Zerograd

Varakin, an engineer sent from Moscow to a factory in the provinces, plans to finish the job and go back the same day. The factory secretary sits at her desk entirely naked and nobody notices. The director claims to know him. In the restaurant he is served a cake made in the shape of his own head, and when he will not eat it the chef kills himself. Varakin tries to leave the town and cannot. Karen Shakhnazarov directs. It was made in 1988, in the final years of the Soviet Union, and is built directly on the mood of that moment. Everyone in the town inhabits their own reality, nobody agrees with anybody about anything, and the official explanations contradict each other. A museum displays the local history and the entire exhibition is invented. The narrative is absurd but the film does not operate as comedy. Every scene looks reasonable, and the discomfort comes from that consistency. Shakhnazarov was among the directors able to work during glasnost, and this counts as one of the most openly political films made in that brief loosening of censorship. Who it is for: viewers who like late Soviet cinema and absurd narrative. Who it is not for: the film explains nothing and reaches no resolution, and most of the references are invisible if you do not know the period.