There is a rare creative lucidity to the defecatory madness of Hard to Be a God. I would be lying if I claimed to have fully grasped its essence, though cogency is hardly a quality the author appears to be after. What comes through clearly in his Bruegelian delusion is what he once declared, that he was interested in nothing but ‘the possibility of building a world, an entire civilisation from scratch.’
Converted from native colour stock to a strikingly grim b/w, Aleksei German’s apocalyptic orgy of rot and rain demands a certain degree of cinephile stamina—but not for nothing. Its exhaustingly slow pace and murky narrative convey a palpable sense of stillness, anguish and oppression, likely intended to evoke the dereliction of Stalinist Russia while stirring broader reflections on human nature.
What more than anything seems to shape the intellectual and metaphorical core of the film, are its visceral cinematographic idiosyncrasies—the camerawork, specifically. Crisp, spherical lenses wander through the delirious carnival like one-eyed, crooked creatures, seamlessly shifting in and out of POVs and seeking physical contact with props and bodies. Characters often emerge from behind the camera, à la Klaus Kinski in Herzog’s Aguirre—unexpected, unwelcome, occasionally staring straight at us, delivering sporadic, nonsensical fragments of lines or lovely guttural grunts. There is an almost uncomfortable sort of urgency to all this—one difficult to articulate in words yet strangely addictive.
However arcane and strenuous, Hard to Be a God is the monumental work of a master. It touched me like great art does, leaving me beguiled, inspired—and eager to take a long, warm shower.