Console best movie i've ever seen.

Derry Herrera Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

punishmentpark Stunningly beautiful. This animation seems to be made of a large series of paintings, and in each painting there are some animated details. Story-wise, I could only make out that the old man had an affair before he got married long ago, and the woman of that affair comes back (as a mermaid) to haunt his son in the present day. It turns out that the young man is not his son, but an apprentice - the old man is a monk. I don't understand how he would have been married in that case, but I must have missed some details there.Despite the fact that this an impeccable piece of animation, somehow not all of it worked for me. Maybe the subject matter stayed too much on the safe side of a fairly simple cautious tale, or even a fairytale, but I've very much enjoyed it nonetheless.A big 8 out of 10 feels like the minimum rating I must give this.

Armand a perfect film. seems be a too large definition but it has all pieces for be more than wonderful animation, pure Aleksandr Petrov high work but a magnificent story who remember the Russian mythology, the air of Orthodox Church,who presents , in wise manner, the temptation and the love in its so different nuances as not exactly as show but as touching source of love sense. it has the gift to impress in a profound manner. to give a form of beauty who could be not just aesthetic but perfect lesson about important things. it seems be enough - it is one of Aleksander Petrov short animation. but, like each of his films, it is not only animation. maybe a testimony about force and delicacy, about heart and fascination of existence. presented after a work who could be , for many from us, unrealistic, a sacrifice itself.

Rectangular_businessman "Rusalka" was another short masterpiece directed by the great Aleksandr Petrov: Just like his other works, "Rusalka" possess a magnificent beauty that hardly could be compared with anything that I've seen before, expressing with lyricism and captivating imagery a fascinating story.The quality of the animation is outstanding beyond words, being every single frame of this short a great work of art, with an almost dreamlike use of colors and shapes, capturing perfectly well the equally ethereal nature of the plot.This is a great animated film, that has to be seen to be believed. My review isn't enough to make this short any justice, being my main recommendation to any viewer to see with their own eyes "Rusalka" to confirm how wonderful it is.

Pierre Radulescu This movie is of great beauty, and you can be conquered by the visual wizardry even if not understanding quite well what's going on there. The images are oil paintings on glass, witnessing a rare mastership, and you are like caught by a spell. Yes, it binds its viewers, so beautiful it is.Some viewed in this movie only the Christian lesson: the old monk makes the supreme sacrifice to save the soul of the apprentice, teaching him (and through the movie also teaching us) the ultimate lesson. I think there are more valences in this movie, and maybe we should start methodically, with the title.Let's try an explanation for what a "rusalka" means. She is a spirit of the waters; long time ago she committed suicide after being abandoned by her lover. So a "rusalka" is a drown maiden. She is not properly dead, rather in an intermediate realm, and she looks for revenge; only after that she might be fully received in the underworld, to rest for ever.Let's now talk about the poem of Pushkin, which this movie is based upon. It will offer us the clue. Well, it's not that simple: Pushkin wrote two poems, with the same title, "Rusalka," quite different each other.Pushkin created his first "Rusalka" in 1819. It is the story of an old hermit passing his days in continual prayer, who falls in love for a "rusalka." The attraction proves fatal: the old friar ends by drowning. What remains is a gray wet beard flowing over the waters.In the 1830's Pushkin came back to the subject and started working on a large dramatic poem that remained unfinished. This second "Rusalka" would be the inspiration for the opera of Dargomyzhsky. The story is more elaborated here. A young prince sacrifices the love of a beautiful maiden in order to make a suitable marriage. The maiden drowns herself and becomes a "rusalka." Years are passing and the prince will encounter one day a girl who is the daughter of his long forgotten love: now herself a little "rusalka." And he realizes that his love story was the only happy period of his life and nothing else matters any more. From now on the prince would spend most of his time alone in the forest of the Dnieper banks.And we can ask ourselves: is the "rusalka" looking for revenge, or just for being again together with her lover? It is this ambiguity that marks the genius of great writers.The movie of Aleksandr Petrov unifies somehow the stories from the two poems. The old monk is the prince who in his youth betrayed his love. He hopes now to find solace through prayers and mortification. The novice who stays with the hermit will have to learn the way to God through his own trials and errors.The story calls in mind somehow the movie of the Korean Kim Ki-Duk, "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... Spring." Like there, it is the large water, and the small shrine, hidden in the woods: an old master, his novice, the way toward purification going through the sins of the youth and the remorse and repentance of a whole life. At the end of the movie we realize that each monk in turn went through the same cycle: sin, repentance. Time is circular, we are to follow the same cycle of life. There is no history, just a present that comes again and again, with each new generation.There is this circularity of time that marks also the movie of Aleksandr Petrov. The old monk sees in the novice his own image from long time ago. He is just entering the cycle of life, this novice, and the old monk wants to protect him.So let me give you my understanding of the movie: As the novice starts his love games with the "rusalka," the hermit has a flashback, the remembrance of his sins of youth. He realizes that the girl in the river is his own love that he betrayed long time ago (an interesting detail: the sledge from today's hut appears also in the flashback; to say nothing about the fox who runs at the beginning of the movie, a witness of this circularity of time, of this endless repetition of sin and repentance).The monk falls asleep while praying and in his dream he ascends Jacob's Ladder to find advice from Heaven. The Blessed Virgin is handing him the Lamb of God, and the monk realizes that he got the Stigmata of Jesus: the heavenly advice is to offer himself to sacrifice in order to save the novice. And that's what he's doing: going to the river, throwing himself inside the waters to save the novice, dying, together with the "rusalka," who is now revenged. The novice remains alone, taking care of two graves: monk and "rusalka" have finally found their solace.