I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

The "masterpiece of soviet cinema" turned out to be artificial and absurd all through its length. Boris Pasternak's translation of Shakespeare's text not only rendered the original meaningless but flattened and simplified it to the level of "simple soviet people's" understanding. In order to reach this goal, the text was also shaped in bureaucratese. All characters speak like chartered accountants, insurance agents, lawyers, or trade union activists. You constantly feel a sort of Spanish shame for actors, like you're watching a village culture club's amateur dramatics. Oleg Dal is especially bad. Apparently, actors simply didn't understand what they should, well, act, for the text itself was bad with its unpronounceable syntax, soviet clichés, and all falsity stemming from this. For the most part, the film is a sorry spectacle, filled with illogical dashings to and fro across the screen, for these massive crowd excursions are impossible to explain neither by common sense nor by strategy and tactics of the plot itself. Horses, too. In fact, one feels sorry for the poor beasts here more than for anyone else. At first, a herd of them runs across some takyr, apparently somewhere in soviet Middle Asia (pretending to be marshes and heather), and then, immediately, they are made to climb up the White Cliffs of Dover. Inexplainable.

William Shakespeare's King Lear is a medieval morality play that weaves a web of complexity and intrigue based on a misjudgment of character and a struggle for succession. Containing Shakespeare's favorite themes: succession, legitimacy, and bastardy, King Lear has some of the author's most elevated poetry. It is one of Shakespeare's most difficult plays and has been filmed only a handful of times. One of the best cinematic interpretations is that of Russian directors Grigori Kozintsev and Iosif Shapiro's 1971 film, King Lear (Korol Lir), based on a translation by novelist Boris Pasternak and propelled by a dramatic score by composer Dimitri Shostakovich and memorable images by cinematographer Jonas Gritsius.While Kozintsev does little to clarify the convoluted succession battles and internecine warfare, the overall effect is one of epic sweep and power, with the blindness of the leading protagonists being an apt metaphor in the Russian interpretation for oppressive feudal rule and its results on the downtrodden masses ("A generalized picture of a civilization heading towards doom", is how Kozintsev described his King Lear).At a royal banquet, an aging king of ancient Britain plans to vacate his throne and divide his kingdom equally among his three daughters, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia. Before he does this, he asks each daughter to tell him how much they love him. Both Goneril and Regan are effusive in their flattery but Cordelia is much less forthcoming, telling him that she loves him but has no words to describe her love. To that King Lear responds, "Nothing will come of nothing", and disowns Cordelia, leaving her without estate but still courted by the king of France. Sadly, Goneril and Regan both proceed to scheme against their father and each other until the wheel turns.In a sub-plot, an elderly nobleman named Gloucester is tricked by his illegitimate son Edmund into thinking that his legitimate son Edgar is out to kill him. Fleeing the manhunt that his father has set for him, Edgar disguises himself as a crazy beggar and heads out onto the heath in a driving thunderstorm. Lear yields completely to his rage against his daughters who have turned him out and, like Edgar, rushes out into the storm. When they meet, it will be on the Dover Cliffs where each awaits their fate.Kozintsev's Lear is filmed in black and white and set in a stark landscape of windswept moors and marshes, bare castles and wandering beggars. Kozintsev, a master Russian director and contemporary of Eisenstein, who had been making experimental films during the 1920s, assembled a cast of great actors for the project. King Lear is the thin, tall, gaunt-looking Estonian actor Yuri Yarvet who fully conveys Lear's power and his growing madness and despair. Also Leonhard Merzin and Regimantis Adomaitis as Edgar and Edmund, rival sons of the Duke of Gloucester perform admirably as does Karl Sebris as the Duke of Gloucester.Accolades must also be given to Oleg Dal as the Fool whose only job is to amuse the King but does so by telling him the truth, using songs and riddles like Feste in Twelfth Night. In a smaller role, Valentina Shendrikova excels as Cordelia. In one of the most touching scenes, "good son" Edgar, pretending to be the madman "Tom o' Bedlam" finds his now blinded father The Duke of Gloucester wandering on a heath in pain and leads him to the Dover cliffs where he walks him to the edge and allows his father to think he is committing suicide, but saves him in a scene of the utmost tenderness. In another memorable scene, after having been banished by both Goneril and Regan, Lear wanders with the Fool and Kent, a nobleman in disguise, on the moors in a vividly-imagined driving thunderstorm until he takes shelter in a hovel, only to find the disguised Edgar.As recounted by Kozintsev, "When Lear goes mad at the beginning of the storm scene, this is the beginning of an absolutely new relationship with nature. I try to illustrate with this landscape a country which is not bare, not cruel. I try to show Lear himself as a part of nature, in a field of flowers. His hair spreads like moss, the grey hair of nature. Once man is seen as a part of nature, the movement towards regeneration can begin. Cordelia too has her own landscape–sea and a very wide landscape–with waves and seagulls. All the important characters have their own atmosphere and there are relationships not just on the level of character but between different aspects of nature." Kozintsev's King Lear has the look and feel of an epic in the tradition of Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev, and though it has been given a Marxist slant, it is true to Shakespeare's vision. As the aging monarch confronts the wrongness of his own decision, he also realizes how little he has done to help others. "I've taken too little care of this", he laments as he confronts the suffering of his people. Faithfully accompanied by his shaven-headed Fool, Lear moves from a monarch blinded by his own arrogance in misjudging his children to a pitiful presence who finally discovers his own compassion and ultimately evokes ours.

When he was 6, my younger brother got a black and white video camera for Christmas. He spent a lot of time filming a lot of rubbish black and white videos. Korol Lir is structured to begin with, but then it ends up being fairly similar to one of these black and white videos. At least my brother's videos were in English though - but then, I guess I wouldn't have stayed awake through most of this film if I didn't have to read the subtitles.Do not bother seeing this film. You can achieve an equally entertaining experience by locking yourself in a darkened room for two hours and staring at the walls. And you could do that for free!

This version of King Lear is an incredible achievement due to the masterful adaptation from the Shakespeare original by one of the best Russian poets, writers, and translators of the last century, Boris Pasternak; elegant and powerful images by the cinematographer Jonas Gritsius (he also worked with Grigori Kozintsev on the earlier Shakespeare's adaptation, "Hamlet", 1964), the music of Dimity Shostakovich, and the great performances from all actors.Estonian actor Jüri Järvet is masterful as the mad king in a performance which is reminiscent of Kinski as another brilliant madman - Aguirre. They were even the same age when they played Aguirre and Lear. The whole cast is amazing: Kozintsev chose the best actors possible for his project and everyone delivers. I'd like to mention Oleg Dal as the touching Fool; Karl Sebris as the Duke of Gloucester, whose scenes with his son Edgar after having been blinded are very moving; Regimantas Adomaitis as Edmund, a treacherous son and brother but a brilliant man; and Donatas Banionis (who played the main character in Tarkovsky's Solaris) as an intelligent and noble Albany. But like I said, everyone and everything is just perfect in this little known but IMO, the Best adaptation of the beloved and one of the most wrenching tragedies in the English and in the world literature.