Okraina

It's a very hard movie,and I didn't really find any funny moments-it might be a very peculiar kind of humor which I really don't get.What can I say about Okraina?A very strange movie,somewhere a mix between Tarkovski(the overall mud),Tarantino(the fun of having someone's blood on its clothes),Kurosawa(the gang of men looking for justice),to say nothing about Dziga Vertov,Eisenstein in the expressionistic language.Despite this strange mixture,the movie remains a highly original,and illuminating in understanding why Bakunin,Stalin,the Ukrainian murderers in the Holocaust could exist.It is a movie who needs open-minded,and patient audience.What stunned me-it might be ironic,I hope,it's the collectivist happy end.So,if you love Tarantino,find Tarkovski breathtaking and have nihilistic thoughts,you will like.Others,try it,it might be alright.

Having read the few other comments i have clearly missed most of the Russian cultural significance and jokes in this film. However, as a new zealander who enjoys all kinds of film i saw this at one of our festivals and absolutely loved it.

as mentioned in the title, to a non Russian eye it moved like slapstick in slow motion. Plenty of accessible deadpan, morose humour was on show as well as some great backdrops and scenery.

i particularly enjoyed the long close-up shot/scene on the farm four wheel motorcycle thing. funny how such a pastoral setting can become so surreal.

towards the end it seemed to change gear and moved quite quickly to black comedy and on into b-grade style action - with an explosion and getaway worthy of ed wood. amongst all this is still managed to be quite gripping and had me keyed in wondering how their quest would turn out.

If you liked this film I would suggest seeing:

American Astronaut, The Beaver Trilogy

Definitely worth a look if you like something a bit different. Jacob.

Like the cheeky director, Petr Lutsik, this film has some wonderfully bizarre moments, (I think you may be able to label it as surreal). Four farm men hit the road on a journey to the big smoky city and fight the powers that be. A wicked tale about an insane country going through some heavy changes.

"The Outskirts" - a black and white multi-genre drama by Pyotr Lutsik according to the script of Aleksey Samoryadov. In this ingenious film, the authors have mixed so many genres of cinema that you wonder, this is a parable, a western, a road movie, and a retro film. 30s of the 19th century, the outskirts of Russia, a group of men not finding the truth at home, go to seek this truth in the capital, in Moscow. It is unfortunate that the fate of the authors of this masterpiece was so tragically, for various reasons early from the deceased.

In current times,the merits and strengths of Russian cinema are properly assessed only by those foreign critics and viewers who have also evaluated the artistic brilliance of other national cinemas.It is important to know that this trend is happening at a time when for some peculiar reasons Russian audiences have started to ignore the heritage of their own domestic cinema in order to appreciate films from different types of dead woods namely Bollywood and Hollywood.This small review is an earnest attempt to discuss the greatness of Russian cinema.Apart from water,land is recognized as one of the most recognizable universal concepts.As a film, Pyotr Lutsik's Okraina is based on the universal theme of land but chooses to depict an oddball case of land grabbing and its consequences on hapless peasants.This might appear simple to digest but Okraina is absolutely impossible to pigeonhole.Blackest of all black comedies would be the nearest brief plausible description of this film.The film's TOUR DE FORCE consists of some violent scenes which have an absolutely surreal charm.For example- proper attention must be paid to a scene wherein a man disappears in thin air under the ice to reappear after some time from the other side.The film is replete with several humorous scenes of this kind which shock the viewer in a positive sense.It is for this reason that an astute viewer has to marvel at indefatigable efforts by director Pyotr Lutsik who teamed up with his screenwriter colleague late Aleksei Samoryadov(1962-1994).Lastly a word of advice from film critic Mr.Lalit Rao-If a viewer has appreciated this film then the next best step would be to watch Boris Barnet's original Okraina which is considered as one of Russian cinema's greatest classics.