La isla habitada

Bondarchuk's last motion picture "The Inhabited Island" is very colorful and vivid piece of film. Visual material is stunning, top notch. Characters and environment are interesting and story too, for me as a die hard sci-fi fan seemed great. Yes, the main character is blond... So what? He comes from the Earth that lives in the golden age, having defeated all the illnesses and wars. People there are beautiful and they are smiling as it can be seen in the movie. On the contrary, on Saraksh people do not understand why he is smiling because there they are stricken with diseases and constant wars, radiation levels etc. Film suffers a bit from cheesiness in the end, some already seen things in other movies but it still has some good qualities. The scenes with Guards and their song are stunning.

Great visuals, great environment but still it lacks top notch acting and some things have already been seen.

First things first: Make sure to see this in the 227min original (two-part) version. The international (one-part) release is a hack job with many crucial scenes missing, and a new cartoon title sequence that doesn't quite fit the mood.

The movie's greatest asset is certainly the Strugatzky brothers' nuanced story about a planet corrupt to the bone and the hero's moral imperative to intervene. The story is largely treated with respect, and while I can relate to some of the criticism aimed at the movie - there are some continuity issues, the casting might not suit everyone's taste, as won't the Matrix-style kung fu - this is a well-realised sci-fi flick that's worth watching for the strength of its story alone.

Yes, Tarkovsky would have made this a different movie, and I'm surely going to watch Aleksey German's 'Hard To Be A God', but I for one didn't mind this movie's bubblegum aesthetics while pondering existential moral dilemmas.

This attempt at bringing a Strugatski brothers novel to the modern Russian screen is without a doubt a success.

A little about the plot: young explorer Maksim Kammerer crash lands on Sarakhsh, a world enveloped by nebula gasses where people have never seen the stars. The Unknown Fathers, a group of local oligarchs, brainwash the population to fear and despise surrounding nations. Kammerer, aloof in his assumed superiority, sets out to free the people of Sarahksh of oppression and paranoia.

I wont ramble on - suffice to say that Bondarchuk has done well considering the scale of the novel. Vasiliy Stepanov (as Maksim Kammerer) is sexy, cool and a blond head taller than his alien companions (a fine nod to the novel and a detail I did not expect). He was also most excellent in the action scenes.

Bondarchuk shines in his portrayal of Umnik (The Clever One). I really enjoyed the scenes of him writhing in agony in the bath. A great performance. I am compelled after reading some of the other comments to say that the novel, like this movie, is quite comical...

Direction-wise there are some minor continuity errors and a few places where pace slows, but the film sticks quite closely to the novel and this may not have been avoidable.

Compared with the contemporary adaptation of the Strugatskis Ugly Swans by Konstantin Lopushansky the film is of course rather crude and soulless. But it's good fun done right.

I recommend it to everyone and will be waiting for film two.

The original book is a classic in Russia, and contains enough material (and in high enough quality) to create a Start Wars-like series of films. What was done instead was extremely fast-paced bullet-point-like re-telling of the classic story. No suspense, no tension that was present at all stages in the book.

The screenplay sticks to the original dialogue almost verbatim. A serious mistake in my view: the director seems to be afraid of the book fans, and doesn't dare to touch anything in the original. But the original dialogue was backed by a lot of description of internal thinking of the heroes - which cannot be shown on the screen. The result - the storyline is flat and uninteresting, instead of the intriguing and fascinating story in the book.

The actors' play is a total fiasco - except, maybe Strannik ("Strider") - but his role is relatively simple. Everybody else looks like they're reading from a phone book - which probably has to do with the fact that the dialogues were left as-is, see above.

I do appreciate the effort to create an "exoplanet" look of everyday things (cars, glasses, forks, plates, food, clothes etc). The things created would be unusable, but had the desired unusual look.

Overall, disappointing, and leaves a taste of a missed opportunity.

Can't understand all this negative hysteria. Most of which is actually about nothing ("crap! oh, such a crap! totally crap!" often mentioning that Bondarchuk is a bad director). Well, I can partly understand those who admired the original book (which is really worth reading) as they may have imagined everything in different manner (this is particularly true for sci-fi adaptations). But very often I read comments of people who seemed to be negatively oriented even before they really watched the film.

The movie is not piece of art. It really takes a lot from classic sci-fi movies (from costumes designs to city views). And directing sometimes is confusing. But the film has one strong point - the plot, original story that authors reflected rather well. Special effects are good (they were performed by American specialists), acting is not bad (dramatic acting usually is not required in sci-fi action movies). In essence, the movie is good and worth seeing. Don't take negative comments for granted.

BTW as far as I know Boris Strugaztsky (the one of two brothers who is still alive) liked the adaptation.