Hard to Be a God

If nothing else, Hard to Be a God will almost certainly lay claim to the title of 2015’s most disgusting cinematic experience. The world we see during the film’s three hours is grimy, shitstained, festering and noisome (we can almost smell the screen); the sets are typically smeared with a combination of mud and something less pleasant, and the soundtrack is a near-constant parade of belches, squeals, and tormented yells marked by uneasy silence. The camera inches through claustrophobic spaces, an array of obstructions (various meats, dead animals) hanging from the ceiling. Then, of course, there are the disembowelments and beheadings. This might not be the most alluring sales pitch, but thankfully Hard to Be a God can be regarded as much more than just a vile horror show, a miserable wallow in human awfulness; there is existential mystery and aesthetic wonder beside the repugnance. 

The film was decades in the making: Aleksei German, the meticulous Russian director whose films often faced production and censorship obstacles (he’s made six features since 1967), first started planning Hard to Be a God in the late ‘60s. Based on the sci-fi novel by the Strugatskiy brothers (the same duo who wrote the source novels for Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker and Alexander Sokurov’s Days of Eclipse), German’s adaptation was to be a grim, austere look at an alternate reality where humanity remains stuck in the Dark Ages, ruled by barbarism. Here, on the distant planet of Arkanar, human life runs parallel to our own evolution on Earth—albeit a few centuries behind. The Renaissance, however, seems infinitely out of reach for this grotesque planet, as the muddy medieval streets are typically populated by drunkards, bare-assed idiots, and armed soldiers killing writers and intellectuals.

To this planet a scientist is sent from Earth: Don Rumata (Leonid Yarmolnik), who has been asked to observe this alternate humanity without influencing it or intervening in any way. Because he seemingly appears from the skies, Rumata is rumored to be the offspring of a god among the locals—and, in fact, Rumata soon begins behaving like one, no longer willing to idly watch this subspecies ruin themselves (though arguably, he accelerates the process). There is also apparently a conflict between the religious “Grays” and the militaristic “Blacks,” although it’s usually impossible to tell the warring factions apart.

As someone who doesn’t mind a vague, elusive narrative, I’ll admit that the elliptical storytelling in Hard to Be a God can be frustrating: there are mentions of Grays, Blacks, tyrants, and martyrs, but German has little interest in conveying this storyline concretely, instead watching these madmen slop through their abhorrent world in brutal close-up. We’re left not with a legible storyline, but with a completely visceral immersion in an alternate reality—one of the things cinema can do more engrossingly than any other art form. Each soupy outhouse, each muddy courtyard, each grimy cellar and rain-slicked gallows feel repellently lived-in, artifacts from an unknown space and time somehow preserved. Whenever the story becomes incomprehensible (or the gruesomeness overwhelming), there are aesthetic wonders to captivate you in other ways.

The drearily beautiful cinematography and dense soundtrack serve as a fitting capstone to German’s career. (After shooting the film from 2000 to 2006, German worked on editing and sound design for seven years until his death in 2013; the film was finished by his wife, Svetlana Karmalita, and son, Aleksei Alekseivich German.) Embossed with splinters of light, deep shadows, and remarkable tactility (you may feel the slurping mud seep into your shoes), the cinematography by Vladimir Ilin and Yuriy Klimenko brings to life a world I have never so vividly witnessed in movies before. The crudity and absolute immersion in a wildly different way of life reminded me of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Decameron and Dusan Makavejev’s Sweet Movie, but Hard to Be a God is really on its own cinematic planet—a study in barbarism that's not easy to take, though it’s astounding to watch. Meanwhile, on the soundtrack, a precise blend of sounds, from deafening footsteps to growled dialogue to sickening, phlegmy bodily noises, interweave; all of the sound was post-dubbed (as in many of German’s films), allowing him to create a unique and unsettling aural universe (it’s no wonder it took German seven years to come close to finishing editing).

All of this combines to make a frightening, unflinching condemnation of the hell that men create, one of the only films I’ve seen that creates a style close to a Hieronymus Bosch painting. The graphic violence and unpleasantness wouldn’t mean much without a thematic subtext, but even if Hard to Be a God is abrasive, it undeniably has an existential empathy for humanity. Everyone in the film is powerless: Don Ruma can't do anything to deter this world from its base destiny, the shit-covered peasants are tormented by armed guards, the few writers that live here are threatened with death (or already hanging from a noose), and even the soldiers and monks carry out vile orders in terror of some punishment from God, sickened that this divine force does nothing to intervene. (As one deranged character screams to the sky: “Creator, if you exist, blow us away. Blow us away like dust or pus. Or leave us in our rot. Destroy us all.”) This powerless omnipotence even extends to the film camera: in the midst of a long tracking shot, it might abruptly assume someone’s POV as other characters gawk at it and speak to it (their dialogue often unheard), only to become a disembodied camera once more. Even the camera is an impotent God, bearing witness to abject misery but unable (or unwilling) to do anything to stop it. 

First written in 1964 and gestating as a film project in German’s mind shortly thereafter, Hard to Be a God was originally meant as a condemnation of Stalin-era tyranny in the Soviet Union: the ease with which people can be betrayed by leaders, and the rapidity with which leaders become mad and power-hungry. It’s a sad irony that such a political subtext still works more than fifty years later, allegorizing the censorship and rampant corruption of which Putin’s presidency has been accused (just as it might symbolize the tensions between rulers and ruled in any nation, especially the United States).

​More effective and universal than the film’s political subversion, though, is its existential despair, its depiction of a parallel planet in which only the dark side of human nature has survived. Love is nowhere in sight, and the brief examples of art (in the form of musical performances and paintings) are either destroyed or fall on deaf ears. Do the scales of humanity shift more to destruction or harmony? If we’re just an animal species driven by evolutionary urges, how is there any kind of religious or moral scripture to follow? This is the ambitious thematic terrain the movie explores, and even if its dismal tone denies the possibility of almost any hope, at least its philosophical speculation is majestically powerful in the way that Russian cinematic masters seem to have perfected like nobody else.

A telling contrast can be found, I think, between Hard to Be a God and the Ukrainian film The Tribe, which was also released in 2015. Both films are extremely bleak comments on the innate cruelty and violence in humans, and both utilize a rigorous aesthetic (very long takes, minimal or stylized dialogue) to convey highly unique and extreme environments. While some of The Tribe’s shock value seems unearned, however—its themes of community, isolation, masculinity, and violence are not especially complex, and the film’s nihilism feels disrespectful to the characters tormented onscreen--Hard to Be a God’s ugly, bitter core seems more substantial and brutally humane than The Tribe’s. Hard to Be a God provides rampant evidence of the brutality of which we're capable, but it also relates to the moral dislocation and spiritual doubt of being alive. Someday, German’s final film might be regarded as a marvel of existential sci-fi along with 2001: A Space Odyssey and Stalker; for now, I can only say that Hard to Be a God is the most intense theatrical viewing experience of the year, as astounding to contemplate as it is to witness.  

Hard to Be a God

Grade: B+

Runtime: 177m.
Country: Russia
Premiere: November 13, 2013 (Rome Film Festival)
US Release: June 30, 2015

Director: Aleksei German
Producers: Viktor Izvekov, Leonid Yarmolnik
Writers: Aleksei German, Svetlana Karmalita, Arkadiy and Boris Strugatskiy (novel)
Music: Viktor Lebedev
Cinematography: Vladimir Ilin, Yuriy Klimenko
Editor: Irina Gorokhovskaya
Cast: Leonid Yarmolnik, Aleksandr Chutko, Yuriy Tsurilo, Evgeniy Gerchakov, Valentin Golubenko, Leonid Timtsunik, Natalya Moteva, Nikita Strukov