À travers les ronces vers les étoiles

A bit long but worth seeing. The story of Kir Bulychyov and Richard Viktorov is interesting and honorable by the same Richard Viktorov along with Nikolay Viktorov. It made me think of Tarkovski, "Solaris" and "Stalker". Yelena Metyolkina is impeccable in the role of the Niyya clone. And all the other actors are very credible and convincing. The film has a little humor, thanks to several characters. The decorations and the costumes are very well done. And Aleksey Rybnikov's music is super special.

Cherez ternii k zvyozdam (aka. To Stars by the Hard Ways) is one strange, yet also rather campy, entertaining B-movie from Eastern Europe.

NOTE: This review is *not* on the "Americanized" version called "Humanoid Woman" which was rather hillarious on MST3K (screw you Sandy Frank!), this on the original Russo-Ukrainian version.

This doozy starts off with a group of Soviet Astronauts going to an abandoned Alien labratory on some planet is space, I guess. In a crazy weightless sequence, which is from what I've heard, filmed underwater, they run into a lone surviving alien woman who looks like Final Fantasy 7's Jenova after having chaemotherapy. Luckily, she does not touch anything, well, except for a picture of ol Gorbychov ^_~

When she gets to Earth, she learns Russian, uses telekinetics, floats off of the vegitation, does actrobatic stunts, getting used to Earth's climates and stranger yet, she hangs with "Rosie the Robot" with a vacuum-cleaning rear end!

However, everything on Earth is not peaches or creame, since there are some treasure hunters who want to use her at the archaeological dig, so they can become rich and famous. Then, the alien girl sees some people from her planet getting interviewed on TV. She regains her memory and sets back to her home world.

This is where it gets even funner! There are old wisemen midgets, clowns and harlequins wanting world domination and better yet, a raw seawge plie monster, possibly a distant relative of Hedorah from "Godzilla vs. Hedorah". Wouldn't surprise me, since they seem to be such similar beings, plus, they are very ummmmmm......different!

Anyways, this movie is on Eastern European cult movie that you have to see to believe!

This is probably the finest example of soviet sci-fi movie-making. Great cast, great story and one-of-the-kind atmosphere, brought mostly by the efforts of the director.

The only reason I can find for all the negative reviews here is the simple fact of culture differences. In the West, US of A in particular with the exception of maybe Star Trek and 2001 all sci-fi movies fall into block-buster category, whereas in Soviet Union and perhaps even now in modern Russia sc-fi genre tries to be more on philosophical side (original Solaris for example). Result - nearly total unacceptance of such films by the western audience. Yes this movie does have some corny moments and looks childish, but, overall, the issues it deals with much more serious than today's space-action flicks.

And on the lighter note. Being myself a huge MST3K fan, I don't think it did the movie justice. Of course they riffed awfully dubbed Sandy Frank import, but still...

If you really want to check out this movie - get the DVD re-release with remastered 5.1 soundtrack and clean picture.

"Per Aspera Ad Astra" is really excellent film. It contains a lot of poetry elements. It is very sorry that American lookers cannot view this movie with the correct translation. The author of screenplay Kir Bulychov is a famous Soviet sci-fi writer. He is author of such books as "Girl From The Earth", "The Last War", "Wonders in Guslyar", "Witches' Cave", "The Settlement" etc. And fine music of composer Alexey Rybnikov. In 1970's in USSR Rybnikov was known as author of music for some children's movies. Some musical fragments from "Per Aspera Ad Astra" were used in famous Rybnikov's opera "Juno and Avos". The work of creators of this film was awarded in 1982 with State Prize of Soviet Union.

It's hard to comment this movie for the non-Russian auditory but I'll try to explain everything.

As far as I see nearly no one here knows the reasons why all the Soviet sci-fi had poor special effects. The reason is simple: in Soviet Union were NO commercial movie industry at all. Movie makers were making their movies and had month pays for their work. When they began making a new movie they showed the screenplay to the ministry of culture and if the ministry accepted it it allotted them some money from the state budget. Any sci-fi had never been that politically correct in comparison to war or revolution movies and thus the budget of such movies was ALWAYS very small. You can understand how much devotion to the work and art was needed to make such films in such conditions. This is the reason why soviet sci-fi movie makers always tried to put into their movies the things that were not dependent on budget. They put ideas. Soviet way of life and way of thinking was much enclosed in itself and developed enclosed. Influence of western culture was rather subtle because all the borders were closed. Contraband products were rare and highly illegal. No one have seen any of the non-Soviet sci-fi movies until the very end of 80's.

"Cherez ternii k zvyozdam" ("Per aspera ad astra" is the correct translation) have one of the best special effects ever made in the Soviet Union, seriously. So ignore them, they are not the central piece of the movie. The central piece is the ideas, the characters and the acting. The visions of the ecological catastrophe were rather fresh in 1981 for the whole world, the more in the Soviet Union where government always told everyone that the future is bright. According to the screenplay there should have been the ending title saying "All the scenes of the dying planet Dessa were shot at the territory of the Soviet Union". No need to say that that title was censored out (now it was added in the new re-edited DVD version).

I see that many of those who have seen "Cherez ternii k zvyozdam" misunderstand its plot. It's very strange because the plot is clear and straightforward, possibly it's all because of the poor translation. In fact only the concluding scene may be found somewhat strange because it has purely allegoric meaning: creation of the new life.

All acting is nearly perfect, no need to describe it, especially amazing are the roles of the economical tyrant Turanchox by Vladimir Fyodorov, Ambassador Rakan by Vadim Ledogorov and of course, Niya the Artificial Human by Yelena Metyolkina.

9 of 10. Find a well-translated version, turn on your brain and you'll understand why I rated it so.