‘Kin-dza-dza!‘ is a 1986 science fiction production of the Soviet film studios Mosfilm, directed by Georgian director Georgiy Daneliya. If we didn’t know anything about this movie and if it was spoken in English we could classify it in the category of low-cost movies with a crazy script that combines the pretext of science fiction with absurd comedy and social criticism. For the informed spectator, ‘Kin-dza-dza!‘ is much more. 1986 is one of the first years of the democratization of the Soviet Union. Director Georgiy Daneliya, who had seen many of his previous films censored and other projects stopped before they were made, was one of the first to use the atmosphere of openness (‘glasnost’ in Russian) to make a satirical and critical film about the Soviet society, the inequalities between the peoples of the USSR, the deprivation suffered by the population, the ecological disasters caused by forced industrialization. In this film, he combines the science-fiction tradition of Russian literature and cinema (Arkadi and Boris Strugatzki) with the social satire practiced in the first decades of Soviet history by Ilf and Petrov. The result is an original, funny and strange film that has rightly become a legend or ‘cult’ film if you wish (I’m not a fan of this term), unforgettable for those who know it, but also ignored by many others.
The movie begins in Hollywood style. Two Soviet citizens on a Moscow street press the wrong button on a strange device and suddenly find themselves on a desert planet in another galaxy. Vladimir Nikolaevich (Stanislav Lyubshin), the elder of the two, is an engineer or team leader in a Soviet factory, the younger one, Gedevan (Levan Gabriadze), carries a violin. Attempts to contact the Soviet embassy, of course, fail, and the Soviet moral and behavioral codes are put to the test. The inhabitants of the world they have reached master telepathy and intergalactic travel, but their society is divided into classes, and those belonging to the upper classes have almost supreme rights over the destinies of those of the lower classes or races. The language is reduced to a few words and one of them (‘ku’ if you are curious) can have thousands of meanings. Matches are at a great price, and the box that Vladimir Nikolaevich has in his pocket can buy a lot, including a trip between stars, while the violin will turn them into a kind of ‘performers’ of the planet’s inhabitants, although their musical talent seriously scratches the ears of earthly spectators. Those who lived through the era and those who learned about it will recognize many aspects specific to Soviet society, from the inequalities between the Russians and the other peoples of the Union to the ecological catastrophe transforming the planet into a huge desert, strewn with rusty industrial skeletons witnesses of a past industrialization, and with ships stranded in what was once a seabed. In 1986, it took not only talent but also courage to bring such a chain of subversive metaphors to the screen.
Georgiy Daneliya and cinematographer Pavel Lebeshev manage to create a consistent and effective cinematography, turning the lack of technical means into an artistic quality. Costumes are superb, among the best in post-apocalyptic cinema. Stanislav Lyubshin is a fine actor in the tradition of Soviet film, and the young Levan Gabriadze is so expressive that I can’t help but wonder why his filmography was limited to just a few films. The whole cast is great. ‘Kin-dza-dza!‘ is a reference film for the period in which it was made, but also a strange and funny entertainment, which tells a lot about the world then and … about today, because some things have not changed much.