jay-bethke

In recent years I have come to anxiously look forward to any piece of Russian cinema that I am able to see. It rarely disappoints, and is almost universally at a deeper emotional level than what is produced in the U.S. Poor Pavel epitomizes the difference. While being at times very funny, it is also profoundly sad ...but not in the sappy, clumsy, staged sort of way that so many U.S. films cannot rise above. Maybe it's the Russian spirit, laughing hard and crying hard at the same time. The actor portraying Pavel, Victor Sukhorukov, gives off a unique, uneasy and disturbing feeling that works so well for Pavel, and I can't praise the other actors highly enough either. Between them and the direction of the film, there is real cinematic magic at work. The viewer is transported to the late 18th century Russia for an exciting walk with a mad king, and no reminders that it is only a film, such as formulas or cheap dialog, show up to disturb what is an all around great picture.

Couldn't agree more with anyone who says this is bad, bad, bad. It's that bad. Incoherent, really. The little bits of dialogue are just atrocious, with guys in T-shirts and jeans sitting at a blue-collar kitchen table using old English mixed with new, occasionally slipping in-between American and British accents because they haven't been coached on how to deal with their oddball dialogue. The "story," if we take the liberty of calling it that, involves a lot of self-loathing (Bill Zebub's contribution?) and some kind of piecemeal, not-thought-out-too-far pseudo-Satanism, and a lot of crappy cliché shots that make it obvious the director is anything but eclectic in taste or life. A full half of the film is made up of naked or semi-naked young women tied up in a forest (the only thought in my mind seeing this was: "Mom, Dad, this is my big break!"). Slow pans up theirbodies or through the trees fail to hide the bored look on the girls' faces. Meanwhile, and through most of the film, pitifully awful, stupid and hate-able music plays, with lyrics worse than the film's dialogue ...idiotic enough to make your stomach turn. I see a lot of trashy films, but rarely are they so totally uncultured. There's no point ...life's too precious to bother over this garbage.