From rec.arts.sf-reviews Tue Aug 27 22:50:18 1991 Xref: herkules.sssab.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:416 rec.arts.sf-reviews:66 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!mcsun!uunet!cis.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!cbnewsj!ecl From: mark@motown.altair.fr (Mark James) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf-reviews Subject: REVIEW: HARD TO BE A GOD Summary: r.a.m.r. #01006 Keywords: author=James Message-ID: <1991Aug26.145603.21674@cbnewsj.cb.att.com> Date: 26 Aug 91 14:56:03 GMT Sender: ecl@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Reply-To: mark@motown.altair.fr (Mark James) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies Organization: Altair/O2 Technology, Versailles, France Lines: 64 Approved: ecl@cbnewsj.att.com [Followups directed to rec.arts.movies.] HARD TO BE A GOD A film review by T. Mark James A review in the public domain I walked into HARD TO BE A GOD a minute late, and immediately began to wonder if I had not entered the wrong room. Instead of the "film adaptation of a science-fiction classic by the Strugatzki brothers," what I saw on the screen looked more like CONAN THE BARBARIAN. "I am Romalla of Arkachon," cries our blue-eyed, goldilocked hero as he leaps from his horse and draws two swords. "Approach me and die!" And the brigands dutifully slink off into the dust. I began to wish that I *had* entered the wrong room. Actually, though, I ended up loving this film. If "Romalla of Arkachon" (I forget the name he used) acted like a puerile fantasy of mediaeval chivalry, it's because he was from another planet and felt distinctly uneasy about pretending to be a local. The premise of the story is that an advanced human civilization, which has succeeded in ending war, misery and passion, discovers a remote world of uncivilized beings, and sends an expedition of historians and archaeologists to investigate these "keys to our own past". The trouble is, each of the investigators sent down to the planet, and even some on the mother ship, begin to rediscover instincts of feeling and involvement: hatred of a dictator for whom literacy is a capital crime, support for a peasant rebellion, and (well, whaddya expect) passionate sex. The question that arises -- whether the advanced civilization has really gained more than it has lost -- is left cleverly unresolved by a sudden turn, not so much of plot as of meaning, near the end of the film. Production values are uneven. The German director, Peter Fleischmann, shot this film in the Ukraine and in Soviet Central Asia. The actors speak German (and perhaps other languages) but are dubbed in English; and the version that I saw was subtitled in French as well. The dubbing quality is spotty -- I sometimes had to read the French to find out what was being said. The actors are uniformly good but not more than that. Special effects are low-budget 1970s technology (the film was made over the period from 1986 to 1990). There are a number of allusions to classic films; some are handled better than others. About half of the mountain-travel scenes look like the finale of THE SEVENTH SEAL (this gets weary after a while). There is a take-off on the bar scene in STAR WARS where we first meet Han Solo and an interplanetary zoo of drunken revelers; here the zoo is entirely human, but just as uncivilized. The communications officer aboard the mother ship follows the traditions of her genre from STAR TREK to BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: female, cute, sensitive and lit from below. From a science fiction point of view, there are the usual gripes about instantaneous interstellar communications and space aliens who somehow speak the same language as the denizens of the newly-discovered planet. Overall, however, the plot is very good (in spite of some unnecessarily gory battle scenes), and Fleischmann has succeeded in maintaining a rhythm that sustains interest without getting in the way of the more philosophical issues that underly the story. Recommended for fans of good science fiction who can overlook the film's technical shortcomings. -- Mark James or