What a waste of my time!!!

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

A clash between the old and the new world. Can children be educated in a better way when removed from their parents, and taught to be more logical, cleverer, more reasonable, not to repeat mistakes that go back thousands of years? Can perfection be attained given the right conditions?Fairly loose but good adaptation of "Ugly Swans", a novel by the Strugatsky brothers. No surprise if you are reminded of Tarkovsky's Stalker, because Stalker is also based on a story by the same Strugatsky brothers (Picnic by the Roadside). What follows is a fairly detailed description of the film. Though I am not telling how the film ends, you may not want to read all of this. Victor Banev, a fashionable writer, is part of a small UN mission going to Tashlinsk, a closed, quarantined city controlled by the military where mokretsy ("the wet ones", usually translated into English either as "Aquatters" or "Slimies") live together with normal humans, and have a say on who is allowed into the city. An important reason for his going there is see his teenage daughter Irma, who is being educated by the Mokretsy in an isolated boarding school for gifted children, with little or no contact with their parents. Children are there out of their choice, simply because what the mokretsy offer them is more interesting than what their parents and tradition has to offer. And this is mostly education, new values, breaking with bad old habits and with half-wasted lives. The Mokretsy are surrounded by mystery, unpleasant to look at. They are some sort of mutants, or people with some degenerative or genetic disease. But they have some supernatural powers and are more intelligent than normal people.Although they have lived together for many years, some humans feel threatened by the mokretsy, who have done nothing blatantly wrong. In fact, some humans believe that mokretsy are humans that have contracted a disease, like lepers. Because of this fear, most humans want to wipe the mokretsy out, even if human children under their custody have to go as well. Action to destroy the mokretsy develops quickly after the arrival of Victor Banev in the forbidden city. One of the key scenes in the film (as in the novel) is when Victor Banev is invited to the boarding school, where his daughter is being educated by the mokretsy. Banev is accustomed to speaking in public, but the gifted children do not make it easy for him. They are not interested in what he wants to tell them (mostly about his literary work, which they dismiss), but ask simple yet difficult to answer philosophical questions, about the future, how to deal with people who do wrong things, etc. Banev regains some ground and accuses them of wanting to dismiss and leave behind the old world, and of being cruel, like previous generations. So, he tells the children something like "You are very bright, but if you are going to be cruel, like in the past, who needs you?" In this way, Banev is an anti-hero (more so in the novel than in the film) and the story may be regarded as an anti-utopia. Another key moment in the film is Irma's recorded message to her father, about the way children see their elders' world. Banev hesitates whether to support normal people who want to do away with the mokretsy, or to support the mutants. He soon has to make a choice because the city is being evacuated and the mokretsy are going to be exterminated by chemical attack using military planes.In my opinion, Lopushanky manages to convey the book's atmosphere quite well. And this is a particular, fairly oppressive atmosphere: it rains from beginning to end, because the mokretsy control the weather, change the light (a permanent red light) and so on. Ending the film on a much more pessimistic note than the novel is the director's own right (perhaps more in keeping with the times?). A thoroughly recommendable film.

This beautiful, small budget film plays like a tribute to Tarkovsky's films(shakuhachi music and dripping water), but it is more conversational and quite direct in its message, which isn't simplistic, for all that directness. That message rings true these days as much as it did when the novel was written. Has the world become dangerously, insidiously pedestrian and banal? Have we squandered our potential utterly? The spirit of the film, the whole tone of it, is alienating - we cease to trust ourselves a little bit while watching it. It is a fairly short film too, it doesn't tax the viewer in that way, although it will challenge viewers. The Strugatsky brothers are my favorite Russian authors, and this film does, above all else, capture the spirit of their book, as well as can be expected. I sure would like to find it on DVD.

After the storm of "Globalization" and quick growing of "multiplex"theaters with their overwhelming taste-unifying power, Konstantin Lopushansky remains to be one of the most consistent and humanistic author-filmmakers. His films have always dealt with serious problems threatening human civilization. Global climate change after nuclear war and ecological catastrophe("Lettes from a Dead man" and "Visitor of a Museum"),people's indifference to children's fate and utter powerlessness of contemporary intelligentsiya in the moment of social destruction("Russian Symphoy").Based on a novel of Strugatsky brothers, "Ugly Swans" shows a new step of Lopushansky's filmography. It is far more easy for ordinary film-goers for watching and understanding than previous works,because in "Ugly Swans" author's own intonation is deliberately concealed under the mask of "popular genre". Author's discourse here is near to that of rather anonymous storyteller, as that of Strugatsky brothers. The story is rather simple. It's of a tragic and desperate trial of Father-writer,representing the conscience of old generations and old civilization, to save his teenage daughter,who has passed through intellectual evolution with other teenagers and become superior,because they now are treated as a threat to the old human being and their civilization. Conservative people are trying to destroy the threat for human being. Children themselves don't want to return to the old world. They are living in some kind of supernatural ZONE,where they are taught by mutated adults called "Mokrytsy(wet people). Father can rescue children,including his own daughter,but outer world is found to be fatal for her in spiritual sense. Apparently, it's a allegory of contemporary cultural crisis embodied mainly by mass medias, which force new generations to stop their intellectual and spiritual development. As far as I know,previously Russian critics often blamed Lopushansky for his extreme seriousness and preachy approach to audience,but the situation seems to be changed after Lopuchansky's last work. And I heard that the Russian young audiences also saw it with sympathy in film-festivals and in Cinema Museum.Yes,after the global mode of excessive indulgence in "entertainment" and "blockbusters",at last the time has come for new generation to think their own fate reflected in "serious" films.

Unfortenetly i didn't read the book(by Strugatsky brothers)but i seem to get the idea- the humanity is in a very critical point of time and as always there are 2 options... I must admit i'm not a big fan of this idea (it seems that every one think that only our generation lives in a very unique time and all the others are not so interesting)but the wonderful filming-the superb camera work just makes you to feel the darkness, wetness and the agony the people in the film are in.So in my point of view if you looking for grate camera work like in "Mother &Son", "Stalker" and so on you're in the right place, and also if you lived in USSR there some unforgettable moments that could have happen only there!