This movie has some amazing shots. The ending scene of the movie is breathtaking, I can't see how he planned for that - but I know he must have. The same goes for the rest of the movie, what a production! Big crowds of people in one scene, big heaps of junk in the next. The room with the stormy waters outside in one scene, and barren landscape outside later on. I can only imagine the amount of work put into making this movie look like it does.
So that's one thing. I'm having difficulties thinking of other things I liked with the movie. Some of the sequences drag on for way too long without really adding anything to the movie (as far as I can tell). I must admit that I'm not entirely sure what Lopushanskiy is trying to do or say in this movie. I guess it can be seen in light of communism and parts of the communists regimes. The elites being anti religion, and the people treated badly. But the religious aspect of it also brings my mind to Judaism. God's chosen people treated like animals. Maybe I'm being too specific, and he is trying to say something about man in general. But is it a message of hope? Or hopelessness? The movie was not able to hold my interest in the plot, and so I also lose interest in whatever message it is trying to convey.
That said, it's worth watching for the visuals alone, and I'm sure other's will find more in the plot than I did. Maybe it helps knowing more about the context in which the movie was made?
