User reviews

"Chyornaya roza..." is a funny film full of the sense of pop=culture in the end of Soviet era The story happens mainly around "The Old Arbat Street" in the center of Moscow, where always concentrate vendors, poor young artists and musicians. The hero of this film is a boy named Mitiya,who lives with eccentric elder friend in an apartment house on "The Old Arbat". In fact, people who then appear around Mitiya are all unique, eccentric and the space of the apartment house begins to have an unrealistic character as a miniature of unstable society in the end of Soviet Union. Outstanding is the episode of orgy shot in B/W with accelerated motion, where also appears the director Sergei Alexandrocvich himself.

The plot synopsis of this film is rather confused, and the characters are vague, so there is no point in dwelling on these details. Instead, I will briefly outline other aspects. In general, the preservation of characters similar to "Assa" (1988) is observed here, which is supplemented by new personalities, but at the same time, a complete rearrangement of previously set proportions is observed. So if in the conditional beginning of the film, divided into several segments, a certain context is observed, then the further, the more the situation slides into pure farce, the absence of any noticeable brakes and the prevalence of the mentioned over everything else. Against this background, the character of Alexander Bashirov (who plays the role of the protagonist's neighbor), a "limitchik" who once arrived in Moscow, either dodging or actually escaping from the nearest mental hospital, looks like the only more or less sane person, while individual episodes with his participation can't be explained by anything other than the fact that the permissiveness that came during perestroika blew the roof off.

The impression the film creates is twofold - it doesn't reach its predecessor, a certain message, if you add such prefixes as "art house" and "grotesque", can be traced if desired, but in general the farce greatly prevails over the content and has no context in comparison, for example, with such a film as "Sny" (1993). Boris Grebenshchikov and the group "Aquarium" present here in various matters do not save the situation. On the other hand, subjectively it turned out to be better than the same "Gorod Zero" (1988), which I once finished watching more out of principle, partly relying initially on the high average rating.

When this movie was originally released, I was still living in the former USSR and went to see it in the theater. I was about 15 years old and didn't understand much, but it was so beautifully absurd, bizarre and hilarious that I couldn't help but love it. I still do. Sergei Soloviev used the language of Russian counter-culture to present a mythological vision of his country and his own surroundings. Everything is taking place in an old apartment on Arbat street, which is continuously being infested with all sorts of outrageous characters (and sometimes even historical figures) who, on the course of their bizarre appearances, make numerous comments on various Russian cultural, historical and political happenings. Everything is, once again, deliciously bizarre, freaky and funny. This movie is definitely worth a try.

Continuing with previously given promises, I re-watched this one, too. Nowadays, it looks more "together" than "Assa". In the previous "perestroika gem," the trashy crime noir was wed with a restaurant band but here we have a Mexican soap opera married to soviet kitchen dissidents. Yet the film still looks like a daisy chain of visual gags, some of them tired even at the moment of the premiere. This time, almost no Spanish shame for participants, apart from Mr. Zbruyev (Alexandra's dad) who overdoes it big time. Two scenes are especially bad: the prolonged caterwauling with strained freaky fun, "The Ship of Freaks" playing in the background; and the breakthrough into the space of frigging high spirituality through a baptismal washtub and a Christmas window with colored lights. The writer-director clearly makes a significant face here yet his problem is that he has really nothing to say. Wise face is a false friend; when all post-Soviet filmmakers had nothing to balance the ugly reality with they used the Orthodox metaphor that looked as unnatural and stupid then as it does now (however now it is also revolting). Making fun of "perestroika" was tired and bad taste even in the late 1980s. But the soundtrack record was much better than the first time.

Well, if you if you value your last remnants of sanity do not watch this one. I consider Soloviev as one of the greatest movie directors of the Later Days Commissars Regime. In this one he repeatedly pokes our collective mirror reflection with a sharp stick in the eye. This movie is absurd and beautiful at the same time. American public should have no trouble understanding it - after legalization of LSD that is.