HARD TO BE A GOD (TRUDNO BYT’ BOGOM) a film by Aleksei German Lifetime Achievement Award for Aleksei German HARD TO BE A GOD (TRUDNO BYT’ BOGOM) a film by Aleksei German INTERNATIONAL SALES CAPRICCI FILMS Julien Rejl/Manon Bayet [email protected] SYNOPSIS A group of research scientists has been sent to the planet Arkanar, living under an oppressed regime in a period equiva- lent to earth’s Middle Ages. The local population is suffering a ban issued on anyone who knows how to read and write. The scientists must refrain from influencing political and historical events on Arkanar. They must work incognito, and they must remain neutral. Don Rumata, recognized by the locals as a sort of futuristic god, tries to save the local intelligentsia from their punishment. He cannot avoid taking the stance: “What would you do in God’s place?” Adapted from the 1960’s cult sci-fi novel “Hard to Be a God” by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. ABOUT STATEMENT FROM THE PRODUCTION ALEKSEI GERMAN Hard To Be a God is a project that Russian director Aleksei Svetlana and I usually spend the weekend in the country German had been considering since the mid-1960s. German watching movies. Usually old ones. We have seen «Amarcord» tried to make it as his first film as early as 1964. Instead, he made or Tarkovsky’s films thousands of times. We know them by heart. Trial on the Road in respect to Lenfilm, the historic production It is amazing how we are losing the art of film without even company for which the director worked throughout his career. realizing it. When you watch a scene from «Stalker» with crying The project was later approved by Goskino, the State agency Kaidanovsky you immediately realize at which high level it was responsible for organizing filmmaking in the Soviet Union, but created. Neither Russian nor American contemporary films can in 1968, after the uprising in Prague, the authorization was reach that level. Film has turned into something for people who revoked for ideological reasons. Twenty years later the director are bored to read the book, and that is why the contents of the returned to the project, but decided instead to make a film that book are narrated to them by actors. This tendency is crucial would take him a long time to complete, Khrustalyov, My Car! for artists as well. That is why I almost never watch modern Ten years later, after stating “I am not interested in anything moovies. I am quite happy with Bergman, Kurosawa, Fellini’s but the possibility of building a world, an entire civilization from «Roma», Otar Ioseliani. Muratova’s films, some works by young scratch”, German committed his efforts to Hard to be a God. directors sometimes. Speaking about actors it is getting more The film was shot between the autumn of 2000 and August and more difficult to find them and when you finally succeed, it 2006: it even involved the construction of castles near Prague is sohard to tell them: «Look, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?! and on the sets at Lenfilm; the shooting took so long that some Instead of working your guts out, instead of putting in your soul of the actors died of old age; the post-production phase took and heart, you are just trying to hit fancy. You should be afraid over five years. German died on February 21st, 2013: the film of it and run away from it as fast as you can!» Film is a divine was completed by his wife and closest collaborator, Svetlana art, which is now overtaken by lazy people with empty eyes Karmalita, and by their son Aleksei A. German. which they are covering all the time with their hands. In my film there appears a short and fat actor who is trying to fly – and he is a brilliant actor. The man playing the part of the king is an actor from a far away small thatre for children, meanwhile he could glorify any thatre in the capital. Take a look at Alek- sandr Chutko – the very first moment I saw him I said, bring this man to me, he would make a perfect Don Reba. But the main problem is that a smart, well-educated spectator has become more and more rare, very hard to find and recognize. soviet tanks into Prague. Those ideas that intelligentsia distin- INTERVIEW guished in the novel were also obvious to censorship people WITH SVETLANA who immediately associated the Czech events with landing of the “grey order” mentioned in the script. And on the 23rd of KARMALITA August of 1968, Aleksei was informed of the arrest of his movie script. Generally speaking August of 1968 terminated all the illusions of the so called “Sixtiers”. 1. The Strugatsky brothers wrote the book in 1964. 2. The narrative has a secondary importance in the film. Why did Aleksei German immediately want to adapt it The camera is like a subjective point of view floating to the screen? among characters. Like in paintings, there are simulta- The novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky immediately broke neous actions happening at the same time on different out with striking success. Readers saw in it something that grounds. The camera is always on the move… caught their fancy. The ready-made feature movie plot rich Starting from his second movie, Aleksei was getting more in clashes offered them diverse people characters typical of and more interested in depicting the world surrounding a Middle Ages and at the same time incredibly resembling real protagonist. He had always believed that the reasons and neighbors, friends, colleagues and distant acquaintances. And sources of deeds and emotions of a character could only be of course the issue of eternal fight of good and evil was not understood through depicting the environment and reality put aside by the authors. So everything in the novel seemed around him. Appreciation or rejection of real life and its very similar to common life of common people though full of intrinsic manifestations by a character, all those factors that romance and valor. mould his personality are no less important in the fiction story The intelligentsia of the 60s which by that time had tasted than the figure of a protagonist. Aleksei believed that camera and enjoyed the charm of “allusions” found in the novel the should be an artist’s tool of many places helping to reveal embodiment of their conception and understanding of social different aspects of one phenomenon. Indeed, if we distin- life in Soviet Union. The book was immediately sold out and guish different plotlines in the movie not only the protagonist began travelling from hand to hand. Don Rumata but also any other character would be presented As to Aleksei German, he belonged to that part of intelli- as a finished character sketch. Although being lost in the gentsia that still had illusions regarding the possibility of liberal movie sequence each character still has his own nature and and democratic way of development. Nevertheless, he had a his own place and value defined by the artist. fear of the return of terror that our country had experienced, The main plotline often recedes into the background especially in the 30s. All his life he feared that that time could permitting the audience just feel themselves part of the return revealing all its ugliness again. panhuman history. And in this sense German the reader and German the artist Several plotlines introduced by the author, none the less, had very much associated himself with the essence and thoughts to bring together the movie sequence and the cinema viewer implicated in the novel. – a man of another time, another civilization and another The movie script that had already been approved at “Lenfilm” understanding of the world. And the call for these plotlines was was all of a sudden ceased on the second day after entrance of satisfied by their quantity – just no more and no less. 3. Don Rumata is a nobleman who tries to save culture, art and intellectuals but fails and ends up as a lonely man. Did Aleksei German want to make an apoca- lyptic film? There exists another point of view on the ending of the film. As I have taken part in many discussions concerning the movie I should say that not always the end of it was understood as such despair. Some viewers paid attention at the fact that Rumata demanded to take off boots from slaves. Besides, the last sound is the trumpet produced by a slave that echoes Rumata’s musical improvisation. Harmony in the world is not achieved that is to say not yet achieved. Rumata’s friend is wearing hand-made wings behind his shoul- ders with which brainiacs learnt to fly. Obviously, he is not surrounded by like-minded persons, and this is not possible because of home, the woman whom he does not love yet but all is further a number of reasons. But at the other hand nobody has yet down the road…Being a historian he made a grave mistake by disproved the influence of a Personality on the world, and in this not checking what was happening with the “black order” and sense Don Rumata is definitely a Personality. thus being unaware that it was gaining ground for attack. And I am often being asked about the so called “light at the end when it came to finishing the story of Don Rumata it developed of the tunnel”. But “light at the end of the tunnel” is something that it was absolutely impossible for him to return to Earth and abstract, not real.