Psy (1989)

... aka: Псы

... aka: Dogs

... aka: Stray Dogs

Directed by:

Dmitriy Svetozarov

The Aral Sea, located between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, once covered over 26,000 square miles (making it the fourth largest inland body of water in the entire world), was home to over 1,000 small islands and was a thriving central point for all manner of agriculture, industry and fisheries... and then the Soviet government (led by Nikita Khrushchev) decided to pollute, pillage and tinker around with the ecosystem, resulting in one of the worst ecological disasters of all time. Thanks to the redirection of rivers, poorly-constructed irrigation dams, canals and reservoirs, industrialization, the introduction of invasive species from other parts of the world into the waters, careless dumping of deadly agents at bioweapons labs, wide scale pollution from canning and cotton factories and overuse of chemicals and fertilizers in and around the lake, the Aral Sea was doomed. Even Soviet scientists predicted a disaster from very early on, yet they still kept going anyway, which is depressingly similar to how the world at large is currently reacting to the dangers of manmade climate change.

Starting in the 1960s, the lake began to shrink at an alarmingly consistent rate. The once vast body of water then split into smaller lakes and those smaller lakes either shrunk considerably or completely dried up, leaving vast, dusty deserts behind. Now without a large enough volume of water to dilute all of the chemicals that had accumulated over the years, these toxins became concentrated in both the soil and remaining water. That in turn rendered much of the area unsuitable for farming or fishing, with farmers having degraded soil and fresh water shortages to contend with and fishermen dealing with an increase in H2O salinity, which killed off all of the fish, even driving some species to extinction.

The already-shrunk Aral Sea three years prior to the release of Psy vs. the Aral Sea today.

As for the humans who remained in the area through all of this, they've had numerous other problems to deal with other than having their livelihoods destroyed. They've also had to deal with poverty, the ensuing extreme weather conditions (hotter summers and colder winters) and a host of health problems caused by frequent dust storms spreading hazardous chemicals around. With the Aral having now receding miles away from the once-thriving villages that sprung up there during its industrial heyday, rusted out old ships and abandoned buildings and factories now blot the dry, desert terrain. Seeing how the area is basically one big, self-contained catastrophe in and of itself, can you imagine a better setting for a post-apocalyptic movie?

Mutilated, half-eaten corpses have been turning up in and around a near-vacant "dead city" out in the desert, but these attacks have been slowly creeping in toward more populated areas. In order to keep this menace at bay, a government agent organizes a top secret mission. He brings in former army civil engineer Ivan Maksimchuk (Yuriy Kuznetsov), who was directly involved in some of the projects that have wreaked havoc on the environment in the first place and now has something to prove to himself, and tasks him with putting together a team of six skilled hunters and outdoorsmen to go into the desert wasteland and exterminate what they believe to be the culprit: wolves. Strangely enough, this elusive pack of animals have somehow managed to escape previous attempts to snipe them from helicopters. They have the miraculous ability to vanish soon after they've been spotted.

The eventual team gathered is a ragtag, Dirty (half) Dozen-esque bunch of down-on-their-luck has-beens and eccentrics of varying degrees of sanity, though in this world that's probably about as good as one can hope for. Mikhail Zhigalov plays a never-named former DOSAAF (paramilitary sporting organization) champion and man of very few words who now works as a manager of a shooting range. Boris Grigoryevich (Sergey Kokovkin) is an impoverished, unemployed, poetry and philosophy-spouting drunk stuck at home with a nagging wife and constantly-crying baby. Hired to be their guide is ex con Egor Manikin (Aleksey Krychenkov), who used to live in the dead city back when it was a lively, thriving, seaside town and hopes to do some looting while he's in the area. Viktor Utekhin (Andrey Krasko) is a nihilistic, anti-Semitic, gung ho hunter, while Innokentii Fursov (Aleksandr Susnin), a military vet with previous animal extermination experience, will be their driver. The team load up their transport van with supplies and they're off.

The desert terrain proves to be a harsh and unforgiving place. The torturous heat is suffocating, available water is in extremely limited supply, the sands are filled with potentially deadly sinkholes caused by the disappearance of stabilizing ground water and there's nary a patch of lush green vegetation anywhere in sight. It's all sand, dust, heat and the occasional piece of rusted out car, boat or heap of half-buried scrap metal dotting the landscape. They finally make it to their "dead city" destination and, to their horror, discover there aren't really any rampaging wolves. Instead, the area has been overtaken by vicious feral dogs with a taste for human flesh. Like the now-severe environment, the once passive pups represent nature (deservedly) turning against man.

The few human interactions the group have are limited to a young marauder (Andrey Nikolaev) who ends up stealing their van, effectively stranding them there, and a couple who live in an abandoned lighthouse hauntingly sitting right in the middle of the desert where water should be. (Ironically, they're now forced to collect snow in the short winters to get them through the rest of the year.) The husband, Pakhtusov (Nikolay Ispolatov), is a hydrologist and convinced that man can some day find a way to restore the lost sea. At least he's telling himself that. The wife, Saira (Rajhan Ajtkozhanova), tosses on a monk-like robe and sneaks out every night to kill dogs as an act of revenge for them killing their one and only child. Hopelessness, insanity and death follow for all.

Conspicuously missing from most nature-runs-rampant and killer dog film lists (a Top 10 on Screen Rant has some worthy titles like White God, Cujo and Baxter yet leaves this one off in favor of obvious filler), this deserves to be much better known. Unlike most other films in this category, which are usually schlocky botched attempts at seriousness or intentionally played for laughs, this is dark, dirty, grimy, bloody, completely serious, multi-layered, well-made and frequently quite disturbing. With its unforgettably bleak atmosphere of actual anthropogenic decay, Svetozarov's film is a stark reminder of what effect man's devastation of the planet has on all lifeforms.

As a warning, dog lovers may have a difficult time stomaching all of the yelping, whimpering, whining and obvious fear / distress of the dogs in certain scenes, not to mention seeing the cast casually machine gunning down their canine co-stars. There's also the question of whether or not some of these dogs were actually harmed or even killed in the film, as they're seen limping, falling over, suddenly being jolted, etc. I suppose it's possible that squibs hidden under patches of fake fur could be attached to trained dogs and set to explode to provide some of the gunshot effects seen here, though we're never quite so sure just how they pulled some of this stuff off. In fact, the dog carnage is so convincing that I honestly don't fully believe the disclaimer in the end credits that claims no animals were harmed in the making of this.

The performances are all very strong, there's good use made of slow motion and the long-standing Russian rock band Mashina Vremeni ("Time Machine") provides an excellent, eerie score. Sadly, this has never been officially released here in the U.S., though there have been several DVD releases in Russia, though they're full-screen, could use a remaster and none come with English subtitles. However, fan-made subs exist and are easy to find online, along with the film itself.

★★★1/2

Posetitel muzeya (1989)

... aka: Посетитель музея

... aka: Der Museumsbesucher (The Museum Visitor)

... aka: Expulsion from Hell

... aka: Izgnanie iz ada (Exile from Hell)

... aka: Visitor of a Museum

... aka: Visitor to a Museum, A

Directed by:

Konstantin Lopushanskiy

Strange reddish colors emanate from the night sky. The winds are strong and dust fills the air. If you spend too much time outdoors without a face covering and breath in too much of it, get ready for a rough cough. The oceans are not only treacherous and effectively dead of sea life, but they also reek of chemical waste. Trash and debris and split wood and hunks of scrap metal and skeletons of old vehicles and broken glass are all heaped in huge piles everywhere you look, which are constantly sifted through by filthy vagrants. Half of the children are now born deformed, mentally disabled and with severe psychological problems. These "degenerates," as they're now called, must be relocated to "reservations" to live out their miserable existence. Those who haven't been effected have to now take precautions, like having fires constantly burning in front of their windows, to keep these degenerates from breaking into their homes at night. Welcome to the apocalypse. Or (hence all of the fire and red lighting) hell on Earth.

Some kind of unnamed disaster (referred to merely as an "ecological catastrophe") has occurred that's had a disastrous effect on our planet. Whether that was nuclear war or environmental damage of another sort isn't important. What's important is that we did it to ourselves. From conversation, we gather that things are somewhat better in certain places; namely some of the major inland cities. But our brooding and soft-spoken protagonist, played by Viktor Mikhaylov, has traveled to a heavily-damaged area of the country, where he has but one objective.

The tourist (who is unnamed so we'll just refer to him as "Tourist" from here on out) is there to see a museum. He claims he merely wants to see and touch it. However, this is no ordinary museum. It's kept hidden underwater for all but one week of the year. During that time of low low tide, the ocean recedes back for miles and stays that way for about a week, which is about the same amount of time it takes for a round trip to and from the museum. Due to a coating of toxic slime and the uneven terrain, vehicles cannot be taken to the destination. It's a journey that must be done by foot. Few have ever tried. Some have chickened out. Others have stayed out for too long or gotten lost and drowned. The waters don't slowly come back, they come back suddenly and violently. It's nearly a suicide mission, but our hero is determined to see it.

The tourist has made arrangements with a couple (Vera Mayorova and Vadim Lobanov) who live at a remote weather station. The same couple (they're also not named - actually no one is in this film - so I'll be referring to them by the actor's first names) have hosted previous travelers who've attempted the journey; all of whom either backed out or didn't come back. Despite having two well-mannered and trained degenerates; a female maid (Irina Rakshina) and a male servant (Aleksandr Rasinsky) living in their home, Vera hates them and refers to them as "vile monkeys" while Vadim views them as being their children, which causes strain on their marriage.

The physically unharmed survivors in this new post-apocalyptic society are kind of like the old society (TV still distracts with soccer games, music videos and stories about the latest fashions, like high heels for men) but now have very little use for religion. Vadim claims priests are merely another form of degenerate and chastises his servant for continuing to quote scripture. The new society has even gone so far as to drive the religious leaders underground. They now live among the degenerates. Still, the tourist holds strong about his own religious convictions and believes this journey is going to be a spiritual awakening for him; equating it to Jesus' sermon on the mount. With things being so grim and bleak, he needs something to believe in, as do the degenerates, who gather together during low tide to celebrate something called "The Feast of the Branches" where they burn "branches" (candles) despite being deathly afraid of fire.

After setting up the atmosphere, premise and characters (which takes a good hour), the film then opts to go the surreal-and-existential-and-"profound" route and it's difficult to make heads or tails of just what in the hell is going on half the time. The tourist sneaks into the reservation to visit the priests, attracting the attention of the degenerates in the process. After attending a party thrown by his hosts, he changes his mind about visiting the museum and attempts to go back to the city. Returning to an inn he visited in one of the earlier scenes, he suddenly loses it and freaks out about "The sorrow! The sorrow!" and being nothing but a "marionette", prompting the innkeeper's wife to suspect he's a covert degenerate himself. And then he's suddenly back at the weather station with the bickering couple.

A mob of candle-carrying degenerates (mostly played by people with real physical deformities and / or developmental disabilities) show up, capture him, pour some kind of milk or cream into his mouth and then carry him away on a board. He's taken back to their temple, where he's stripped, cleaned and dressed in a suit. There's lots of bell chimes, indecipherable chanting and people lining up just to touch him. He's paraded through the streets and then led into the (now receded) ocean bed where he finally sets out on his museum quest.

Any film that's artistically accomplished (as this certainly is with its impressive photography, lighting, colors, shot framing and art direction) and delves into topics like the environment, religion, how awful and irredeemable the human race is and the purpose of our existence (granted there is one) is going to be deemed a masterpiece by some viewers... but then there are those other people like me. As much as I enjoyed looking at this, and as much as I was captivated by the first half, it eventually devolves into a miserable, noisy, humorless and depressive screed whose sole purpose appears to be reminding us that, yes, we're doomed as a species and, yes, our lives may very well be completely meaningless. Nihilism masquerading as depth if you will. Is there really anything to gain from subjecting yourself to that? I suppose that depends entirely on the viewer.

A number of needlessly long sequences drag this all out to 129 sometimes grueling minutes. The last half hour consists mostly of the tourist endlessly wandering around in the sand, in the water and through the ruins of a city praying to God, crying to God, pleading to God, screaming to God and then just plain screaming in frustrated agony as his questions are never answered by God. While much of that makes sense in the context of the rest of the film, it's histrionic, endlessly drawn out and not exactly pleasant (or all that entertaining) to sit through. That's capped off with a long unbroken shot of the man looking through a window opening and closing his mouth like a guppy and then a five minute long unbroken shot of him, back to the camera, slowly lurching through a field until he finally falls over. Thanks to the red tinting, it ends up being a striking final image nonetheless.

A co-production between the Soviet Union, West Germany and Switzerland, this won several awards at the Moscow International Film Festival but has sparked little interest elsewhere. The director was a production assistant on Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker (1979), which was an obvious influence, and also made the (even more depressing if you can believe it!) post apocalyptic drama Dead Man's Letters (1986).

★★1/2