Problems? You think you have problems? I'll tell you who has problems. People in Armenia have lots and lots of problems. In fact, their main activities seem to be centered around visiting a cemetery in the middle of a snowy, unforgiving landscape, which eventually will thaw only to bring on horrendous mud. There isn't much life here. Some people live with memories of when there was a Soviet Union and things were actually better. Now, they have tiny pensions and hope that their surviving family members who got away can at least send back some money. If no money comes back, people just starve. That is pretty much all that goes on in this movie. As long as you know in advance that it is about desperate people in an Arctic wasteland, and you don't expect much more, you'll like it! I actually liked this movie. I was having a bad week. My refrigerator died, then my front tooth fell out. I still have it a lot better than these Armenians do. For that reason, I feel happy and grateful, if not a bit shellshocked by the stupefying lack of plot, action and dialogue in this movie. Don't get me wrong. There are some very funny scenes in this movie. If you like Jewish or Slavic humor, for example, and you wonder why it is always so black and so bleak, you might want to see this as a kind of modern view about a place where nothing changes, ever. Things are bad, and they stay bad. And then a horseman goes galloping by. In the middle of nowhere. And we can have a cigarette and a shot of vodka, until we run out of cigarettes and the vodka concession closes. Enjoy.
