My Joy

Regardless of the good casting, acting and camera work, I left at 2/3 of the running time. Same did 20 others before me. Yet, no real exodus was at hand. I left roughly 750 viewers behind, and I did see no restless moves of potential followers. Am I wrong??

The story began as advertised with a truck driver who has a long journey before him. He has to deal with a lot of people underway, all with no good intentions whatsoever. At first that seemed to be the intended framework for this movie: a series of adventures in different areas as building blocks, having the truck driver and his journey as binding element.

However, I got lost after 1 hour. New stories appeared with new people. The common denominator of showing people with bad intentions stayed the main theme throughout, but the connecting truck driver was missing. That got me confused. I am prepared to accept that I may have missed something essential.

Aforementioned main theme was depressing. Maybe there was a happy ending, or some moral to tie it all together. If so I missed it, due to my leaving early. So be it.

No Sergei Loznitsa...it was my joy. In his first fictional feature Loznitsa captures in a Kafka-esque adventure the joys (few they may be) and ills of post-Communist society. It is scathing, funny, horrifying, insightful and everything in between. The writing is impeccable and never dips off or drags for a moment. I watched this film when it was first released and there was no doubt I would watch any and everything Loznitsa would make.

Most low reviews are from people claiming they didn't understand the movie, if you didn't understand it, it's your problem man, but giving it a low rate? it's like saying mathematic is a shitty* subject because you can't understand it. ridiculous, these people probably did not like Pulp Fiction, Amores Perros or 21 Grams, which are far more intricate movies. the movie is a Dostoevsky like tale about a man who take a wrong turn and ruins forever his life, showing the miserable and depraved evil that man are capable of. how authoritarian and merciless, and that sometimes the thief or the killer is a better friend than a cop. it also alternates time lines without a hint, which is genius and done in this way to emphasize the movie 'moral'. it's really great if you like depressive art. for me, a sad masterpiece. a movie about how miserable life is. too complicated for some.(IMDb didn't let me write the curses, great.)

Three main issues = (1) Incredibly irritating to follow unless you know beforehand that the movie is composed of a series of short stories from different time periods. What adds to this problem is that the characters are mostly rough looking bearded Russians sometimes shot in dim light, therefore, it's hard to tell when a new character is being introduced or if it's the same rough looking bearded Russian as before. (2) The short stories themselves aren't really stories but a series of violent occurrences. (3) Since the film is not plot driven it must be making some type of statement or social commentary; unfortunately, that statements been made many times before in better fashion.

I don't think it's a 'social commentary' or a 'statement of the human condition' - it's a mess of a movie made by a potentially very skilled director who seems to get bored with the (admittedly rather boring) storyline and tarts it up in the last 40 minutes with a whole lot of disjointed events which we are left to piece together ourselves, however we may. Perhaps he couldn't think of a sufficiently clever ending and (just the same way as Picasso got bored with doing half-decent paintings) decided to let the New York Art House Set name it to be a work of intellectual brilliance (just in case it actually was). Worth watching for the Ukrainian scenery and faces and for masterful camera-work - but only once unless you want to learn the style.