dimarec

I love this film, I first saw in 1989. It is not an all time great masterpiece, of course, mostly because of its imperfect, but still very good directing (actually it was debut work of this film's director). However, that is well forgivable regarding awesome music and stunning performance by Viktor Avilov, who is as great in this role, as no one could ever be. The movie perfectly conveys the atmosphere of Russian Decadence, the cultural phenomenon, which is also called "The Silver Age" of Russian culture. It was a period since approx. 1905 till the beginning of WW1 in 1914. To understand what it was you must have a cultural experience of being a Russian. You have to feel its beautiful enigmatic spirit in poetry, prose, music and painting of that era, penetrated with troubled anticipation of great changes to come. Having seen this film, you will be haunted by this atmosphere - only if you are able to tune yourself to its wavelength. If you are a fan of scary movies like "Hellraiser" or "Elm street Nightmare" - just skip it. There is nothing in Western cinema to be compared with this. It must be emotionally experienced to say whether you like it or not, depending on your personal emotional constitution. As for myself, this film is rather a philosophic story about an artist, who dared to challenge the God and was punished for that. It bears a powerful emotional impact, amplified by times by the great music score.

I give the movie 10/10, forgiving flaws of directing.

This movie belongs to the russian/soviet culture - this is the reason why so many negative comments are manifested here on IMDB. Besides, the Americanized version ("Humanoid Woman") was cropped and too much spoiled by nasty dubbing, that the whole film's concept has shifted. HOW COULD ONE SAY HERE: "there are some treasure hunters who want to use her at the archaeological dig, so they can become rich and famous"?!! There is nothing like that AT ALL!! And so on about other "comments" available here. The film has a very intelligent plot, written by the famous russian SF writer Kir Bulichev. The director's work is excellent. For example Niya's character is played by non-professional actress Elena Metyolkina, who actually was a model. It was the director's design just to introduce some elements of robot-like behavior. The director managed to make her play as good as possible. All other actors play their characters very persuadingly also. I just wonder how can one abuse the music - it is superb. Of course there should be correction for poor picture and sound quality, presented on the Americanized version. But this film deserves to be watched in its original version and with the TRUE dubbing - JUST TO UNDERSTAND IT. BTW now its remastered version on DVD exists, with both picture and sound quality being superb.

Summing up I want to say this film is not a cheap entertainment as some comments here suggest. It is a very kind, heartful, gentle, touching and thought-provoking movie. It is about love - love to people, love to the Earth. Of course there is certain naivity about the film, but it only adds positive to its atmosphere. I see everything quite balanced in it. Some may see flaws in film's imperfect setting (compared with "Alien" or "Star Wars" for example)- of course Holliwood was much more advanced in Sci-fi making (and a lot richer besides), than the Soviet cinema. But that does not seem too important.