Kin-dza-dza!

Saw Kin-dza-dza!, the film with the preemptive exclamation point. It's a Russian scifi comedy. It's scifi by way of Tarkovski: very slow, very oblique and strange. The plot here is two guys are warped to the planet Pluke where they must navigate the rigidly stratified social structure of the inhabitants. Initially, there's a bit of promise for clever comedy when one of the guys says, of the inter-dimensional teleporter, "well what do you know, the shitty gadget worked!" That's pretty funny, I think. Then a giant tin can sets down in front of them and two men come out, shouting "coo!" and gesticulating wildly. This scene goes on for about five minutes.

Tedious absurdity and slap-stick seem to be the source of much of the comedy. It's pretty dire. There's not much I can actually identify as funny. There's a period near the end of the film where someone wears a flashing light on his head for a long time. That's funny after a while, just in how absurd it is and how he doesn't just take off the damn flashing-light hat. There's also a running joke about how the word "coo" stands for every proper noun except for a very few (man, money, police, etc) That's a funny concept, but isn't so funny as to be included in the opening and closing credits (which happen over a pair of old men cooing like creepy doves.)

The extreme social stratification is an interesting thing to note in passing however. The communists were big on how racist, sexist, and class-ist the capitalists were. Under communism, because all people were equal, this was a thing of the past. Counter-intuitively, this ethic of equality only deprived victims of prejudice of any recourse (how can you claim your boss fired you because you're black? Don't you know there is no more racism?) Although this film was made after the collapse of communism, I wonder if we're seeing these echoes of race/class preoccupation play out?

So, socio-politics aside, this movie is not that funny. It is, however, hilarious if you imagine stern-faced old Russian men and women watching this film in a theater, bewildered at first but then nodding and blinking, confirming to each other that, yes, this is comedy. Extremely pure and efficient comedy. 100% comedy. Maybe 110% comedy? No. This is absurd. But yes, this is comedy.