Making art is a matter of finding clouds in the sky of mind, forming them into objects, often glassy and jagged. Encountering art is a matter of deciding how to dance and carry, whether to digest or be wounded. For art to be powerful ,real art, you need both, which means that the artist has two challenges, the second of which is to seduce.This is successful only in the first, the birthing. One can clearly see that we have someone who knows what he wants and has the ability to make it so. This film is a completely coherent creation, each part bonding to the others in a way that conveys perhaps a too understandable effect. In this, it is much closer to ordinary Soviet film-making than Tarkovksy, to whom this fellow is often compared.So its a nicely machined object. There's craft, vision.But it didn't convey to me at all, probably because no matter how much I open myself, I don't have the nightmares it depends on. I imagine this resonated with its intended audience: citizens of a country cobble together from grotesquely primitive regions and managed with mechanical brutality.I image that if you live close to Islam, or close to a supremely backward people, mixed in with the opposing violences of occupation... where everyone is underemployed and no art finds a happy garden... where paper matters and there's no escaping the heat... where all that you and everyone around you just want to do is run away......it might resonate.Meanwhile, what you'll get is a dreamy meditation for others. He hasn't brought it to me.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

I have seen this film for the first time more than 10 years ago. Since then I saw it so many times, but it never betrayed my expectation. The story is rather simple and clear, if you do not stick to rich details and strangeness of some situation. A young Russian doctor Maryanov, who has been sent to the Central Asia, is working on a academic research, in his free time. But his work somehow causes unpleasantness with the Order, so it disturbs him to get him give up the research. The surroundings, natives of the land, and supernatural forces are standing in his way. After the runaway of his best friend Vecherovsky,Mayranov is left in complete solitude. In short, this is a tragic fable of a intelligent young man in a dull, decayed society(not necessarily Soviet Union).This simple story is told through marvelous cinematography and intriguing multi-layered soundtrack,which is worth remembering as a best achievement of contemporary film art. There is no movie star,no Dolby surround, no big budget, but this film will be remembered for a long time for its humanistic implications and cinematographic beauty.

Rare astonishing movie in beautifully sepia colour, beautifully slow shots. The story is about a young Moscow doctor who went to the south to do someresearch and is struggling with loneliness, displacedness, temperature and so on. Also beautiful music, a piece of art

Loosely based on a great science-fiction novel Billion Years Before the End of the World by renowned authors Boris and Andrei Strugatsky, it one of my favorite films. It is hard to say what is more striking in this film -cinematography or the ideas it is about.