Anniversary of clairvoyant dystopia

On March 30, 1987, in the Moscow cinema "Russia" the premiere of the film took place, which at the time of the start of filming was supposed to be called "Space Dust". At the time of the beginning of filming, the script of this film assumed a very important character - a speculator of cosmic dust. Leonid Yarmolnik was going to play this role. When he arrived for the shooting - in the Karakum desert - the scenery burned down. Filming has been postponed. Yarmolnik returned to Moscow. When he came to the shooting for the second time, the restored scenery was destroyed again, but this time by a drunk Lichtwagen driver.

The director did not call the Yarmolnik for the third time to shoot. The director, and he is also the co-author of the script, simply deleted this role from the script. We are all superstitious. Someone more, someone less... And the film was called "Kin-dza-dza!". And the director's name was Georgiy Daneliya.

However, the problems with the twice destroyed scenery of the film were far from the only ones that got in the way of the filmmakers. It makes no sense to describe all of them, since they have already been repeatedly and colorfully described in various publications, for example, here. I will only note that the film was supposed to be finished by mid-September 1984. And it was released on the screens only more than two years later.

Or it might not have come out at all. The political upheavals that took place in the USSR in the mid-80s of the last century constantly created censorship "traps" for this film. Coincidentally, during the filming of the picture, K.U. Chernenko had to "reign" on the Kremlin Olympus. And everyone who has seen the film knows that the most popular word in the Chatlan-Patsak language is "ku". Strict censors saw in this coincidence a hint of the initials of the Secretary General. But, the organizational conclusions did not have time to follow: the Secretary General rested in peace. In Gorbachev's time, censorship was no longer so picky. However, in connection with the announced anti-alcohol campaign, it was necessary to replace the cognac provided for by the scenario with vinegar. But this only added absurdist colors to the film.

Georgiy Daneliya's film "Kin-dza-dza!" gathered about 16 million moviegoers in Soviet cinemas in the first year of the demonstration. Not very much, but not very little - 14th place at the box office that year. However, comparing the size of the film's budget of 16 thousand rubles with the specified number of tickets sold, it is possible to understand what a huge profit this film brought to Soviet cinema.

The film "Kin-dza-dza!" was not nominated for participation in prestigious international film festivals. Accordingly, the foreign moviegoer remained in the dark about this film by Georgiy Daneliya. And at the national film festival "Nika" was not honored not only to receive serious awards, but even nominations in the most important categories. Only in technical. "Nika's" favorite was Tengiz Abuladze's film "Repentance" that year.

Today, several decades after the release of the film, the meaning of the visionary predictions contained in the film is beginning to reach many. The well-known Russian film critic Yevgeny Nefedov writes about this in his review of the film:

"What was perceived as entertainment at the time of the film's release (I remember how such reproaches of the reader of the "Soviet Screen" had to be parried in an interview with Yuri Yakovlev) made everyone laugh heartily at the adventures of civilized earthlings on a wild and degraded planet, soon acquired a bitter taste, if not fulfilled, then inevitably fulfilled prophecy. Unaware of this, Danelia and Revaz (Rezo) Gabriadze sent their fellow citizens such a clear and thoughtful warning that one can only be amazed at the unwillingness to hear the peculiar voice of the crying in the Plyukan desert, especially to heed it. Actually, a similar journey by an ordinary (typical!) the Soviet people were already in the near future. The functions of the guardians of order, the privileged and corrupt caste, and cultural (more precisely, related to the sphere of show business) life, and the principles of the functioning of the economy as a whole are exhaustively disclosed."

And, indeed, it is impossible to call the fact that the authors of the script of the picture called representatives of the ruling class on the planet Pluck the word "ecilopp", formed from the inverted English word "police", otherwise than a brilliant prophecy. And just as brilliant is the prophecy about what the domination of the "ecilopp" (read: law enforcement officers in the broad sense of the word) leads to - the desert, bells in the nose and the top of spirituality - the song "Mom, Mom, what am I going to do".

According to the reviewer of the film portal Ovideo.ru Maxim Malyukov

"Danelia managed to create a brilliant visual example of a society that completely shows human vices, shortcomings and weaknesses...It is possible that many viewers would consider everything that is happening on the planet Pluck a real nonsense of a brilliant director, but if you dig deeper, try to find yourself in this universe, it becomes clear that Daneliya has made a truly masterpiece movie...After all, the meaning of the picture is precisely to show how important it is to remain Human, despite all the events surrounding you."

I think it is important to note that literally this year Georgiy Daneliya's film "Kin-dza-dza!" finally got into the field of view of the Western moviegoer. And caused, literally, delight. It is enough to cite as evidence the opinions of some Western film critics. Thus, German film critic Frank Schmidke writes:

"Eigentlich ist es beschämend, dass die großartige, zeitlose Sci-Fi-Komödie „Kin-dza-dza!“ erst nach rund fünfunddreißig Jahren hierzulande in die Kinos kommt. Umso schöner ist es zu erleben, dass die absurde Komödie überdauert hat und nichts von ihrem sowjetischen Kult-Charme verloren hat. Ku? Ku."

At the same time, he gives an explanation of the reasons for this shame:

"Es ist ein Fakt, dass das Filmgeschehen in Deutschland sehr stark vom Angloamerikanischen Business geprägt ist. Was hierzulande in den Kinos läuft, kommt, sofern nicht aus eigener Produktion, häufig aus den USA, Großbritannien oder Frankreich. Gelegentlich schleicht sich etwas östliches in das Segment des Arthaus-films, wahlweise mitgefördertes Filmschaffen aus ehemaligen Sowjet-Republiken. Da ist ein großer blinder Fleck, der auch damit zu tun hat, dass der Osten jahrzehntelang der Feind war, das verortete Böse".

The editor of the Anglo-American online magazine "Comedy To Watch" Alex Finch commented on the film "Kin-dza-dza!" as follows:

"It’s one of those films that appears to be a situation where one person might passionately love it, one might be mildly amused and bemused, and another might hate it enormously, and I found myself in the middle category. Its relentless weirdness can be a bit exhausting on occasion, but the majority of the time I was entertained even though I wished it was funnier and faster paced. But even despite these issues there’s certainly a fair amount to admire, with a lot of strange but funny ideas being played around with, the performances are strong from a very committed cast, and visually it’s a film with some images that will stay with you for a long time to come."

Modern moviegoers highly appreciated Georgiy Daneliya's movie masterpiece. 70% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave Georgiy Daneliya's film "Kin-dza-dza!" scores from 8 to 10, and 30% of users rated the film with the highest score - "ten".

With that said, the rating of Georgiy Daneliya's film "Kin-dza-dza!" according to FilmGourmand's version, was 7,99, which allowed it to take 721st Rank in the Golden Thousand.