Khrustalyov, My Car!

Moscow, 1953. Stalin is dying and the purge known as the doctors' plot is under way in the city; Jewish physicians are being arrested. General Klensky runs a military hospital, is a brain surgeon, loud, drinking, and believes himself untouchable. One day they come for him. He runs, is caught, and after what happens in the back of a truck learns that he is needed once more: Stalin is on his deathbed. Aleksei German directs. The language is unusual. The camera moves constantly inside crowds, people talk over each other, unexpected faces enter the frame, and no scene is built to convey information. The viewer is left inside the events without being briefed. The image is entirely black and white and almost always crowded; the interiors are packed with objects and there is no room to breathe. That sense of blockage is what the film is actually about. It took over a decade to finish and was shown in competition at the 1998 Cannes film festival. The screening is remembered as a disaster; people walked out and it won nothing. Its standing changed completely in the following years and it is now held to be among the most important Russian films of its period. Who it is for: viewers who take on difficult art cinema and hard films about Soviet history. Who it is not for: it is very hard to follow, the scenes go unexplained, the violence is heavy, and the film makes nothing easy at any point.