Hard to Be a God (2013) (original) (raw)
Synopsis
A group of scientists is sent to the planet Arkanar to help the local civilization, which is in the Medieval phase of its own history, to find the right path to progress. Their task is a difficult one: they cannot interfere violently and in no case can they kill. The scientist Rumata tries to save the local intellectuals from their punishment and cannot avoid taking a position.
Cast
Popular reviews
24/100
Philistine alert! Like watching a three-hour version of Holy Grail's "Bring Out Your Dead" sketch with the jokes removed—German's sole interest in the novel appears to be the opportunity it affords him to have an ostensibly enlightened man trudge through endless muck, encountering nonstop cruelty and ignorance. The issue for me isn't so much that nothing "happens" as that nothing progresses; even in, say, the third chapter of Sátántangó (to pick a film in roughly the same aesthetic and temperamental ballpark), which is just an hour of a fat old man drinking and spying on his neighbors, there's distinct forward motion, inspiring curiosity about what will follow. German, on the other hand, just keeps constructing formally complex Steadicam shots…
If you're ready for 3 hours of floundering in filth, staggerstumbling through the muck and mire shitscape that is Akanar, swathed in an incomprehensible steamfog, perpetually rolling through the frame, enveloping everyone and everything...Medieval times as alien...future as past...cyclical oppression and barbarinism shot through documentarian-observer style with reportage style camerawork showcasing cultural and academic destitution where the townfolk administer ladlefulls of a lacquerlike substance over an endless array of noosehung bodies transforming the swaying corpses into public ornaments sparkling in the sunlit human decay like a public display of the knick-knack trinkets culled from endless days of slaughtering artists and academias then German's Hard to Be a God is your ticket to cinematic paradise.
This is cinematic world-building at its…
narrator: our story begins,
me: looks like england. maybe sheffield
narrator: on a distant planet, as far advanced as the middle ages on Earth,
me: oh God
Not since THE TAKING OF POWER BY LOUIS XIV has the sheer stench of a pre-indoor-plumbing world emanated from a film as it does in HARD TO BE A GOD. Confounding (I would not hazard a plot summary even using a synopsis of the book it's based on for reference without at least another viewing) but tactile, German's final film is one that relentlessly looks at the world without sentiment, as a place slick with blood and shit. And rather than claim God does not exist or is a negligent son of a bitch, the film takes a measure of pity on Him, asking what short of total cleansing fire a deity could be expected to do to fix a…
I’ve been meaning to revisit Hard to Be a God for a while, mostly because it never really left my mind in the first place. I remember being both repulsed and fascinated by it. It’s the kind of movie you almost don’t enjoy in a traditional sense, but can’t stop thinking about afterwards. Coming back to it now, that feeling hasn’t changed. If anything, my appreciation has deepened. The visuals are still overwhelmingly disgusting, and the atmosphere is still suffocatingly bleak; yet there’s something hypnotic about the way Aleksei German constructed this world. It’s like being trapped inside a nightmare that refuses to let you wake up, and even when you look away, it creeps somewhere in the back of…
89/100
Been obsessed with the tangible, filthy, disgusting environment that Hard to Be a God embodies ever since I first watched it. At that time, I hated the film for its lack of supposed progression while it continuously delved into similar situations over and over, but since a rewatch a few months ago shifted my perspective, I've been coming back again and again to witness this strange beauty; a remarkable sensory journey so severe and vomit-inducing that it deserves its own 4D ride.
A friend of mine recently asked me if there was any great films that are visually ugly and my copout answer was Hard to Be a God. Every second of Hard to Be a God is filled with squalor, disgust, and filth. It is filled with shit-stained imagery that is oppressively grotesque at every opportunity. There is not a single second of the three hour runtime that I could call pleasant to look at. Everything is mouldy, rotten, and greasy - the people, the clothing, the society. With bleak black and white cinematography that lingers constantly on the ugly, Hard to Be a God feels like spending three hours in a rainy, fog-laden hell. It is utterly disgusting, and with extreme…
You ever wondered if a Renaissance world never got its Enlightenment? Hard to Be a God answers this with a nightmarish descent into a civilization drowning in its own filth and ignorance. For three hours, Aleksei German immerses you in this medieval world that will make you question if this is a masterpiece or a punishment.
This movie is unsettling not for its graphic and disturbing imagery or the endless display of violence. It’s the way the movie refuses to give you a clear story or moral compass. You’re trapped in a world so cruel and backwards that any attempt to improve it feels hopeless. It’s a terrifying exploration of humanity as a species constantly on the edge of Enlightenment…
‘’Creator, if you exist, blow us away. Blow us away like dust or pus. Or leave us in our rot. Destroy us all.’’
Masterpiece. As if a hellish painting of Jheronimus Bosch comes alive. Never have I ever been more sucked into a world this disgusting, gloomy and pessimistic. A world that won’t progress, where intellectuals are being punished, people can barely speak proper and where morals don’t exist.
The story is based on a book by the authors of Stalker, the Strugatskiy brothers. Although the plot is secondary to being an overall experience it still has philosophical undertones in it. What is to be live among idiots? All progress is an illusion and life will never rise above animals, however…
''Your fucking Renaissance is the most vile age in the world's history.''
WARNING: A shower required before, during and after this film...
Russian filmmaker Aleksei German spent the span of his whole career trying to get Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's (writers of 'Roadside Picnic' which was loosely adapted into Tarkovsky's Stalker) science fiction novel 'Hard to Be a God' (Trudno byt’ bogom) onto celluloid. Intending it to be his debut film in 1968 (four years after the novel was written), he apparently worked on writing and shaping his vision until he began filming in 2000, completing principle photography some 6 years later. Post-production took him up to 2013 when he passed away due to illness which unfortunately meant that although…
My idea of a date-night movie. I do reckon this deserves a lot more attention as it’s virtually a masterpiece, even though you can pretty much smell it.
"For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people."
- Peter 2:15
"'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'"
- Jeremiah 29:11
Story by Locarno Film Festival 
Story by Letterboxd