the slaughter of ducks, then don't view this film, as it contains two extended scenes of such! Likewise, a cruelly hilarious scene of a gangster delivering a monologue to camera, whilst suffering from diarrhoea! And director Wang's wife, Cora Miao, plays the Boss's wife who is having a lesbian relationship with their own daughter! By turns sickening, and yet scabrously hilarious, this is nothing if not unique!

The film is part-English, part Chinese, and features many scenes where dialogue starts in one language, and then concludes in the other and dovetails between the two. So keeping tabs on the dialogue can be a little hard at times. However the film is brilliantly inventive and a surrealist experience like no other. As we travel from America to Hong Kong, we meet gangsters, prostitutes, parents, a newly-wedded couple, actors paid to dub porn, and teenage thieves.

One of the highlights, is an eye-watering 10-minute chase scene, when the briefcase gets stolen. The entire chase sequence is shown from beginning to end, with almost no edits, as the viewer is put into the first-person-perspective, and we "chase" the briefcase, through dark alleys, up stair cases, through car parks, and smashing into and through doorways. Like a computer game, this scene is revelatory, in that you are put right into the lead character's role, and you are left breathless by the end. In a cinema, the scene would be jaw-dropping. At home, on DVD, the scene still works extremely well, but may make some viewers nauseous, due to the extreme camera movements.

At 84-minutes on DVD, the film is short-and-sweet, but none the worse for it. In a pretty-decent Anamorphic Widescreen transfer, of a 1.85:1 print, the image is stable, clean and clear for most of the time. There are very occasional glitches and nicks in the image, as the DVD has been taken from a 35mm print, and due to the rarity of the film, these little errors do show up. However, do not let this put you off. It's still a solid transfer for this low-budget gem!

The subtitle options are either: all dialogue translated into English, or just English for the Chinese language scenes. They were both clear enough to be read, and I didn't notice any errors in them. And yes, the reason for the film's title is discussed in the film, and also explained by Wang in the accompanying Audio Commentary he provides for the film, which is also worth a listen. (Wang lives and works in America now, so the Commentary is in English.)

Getting hold of this film, is a little harder. For starters, it's never been released on its own, anywhere in the world, as far as I can ascertain. To date, the only way you can buy it, is as an Extra on the second disc of the US 2-Disc DVD release of CHINESE BOX, which stars Jeremy Irons and Gong Li.

You must make sure you get the 2-Disc version though! Also, be aware the disc is Region 1 encoded, and is an NTSC release too! So please make sure your DVD player/TV can handle this format. This release can be obtained relatively cheaply from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk from either of the following two weblinks...

Amazon UK - Chinese Box DVD (Region 1)

Amazon USA - Chinese Box DVD (Region 1)

The price is a little under £9 GBP / $10 US respectively. If you are wondering why it's included as an extra on this film, well, apart from the fact that it's got the same director, the film is - according to Wang - a prequel to CHINESE BOX, and both films deal with culture clashes between the USA and Chinese. As such, watch LIFE IS CHEAP... first, then go on to CHINESE BOX. Just be warned, they are very different movies, aimed at very different audiences. LIFE... is aimed at cult and extreme cinema fans! CHINESE BOX is very much aimed at the mainstream audience. So, I certainly wouldn't recommend LIFE IS CHEAP for anyone who isn't extremely broadminded! You can watch them independently of each other, but viewers may get something extra from this unusual double-bill.

Ultimately, this is a quirky, offbeat little flick that really does deserve a much wider audience. I am really glad to have finally seen and bought this film, after over 25 years of searching for it. Definitely worth a look, if you like a walk on the wild side of Asian cinema, and can tolerate some extreme imagery. Just don't say you weren't warned!