StunnaKrypto Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

axapvov Everything seems random, trying maybe to turn a simple story into something more complex. I think there are too many different ideas mashed at once, the result being thematically disconnected, too vague and cold for any poetry to have a strong effect on me. It may be my fault since I lack knowledge about Russian history or geography but I believe the film should give me more tools to be a part of the dream, fantasy or whatever. Ideas follow each other without too much conviction or any strong link between them.Not entirely bad but in my opinion it's very far from the achievements of its genre, some of them by the same director.

Andres Salama In the final years of the Soviet Union, a Russian doctor arrives in a godforsaken town in the middle of a desert in Turkmenia (the place that would become a few years later the independent state of Turkmenistan, one of the least known and more mysterious countries of the world). His mission there is not clear, though it is apparently to investigate why old believers get fewer ailments than other people. But soon, a series of mysterious things will happen to him.Shot in a very opaque style and with a photography almost drained of color, this movie promises in the first quarter of an hour that it might be interesting if very unconventional, but it soon descends into absurdity. It ends up being a complete mess.Director Alexander Sokurov has made some interesting films after this (Russian Ark, for instance, or some of his documentaries) but this, one of his first movies, is basically unwatchable.Filmed mostly with a fly on the wall - style (there are very few closeups), the shortcomings of this film are too many to mention. But to mention a few, the actors look like zombies, delivering lines with zero expression (this is fault of the director, not of them). The plot becomes incomprehensible – not that the director seems to care much about that. And though this was shot in present day Turkmenistan, very few Turkmen appear – mostly as far away props.Based on a well regarded science fiction story by the Arkady and Boris Strugatsky –though in no way this movie can be called a SF film, it's basically a pretentious art movie.

shusei I have seen this film for the first time more than 10 years ago. Since then I saw it so many times, but it never betrayed my expectation. The story is rather simple and clear, if you do not stick to rich details and strangeness of some situation. A young Russian doctor Maryanov, who has been sent to the Central Asia, is working on a academic research, in his free time. But his work somehow causes unpleasantness with the Order, so it disturbs him to get him give up the research. The surroundings, natives of the land, and supernatural forces are standing in his way. After the runaway of his best friend Vecherovsky,Mayranov is left in complete solitude. In short, this is a tragic fable of a intelligent young man in a dull, decayed society(not necessarily Soviet Union).This simple story is told through marvelous cinematography and intriguing multi-layered soundtrack,which is worth remembering as a best achievement of contemporary film art. There is no movie star,no Dolby surround, no big budget, but this film will be remembered for a long time for its humanistic implications and cinematographic beauty.

weintraube Loosely based on a great science-fiction novel Billion Years Before the End of the World by renowned authors Boris and Andrei Strugatsky, it one of my favorite films. It is hard to say what is more striking in this film -cinematography or the ideas it is about.