Gorod Zero = Zerograd = City Zero opens with engineer Alexei Varakin (from the Moscow Engineering Works) arriving by train at a small provincial town. It is the dawn of a rainy, depressing day; the station is deserted and no other passenger alights. The only other things that move are a dog that sniffs Varakin's suitcase and the only taxi in town looking for a fare.
After checking in a seedy hotel Varakin waits until morning and walks to his destination, a factory that supplies air conditioners to his company. At the checkpoint nobody knows about his visit and there is no pass to enter the factory. After a strained telephone conversation he reaches the offices and introduces himself to the manager, who has no idea of the reason for Varakin's visit. Puzzled, the manager calls the chief engineer and is informed that he died months ago, plainly without the manager noticing,
Obviously the initial scenes evoke Kafka, K. Arriving at (the vicinity of) The Castle and there are other whiffs of Kafka such as The Process in the second half but this movie is something else. In the rest of the film Varakin is the protagonist of a series of happenings, each absurd in itself (such as a secretary working stark naked) but having a certain crazy internal logic and connecting to each other with the twisted logic of dreams. In one, episode he happens upon a museum absurdly placed in an inaccessible spot in the countryside and built in an abandoned mine shaft. He is the only visitor and is given a tour by the museum curator. Varakin is informed that the origins of the town connect with errant Trojans and with a subsequent occupation by Roman legions. Another treasury of the museum: Attila's bed, where he raped some queen or other. There are dioramas everywhere illustrating distorted history, and the wax figures seem to be live people; some of the dioramas are accompanied by gaudy music and kitschy light shows. Varakin is frustrated at every episode; he is prevented from returning to his family in Moscow and ii accused of transgressions of which he knows nothing.
Some of the Soviet reality of the time is imbedded in the dream; the absurd logic of a decaying and malfunctioning political system, the inert and unmovable bureaucracy, the repression of popular trends and music (rock-and-roll). The overall effect is that of a stress dream built out of a distorted reality where the dreamer is thrust in situations he doesn't understand or knows how to get out of.
By all means watch this movie. It has not reached the commercial streaming services but you can find a pristine copy with subtitles in You Tube, courtesy of distributor Mosfilm.
