Take the worst aspects of the dark ages and ostensibly reset all the phlegm, muck, and mud (I'm sorry, but even the middle ages must have had a few sunny days) to an "alien" world in the name of a soggy "Heart of Darkness" metaphor, and the result is the unwatchable "Hard to be a God." Nearly plot less and as pleasant to watch as a boil lancing, this film which nearly wasn't made, shouldn't have been. If watching actors (and I use the term loosely, the director seems to have cast with a sideshow mentality) snort feces and propel snot is your ideal way to spend three hours, feast away from the trough. You be richly rewarded in that direction. "Hard to be a God" is in the worst tradition the grotesqueries of the muck-and-mire school of eastern European art films. These directors and filmmaker bludgeon you with their hyped- up "realism," sparing no expense or lack of taste, to portray the lowly ground man has trod over the ages. Always set-decorated, costumed, and performed so verily over-the-top, these films wind up feeling so overtly phony in their "truth," they like marionette shows in an outhouse. Yes, they frequently achieve authentic repulsiveness -- and but that is a questionable achievement from the standpoint of a viewers force to chug the slime. Setting an excruciatingly high watermark for ugliness in the name of enlightening us to the beast within, "Hard to be God" achieves half it's goal: it's a truly repulsive film. There's none of the poetry or metaphor of even a patience-tester like "Salo" and the only thing cooked up from its cauldrons of phlegm and boot-scrapings of dung is an empty, and tasteless, serving of mud pie.
Review of Hard to Be a God
