I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Blistering performances.

I saw this film when it first came out and never after that. I miss it, and remember it because of the sense of suffocation that the juxtaposition of lighting, images, rhythms and situations drapes over you. I remember the deep sense of ungraspable, inescapable tragedy conveyed as the Stalinist persecution closes in on members of the Trotsky circle, and Zina's own psychological encirclement, isolation and descent, which of course mirrored that of her father as he neared his own assassination. It was a superb film, and Graziano's Tarkovskian air helped in no small measure. But to appreciate the film you actually have to know something about history and politics, and better still, the evolution of socialism after the rise of Stalin. If you don't, and I'm afraid that is the case with the overwhelming majority of American viewers, you are unlikely to understand what is going on.

an excellent film (with just some little historical errors about Prof. Kronfeld, the perhaps most important and well-known psychotherapist in berlin at this time, who died himself by common suicide with his wife in his exile in Moscow on October, 16. 1941:

McMullen's art of photographing and blending scenes into each other is incredible. I've never seen a similar way to create a dreamlike atmosphere or to build up tension when showing only two people talking. Of course, no mainstream bull**** can compete. But it requires concentration - I saw it many times, but it is still not easy. You want to know the contents? Me too! Some parts are about a daughter trying to understand her important father. But maybe understanding takes place between the lines and is not obvious. Forget "Octopussy" as recommandation - it's bull****, like every James Bond. Check out "Ghost Dance" instead, by McMullen, too.

This film is an idiosyncratic and striking meditation on the links between the personal and political realms, between history and the promptings of the individual psyche. Only the surrealists have attempted this kind of synthesis before, albeit in very different terms. The film's impeccable anti-stalinist politics act as a timely corrective to those who believe that socialism died with the collapse of the Berlin wall. If you're interested in socialism, psychoanalysis or political history, this film is essential viewing. You'll never see another film like it!