Hard to be a God (2015) A difficult, dirty, violent epic of a swansong (Review)

The world feels like a brutal, unsentimental place after watching Aleksei German’s final film, not least when I had the following realisation: Hard to be a God’s ceaseless, grotesque phantasmagoria of cruelty makes German the only director who could possibly adapt Cormac McCarthy’s classic novel Blood Meridian. But now he’s dead, passed away before post-production could finish on a project that had been in his life since his native Russia was the Soviet Union.

Hard to be a God is already becoming legendary for its protracted shoot, but this is more than just amusing trivia. Like Fitzcarraldo, understanding the pressures of making the film will help you understand why the finished movie is such a singular work. It is based on a novel by the Strugatsky brothers, whose Roadside Picnic was adapted by Andrei Tarkovsky as Stalker (another gruelling shoot, there). It had previously been adapted as a Soviet-West German co-production by Peter Fleischmann, which the Strugatskys were unhappy with. They felt that their novel, which was inspired by their memories of Stalin’s purges, should have been made by a Russian director, and lobbied to give Aleksei German the job. After Fleischmann’s version came out in 1989, a slow process began where the rights were transferred to German, who began his six-year shoot in 2000.

The glacial pace of production maybe explains why the finished artefact feels so timeless. During the process of getting the rights back, German might have looked at news footage of Haiti, or Rwanda, or Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Syria, and felt like he was seeing dispatches from Arkanar. Arkanar, the alien city where Hard to be a God is set, is a Medieval swamp, a place of constant nihilistic violence. It makes George RR Martin’s Westeros look like an acceptable holiday destination, and yet there are some humans here, including the movie’s protagonist, Don Rumata.

Rumata, it is explained in an opening voiceover that constitutes the movie’s only exposition, has attained his noble title because he is thought to be the descendant of an ancient god. There have been other human explorers in Arkanar before him, and indeed there are some now, mostly wandering the wilderness, babbling insanely about their memories of Earth. Earlier ones, perhaps, were more open about Arkanar’s potential, and have paid the price. The planet Arkanar is part of mirrors Earth exactly, except it is stuck in the Middle Ages. The implication is that the earlier explorers let it slip that if this cosmic rhyming continued, they would enjoy a Renaissance soon. For some reason, it hasn’t happened, and Arkanar’s society has dissolved into a chain of violent retribution against intellectuals and aliens who have colluded in the lie of progress.

Arkanar’s people are sometimes amusing – they refer to their intellectuals as “smart-arses” and have an odd prejudice against “gingernuts”, suggesting that red hair may have been brought to their planet from Earth. Most of the time, though, they’re terrifying, and Don Rumata hangs on to his position through matching their violence. Given that his apparent mission involves protecting victims of Arkanar’s purges, this is an odd tactic, and German leaves it deliberately unclear whether Rumata is merely operating in deep, deep, deep cover or whether Arkanar has given him an excuse to loose some latent sadism within himself. The third act – the third hour – includes some of the grisliest sights in recent art cinema, many of which are perpetrated by Rumata.

Interrogating a man he is sentencing to death, Rumata asks if the prisoner is arrogant enough to give advice to a god. The prisoner says he would advise a god to punish only the strong, to remind them that they’re not omnipotent. He then says that any strong people who died during this process would be replaced by the strongest of the weak, suggesting that the process of oppression would simply start up again. For much of the movie, German holds out little hope that the cycle of violence can break, though there is a cryptic coda – again, so reminiscent of Blood Meridian – which suggests something of the humans’ better instincts might have made it through into Arkanar culture.

For all the violence, despair and truly stomach-churning imagery German offers, his film is also intensely beautiful, shot in long mobile takes in a focus deep enough to turn Orson Welles green with envy. The frame teems with details, and his wide-angle lenses seem to strain at the seams to keep it all in. German’s visuals are radical and unforgettable, so much so that his bag of tricks will surely be raided by lesser talents, so it’s worth reminding yourself that it’s not just empty flash. Every unusual aspect in German’s direction is a response to the Strugatskys’ story, none more so than the strange moments when characters appear to look directly into the camera.

At first, I wondered if Rumata had brought a camera with him, or if the camera was meant to represent another character’s POV. Then it hit me. Like the scenes where objects joltingly pass straight in front of the camera lens from outside its field of vision, German is reminding us that there is space, and there are people and objects, behind the camera. We’re not standing back at a safe distance looking at the scene playing out. Like Don Rumata, we are straight in the middle of this frighteningly volatile situation, scurrying around, trying to find a way out.

I had wondered before seeing it whether the acclaim meted out to Hard to Be a God was sentimental; that it is the kind of big arthouse beast that critics love, and which so rarely comes around any more. But it doesn’t need it. Even people who find it repellent would have to admit that German’s final film is a truly singular piece of work, a forceful and thoroughly imagined vision of hell. There is nothing like it, and without German in the world, there may never be anything like it ever again.

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