Alicia I love this movie so much

Hottoceame The Age of Commercialism

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

vitaky2001 Here is what Balabanov wants to tell us. "Russian people" (Aleksey) drinks, believes in God and dreams of the City of the Sun. "Russian people" sat in prison in the past (reference to the Gulag) and remains indebted to "political regime" (Captain Zhurov). The latter of course is a mockery of the Soviet propaganda's idea that people "owe" a lot to Soviet power. Zhurov commits a crime by killing a Vietnamese (which can be read as the regime's crimes against the non-Russians), but it is the "people" (Aleksey) who become inculpated and executed. "Remember, you owe me something," says Captain Zhurov ("political regime") to Aleksey ("the people"). "Russia" is represented simultaneously as a mother (Captain Zhurov's alcoholic mother), a wife (Antonina, Aleksey's wife) and a bride (Angelica). Political regime turns "Russia-as-mother" into a hopeless degenerate (through alcohol and TV addiction). Then, political regime turns "Russia-as-wife" into a widow (the execution of Aleksey – "the people") and finally it violates "Russia-as-bride". It first presents "Russia-as-bride" with a dead corpse of her bride-groom (paratrooper killed in Afghanistan (or Chechnia?)). Since, "political regime" (and Captain Zhurov) is sexually impotent and cannot substitute the bride-groom, it has an ugly criminal (urka) violate "Russia-as-bride" (Angelika) and then completes the girl's torment by reading her the letters of the dead fiancée (Soviet propaganda's cynical play on the sacred feelings?). "Political regime" professes love to "Russia-as-bride" but opines that this love is unrequited. Antonina ("Russia-as-widow") kills Captain Zhurov (a reference to Russian rebellion), but that of course does not restore the lost purity of Angelica ("Russia-as-bride") Russian rebellion is, after all, bloody and senseless. The crucial thing is that the story does not show the way towards redemption. The teacher of "scientific atheism" (Artem) comes to the Church to be baptized, but the sacrament (if it really happened) remains off-screen. The bottom-line is that political regime is a sadist violator from which there is no escape. In the end, what effect did the director seek to achieve with such a representation? Only one: he wanted the viewer to have the feeling that it is he or she who has (is) been violated. Both the rape featured in this film and the symbolic rape that is stands for, serve to obscure the fact that the actual rape happens in the course of watching the film and that the real rapist is not Zhurov (political regime) or its proxy (criminal), but the film itself. Its goal is to turn the people watching it into a raped subject and thereby complete the material, moral and psychological destruction that the country has experienced for a quarter of a century. It imposes upon the viewer a socio-political imagery (characters and relations between them) which deranges the mind, paralyzes the will and renders meaningless any action. It is the deadliest film I have seen in my life. It should have been cut to pieces and its director placed into a mental asylum, for, needless to say, the fantasy of inescapable rape could emerge only in a profoundly diseased mind.

Jiri Severa I have sympathy for the view that this dark, dark comedy from Balabanov is much too culturally pointed to impress a westerner beyond the more obvious clues and intents of the writer and director. Balabanov's movie articulates the classically Russian 'tragic view of life' (articulated by Antonina: 'the sooner we die, the better for us') and it is through this prism that it views the moral and material decay of the Soviet system. Captain Zhurov's depravity and necrophilia is not psychological. The filmmaker does not even pretend to study Zhurov's motives: it is the bare fact that the police chief has authority and uses it to his own sociopath's ends that matters (Balabanov cleverly keeps the audience from discovering Zhurov's professional identity until after he is outed as an insane murderer). What makes 'Gruz 200' Balabanov's best film and a true classic is the sort-of passerby attitude of the narration, and his insistence that he is not as serious as he appears to be. He delivers the most shocking and revolting scene with a healthy dose of the absurd kind of humour(says insane mama to the visiting lady with a shotgun in her suitcase: 'too many flies this summer'), and in this he resembles Tarantino's killing-is-comedy trademark. But the Russian director actually is committed to a point of view, and acknowledgement that humans have soul, something that would fall beyond Tarantino's understanding, or at any rate, his artistic grasp. 'Sunka', the Vietnamese migrant worker is the torch of humanity in the movie. Balabanov, here and elsewhere, pokes into the renowned Russian chauvinism and racism, in choosing for his saintly innocent an Asiatic who speaks broken Russian. (Dersu Uzala, anyone ?) It appears that the 'conversion' of the atheist professor Gromov, is linked to the death of Sunka, and to his boss Aleksey's convincing argument against atheism - i.e. his refusal to believe that human 'conscience' is a material effect of Darwinian evolution. Balabanov cleverly underplays Gromov's visit to the church by making the priest absent. (This saves the movie from turning preachy). The director also makes excellent use of the industrial wasteland (so much reminiscent of Tarkovsky's "Zone" in the "Stalker") and the dilapidating housing standards in the late Soviet era, as the background for his farce.

dusan-22 As a great fan of Aleksey Balabanov movies I probably expected too much from this film and was rather disappointed thereafter. The greatest problem that this movie faces is the lack of the feature film plot. When made in dark style film should use dynamic plot to make up for absence of light as it is effective plot balance. Otherwise it becomes dull, which is the case with this movie. Gruz 200 is following the bitter and creepy faith of the young woman in the last decade of USSR existence. Literally following, because camera goes after her many times disregarding the development of other actions. What film shows that happened to her can be put in just two sentences. Film needs much more than that, otherwise we could go to Somalia, take our camera, find the place of greatest atrocities and shoot the person that was the greatest subject of somebody's tyranny and sadism. Pity for all the film efforts, especially brilliant acting and fantastic camera, could have been better, if the plot axis had been developed more carefully.

Pascal Zinken (LazySod) The title of the film is a code name for the return home of a body from the battle field. The reason why this title is chosen becomes clear early in the film - but the build of the film would allow a lot of different titles and each one of them would be matching for this film goes far beyond a body returning from the battle field. As the story rolls the film switches back and forth between a number of people and tells their respective tales - and the way all of them connect in one way or the other. The stories are not altogether happy but are not too dark either so the film doesn't turn too dreary. It is very grim though. As each of the stories turns to its conclusion one can not escape the biting cold reality of them.Played out well enough to be believable and quick enough to be entertaining this film does pretty well. It's ending is fitting, its after-taste is bitter. But, above all, it's an interesting watch.8 out of 10 broken bottles of vodka