It's Gonna Get Worse

Unlike the fifties agit-crap of A Piece of Heaven, in this film Nikolaev went all the way to the bone and shot a black-and-white canvas full of believable characters and a raw atmosphere. Even the characters of the communists no longer feel like such a convulsive caricature, and the world of dissidents and bums works extraordinarily smoothly and impressively. The documentary impression is enhanced by both the camera and the very modestly chosen tone of the narrative, which does not stylize anything and goes straight to the essence. The bleak atmosphere of normalization itself suggests questions about the possibilities of existence and the necessity of extreme gesture in conditions that do not allow for free existence. A truly important film. It is scandalous that almost no one noticed it. (29.09.2008)

A cold reminder of old times. Personally, I don’t choose to watch this type of picture much, but watching it on an old projector using the original 16mm reels, with a long scratch on the right hand side of the screen for the first 15 minutes and sound with feedback all just adds to the atmosphere. In acting terms, nothing special, but Nikolaev’s directing saves the picture. As well as the great music. (13.07.2012)

I consider Trainspotting to be one of the best British films of all time, but I admit that if Boyle presented Renton and his gang of ultimate outcasts, slackers, and drug addicts as conscious freedom fighters, opponents of the establishment, consumerism, and the iron lady, I would seriously consider abandoning it and taking a trip to the islands, where I would kick Boyle in the balls. Unfortunately, Nikolaev went precisely in this direction (regardless of the mechanical comparison of directorial qualities, where Boyle acts as a modern jet compared to Nikolaev, who stuck a few chicken feathers on his shirt, jumped around the yard eagerly, and clucked). It is a mixture of unwanted amateurism, naivety, pathos, and screenwriter helplessness. It's Gonna Get Worse sells a romantic view of the underground that deserves a much more sober look. Those pigeons actually wanted to slack off, drink, party, and fornicate a little - actually, quite a lot - and the state power was too stupid to leave them alone. There is nothing uplifting about what they did, and my empathy is frozen in this case. By the way, I remember an article where the editor went on about the case of the hijacking of a Czechoslovak plane to West Germany, and to his unpleasant surprise - actually, quite a big shock - he stated that the Secret Service, which conducted parallel investigations alongside the West German police, acted more correctly than the German investigator who considered the defendants to be a bunch of disgusting hippies. On both the German and Czech sides, there were bourgeoisie who understood each other quite well across the Iron Curtain. Maybe we should stop creating a mythology that is similar to the one created by the communists when they defended their regime, constantly going back to all those proletarians and the heroic struggle of workers on the barricades. Those real histories often correspond to the stale joke when a Soviet soldier, instead of shouting "For Stalin and for the people" heroically fell with a bundle of grenades under the tanks and yelled "That damn ice..." Overall impression: 25%. (18.02.2015)