… Lopushansky follows the novel’s lead. He doesn’t just scare the viewers with an invasion of aliens,
but like the director Andrei Tarkovsky, he raises existential questions.
He asks what we should do with children who have grown so far from their parents that they’ve begun to frighten them.
He immerses the viewers in an expressive world of sounds and images – the pale,
unemotional and unsmiling faces of the little boys and girls; the black skies constantly pouring down rain;
the black raincoats – as black as the mummified faces of the Aquatters; and the celestial music.
Society and its institutions usually respond to real or imaginary threats with violence.
In contrast to the more optimistic novel, this is what happens in the film.
In the work by the Strugatsky brothers, the Aquatters run from the city when the sun comes out,
dissolving the city walls as the new world is born. Lopushansky is more skeptical.
He doesn’t have a happy ending in his film, but he does leave hope that our children,
no matter what they are like, will be better than us ...

LINKS

• Konstantin Lopushansky
• THE UGLY SWANS

Viktor Matizen, Novye Izvestiya, October 2006