The Big Picture

Russian cinema often challenges Western audiences with out-of-the-box films like
Hard to Be a God
, a brutal medieval sci-fi masterpiece.
Aleksei German’s film is a filthy, raw exploration of society’s rejection of intellect and progress in a pre-Renaissance world.
With intense close-ups, explicit bodily functions, and decayed settings, this film challenges viewers to question norms and embrace discomfort.

Russian cinema is home to many bonkers and wild films that push viewers out of their comfort zone and challenge any assumptions that Western audiences might have about the process of film-making and the concept of storytelling. From revolutionary documentaries that break all the rules (Man With A Movie Camera) to the meditative, slow-moving poetic cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky, Russia’s cinematic approach challenges the notions and preconceptions of all audiences. However, certain ambitious movies occasionally emerge from beyond the Urals, that make the rest of Russian cinema look like a series of direct-to-Netflix rom-coms. One such film is Aleksei German’s brutal medieval sci-fi epic (yes, you read that right) Hard to Be a God from 2013. There aren’t many films that get to call themselves medieval sci-fi epics, but this film is certainly one of them. It is also so, so dirty. Like filthy beyond belief. Not smutty dirty though, but muddy dirty.

To summarise a film like this is rather difficult, but its plot follows a group of scientists who travel from Earth to the planet Arkanar where the Renaissance has not yet happened, leaving a medieval, feudalist civilization in-place. The society on Arkanar immediately and brutally murders anyone whom they consider to be an intellectual, thus leaving society in perpetuum in this backward state. The scientists are ordered not to interfere with the killings and conceal their true identities, but curiosity and morality naturally gets the better of one scientist who wishes to stop the brutality and preserve the brilliant minds of the intellectuals; in the film, the intellectuals are somewhat pejoratively called “Wise Guys.” The film is adapted from its eponymous novel by the Strugatsky brothers, famed Russian sci-fi authors and the masterminds behind the source material for one of the most influential sci-fi films of all time. German unfortunately passed away before the film was finished, leaving the final editing to be done by his son. It is a shame he never got to see the completed work, because it is a masterpiece. Even the word masterpiece, however, doesn’t do the film justice.

Hard to Be a God An Earth scientist travels to a far-off planet that has been locked in a brutal medieval era for centuries. Masquerading as a nobleman, he is tasked with studying the society without interfering. As he witnesses the harsh repression of intellectual growth and the savage realities of daily life, his resolve to remain neutral is challenged, leading to an internal conflict between his mission and his humanity.Release Date February 27, 2014 Director Aleksey German Cast Leonid Yarmolnik , Aleksandr Chutko , Yuriy Tsurilo , Evgeniy Gerchakov Runtime 177 Minutes Main Genre Sci-Fi Writers Arkadiy Strugatskiy , Boris Strugatskiy , Aleksey German Studio Lenfilm Studio, Sever Studio, Telekanal Rossiya Expand

A Medieval Sci-Fi Epic With Boundless Depths and Brutality Beyond Disbelief
Clocking in at a monumental 177 minutes, there is no denying the fact that Hard to Be a God is not the easiest watch in the world, nor is there any guarantee that it is a film viewers would be eager to return to. But to reduce the film to that is to do it a mighty disservice. The film juxtaposes a civilized culture and a barbaric culture in one of the more extreme culture clashes ever captured on film. Don Rumata, the protagonist played by Leonid Yarmolnik, represents advanced society with his knowledge and the respect he holds for the acquisition of knowledge and the advancement of human society.

The inhabitants of Arkanar, primitive as they are, represent the uncontacted, less advanced human societies that appear barbaric, caked in mud and somewhat offensively plagued with various deformities and skin problems. Somewhat like Tarkovsky’s Solaris, another notable and influential science fiction movie, German’s film starts out with the preconceptions that the visitors are the enlightened and the hosts and their planet are the backward ones. Whereas Solaris reverses that, Hard to Be a God doubles down on this with profound metaphors aplenty.

Related 7 Strange Sci-fi Movies From Around The Globe to Watch If You Want to Get Weird With It On your break from saving the galaxy, explore these brave new worlds.

Aleksei German was known during his career as a profoundly anti-Stalinist artist, with many of his films being banned throughout his career at home. In this light, Hard to Be a God can be viewed as an anti-Stalinist, anti-Communist film and one that scolds the time period in Russia, or the Soviet Union, in which German himself grew up. Much more abrasive in its criticism of the former leader of the Soviet Union than Pawel Pawlikoski’sromantic drama Cold War from 2018, but nowhere near as in-your-face as Armando Iannucci’s zany The Death of Stalin, German’s makes great use of allegory to criticize state policy and how the rural parts of the country had been neglected. In a similar vein to the totemic work of literature, The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Hard to Be a God pulls no punches in how gruesomely it depicts a life far away from the big cities, away from any semblance of civilization.

Just How Much Mud Can a Film Use?

There are many things about Hard to Be a God about which viewers will vehemently disagree on with one another. One thing is clear among everyone who watches it, however: this is one of the dirtiest films ever made. We’re not talking about X-rated, smutty films of people getting it on, but rather, Hard to Be a God probably has set a record for the sheer amount of mud and dirt used in its production. The look of the film, thanks in no small part to the harsh but crisp cinematography by Vladimir Ilyin and Yuri Klimenko, is absolute filth from beginning to end, with the characters, settings, and buildings all caked in mud. This gives the film a more authentic feel, more accurately depicting the kind of squalor that modern audiences would expect to see in a medieval peasant town.

It isn’t just muck that is seen, though. German does not shy away from showing the more graphic bodily functions on-screen. Characters urinate, defecate, and vomit in public spaces with relative glee at their actions. This scatological humor is mostly shied away from by film directors, with the adaptation of Jonathan Swift’sGulliver’s Travels starring Jack Black keeping it very, literally, PG. The sheer raw power of showing this to the audience, detailing such intimate and explicit acts of daily human life, adds to the visceral impact of the film. It highlights the brutality and the dehumanization of society on Arkanar.

It isn’t just the inhabitants of Arkanar that are dirty, though. The buildings are dilapidated and are about to fall down, any interiors shown are cluttered with debris and tchotchkes, and there is an overwhelming sense of decay and neglect within the society. Some films, like Akira Kurosawa’s astonishing Seven Samurai, revel in showing the natural elements battling against the small, backward, rural town. Hard to Be a God can absolutely be lumped into that category too. German makes exceptional use of close-ups as well to further accentuate the filth of the characters and their world. There is no denying that this film is a tough watch, with the uncomfortable close-ups one of the primary reasons why audiences will squirm while watching this film.

Why Is ‘Hard to Be a God’ Just So Dirty?

It’s all well and good, including all this mud, feces, and bile in the film, but what does any of it mean? Does it mean anything at all? A film that verges on body horror at times, that runs close to three hours, that took nearly seven years to film and had to wait thirteen years from the beginning of filming to its release, must have meaning for absolutely everything in it, yeah? Well…

All this squalor and filth does underscore what German’s main theme was, which was about how debased and degraded a society that rejects intellectuals and progress can be. However, German’s entire filmography does tangentially deal with squalor and the descent of humanity into a degraded society. Khrustalyov, My Car!, his much-lauded 1998 film explicitly set in the final days of Stalinist Russia, doesn’t come close to this film for its pure physical filth. None of his films do. Hard to Be a God is truly out there on its own for its disgusting, revolting, bilious filth.

A near-three-hour brutal medieval sci-fi film about executed scientists in a pre-Renaissance society, a post-Stalinist search for culture and identity, and explicit bodily functions, sounds like a film everyone would like to see, right? There’s no point denying that this film won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Very few films are so rewatchable that they justify unlimited viewings, and Hard to Be a God isn’t anywhere near that list. But, is this a film that will make you think? Yes. Is this a film that will challenge what you thought possible in cinema? Yes. Is this a film that will shake you, rattle you, and make you question everything you thought you knew about the world? Also, yes. Destined for cult status like the cinema of Alejandro Jodorowsky and David Lynch, Hard to Be a God is a deep meditation on the nature of knowledge and culture in the modern world that will shake any viewer to their core. But sometimes we need a little shaking.

Hard to Be a God is currently available to stream on Kanopy in the U.S.

WATCH ON KANOPY