Planeettojen paraati

Imagination and topos are truly the guides of a story that is more than lightly fantastical (my only objection is that it could have pushed the envelope even further). The film certainly has value as a story told on the brink of surrealism, appealing more to the viewer's emotions and imagination than their ability to rationalize a chain of facts, as the Cartesian neatness of the line of aligned planets does not evoke a fit of rationalism, but rather triggers a chain of fantastical events (but still clothed in the realistic guise of more or less standard film means of expression). /// A few comments: social critique - the scene by the fire, in which the characters themselves come to realize that the socialist society did not create one people, but once again split into social classes that have nothing in common, where thieves and greedy butchers who engage in corruption in a scarcity economy are still around. The topos of the village - in the 1920s and 1930s, Soviet cinema triumphantly brought a tractor to a backward village, which thus contributed to the destruction of the old and the construction of the new; from the post-Stalinist thaw through the 1960s, the village no longer fulfills utopian tasks, but slowly modernizes and finds its fate in gradually catching up with the city. Some people nostalgically reflect on this, similarly to elsewhere in Europe; since the 1980s, the Russian village has become a bizarre and dark place, from where anyone that can still run away does. Our urban heroes thus pass through death and thereby through the fantastical realm of the Russian village. (30.04.2016)