Strana Oz (2015) Reviews

• The epitome of tragicomedy : makes you want to laugh at all the inappropriate moments

  TardyGrade2016-05-07

  This is hands down the best tragicomedy I've seen for the past couple of years : the stuff that happens on the screen would be terribly depressing if it wasn't so funny. From the start, I should say that this movie is not for people who get easily offended by obscenities. Also, I'm not sure whether the non-Russian-speaking audience will fully enjoy the movie : it depends on how well the dialogues are translated. ----- SPOILER ALERT ---- The storyline loosely follows that of the Wizard of Oz : Dorothy being Lena Shabadinova, a taciturn and somewhat naive girl who arrives in the city of Ekaterinburg from a small village. She's found a job selling cigarettes, alcohol and snacks from a kiosk for 15 000 roubles a month (which is more than twice her salary in the village). Her first shift is due to start on the New Year's eve, except she doesn't know how to find the Torforezov street where the kiosk is situated. On her quest to find it, she goes through a series of awkward, bizarre and dangerous encounters, first with "the Scarecrow" who has no brain, then with "the Tin Woodman" who has no heart (and who accidentally leaves Lena his dog that I'd say is the same breed as Toto), then the Cowardly Lion (who is a progressive but pervy man by night and an oppressed and despised husband by day), and finally a "witch" who is not really evil herself, but has a vicious family. After all the mishaps, Lena doesn't quite say "There's no place like home", but seems determined to return to her village. Meanwhile, Lena's colleague whom she's supposed to replace at the kiosk (played by Andrey Ilenkov, the co-writer of the script) keeps waiting for her there. He is accompanied by his friend Duke, a dodgy character who looks like he's just returned from prison. The two men drink, engage in comic quasi-philosophical (bordering absurdity) discussions and just pass the time, until Duke descends into delirium and destroys the kiosk. --- END OF SPOILER ALERT --- Overall, I'd say the movie is a biting , if somewhat surreal, satire on contemporary Russian society, and will definitely not leave you indifferent.

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• Not a "tragicomedy"

  boogavenezuela2016-08-31

  Certainly, a major deviation from the kvas-patriotic drivel aiming at the unwashed masses. In fact, a quite plausible depiction of the said masses. Would be funny, if it weren't cutting too close to comfort. Bewildering snapshot of 'Russia today'. However, redemption is perhaps sometimes found even amidst this bleak landscape - one just has to stumble upon a yellow brick road, which is ultimately not yellow, not brick, and more of a maze than a road to anywhere. A fitting epitome of daily living in Russia, especially outside of Moscow or St. Pete. As grotesque as some characters may be - and some of the vignettes are oddly focused on corpophilia - they are still not too far from reality, which, on one hand adds to the credibility of the plot lines, but on the other throws in an additional dollop of gray and black to the already dark backdrop.

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• An awful trend

  acmd-180-2431922016-01-01

  Meh, and here I was expecting to finally see a decent Russian black comedy. For starters, it's not even funny. There are almost no jokes except for those shown in the trailer, and we get to see them all again in the first ten minutes of the movie. After that the comedy ends, and we're in the land of laboured attempts at "chernuha"(noir+trash). My disgust is still fresh from watching "Gorko!" — a blunt and tasteless grotesque depicting some non-existent modern Russian reality. But wait, sophisticated film critic might say, couldn't you just see through the intentionally hyperbolized characters and filth? It's only your narrow- mindedness if you're a pharisee who winces at cursing, and also there's this "allegory from the media knowledge database" and that "recurring literary theme". However, I don't think that juggling random references is a decent way to make neither a movie nor a review. Chernuha's scenarist is supposed to take the trouble to observe and conceptualize negative stereotypes of society for their further magnification and critique. So, to succeed, he must perform a subtle analysis and have an exquisite sense of reality, right? That's totally not the case with "Strana Oz", where scenarists just picked random crap for the sake of showing it. Why? Because there's an ongoing trend in Russia of ignoring reality while getting a twisted pleasure from segregating yourself from abstract common folk. Oh, mind you, I'm not a jingo nor a defeatist and liked "Leviathan". The thing is, that kind of random crap isn't funny at all, it's depressing. Remember, we're talking about the movie labeled as a "Comedy" here. It's ironic - while those critics speculate about allusions instead of thinking, it's clear that the target audience for the movie is rather marginalized: take for instance the joke about "World of tanks" game or a weird cliché soup of which a bard character consists. He's afraid of everything, so let's make him a fan of Stephen King because... well, he's a master of horror! Or maybe because he's very popular and everyone should have a snobbish friend who likes him, right? Oh, and he also supports Navalny, who is obviously... uh, well, everyone knows that he's up to no good, right? Anyway, look - he just ejaculated on the dog, ha-ha-ha! The only satisfying finale would be if every single character ended up dead, but we're presented with an idiotic morale that there's no way to stay sane in Russia without a light-hearted sense of humor and seeing a tragicomedy in any situation. Well, that's deep, considering that the previous one and a half hours you were supposed to laugh at the characters saying "idi nahuy". This movie's a waste of time and a f-cking disgrace to everything which is beautiful.

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• It's Alright To Be A Loser

  jeeap2018-05-31

  Whatch this movie if you don't know what Misanthropy is. The scriptwriter will tell you a thing or two about that )) It's funny though. Not even a black humor, it's much deeper in color. The main character, Lena, represents a person who attracts problems like a magnet while drifting through her life. She is aware of that and she is ok with that. You'll also see a lot of freaks helping or confronting her, most of them are with jaw dropping habits.

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