… Of course, the world’s finest minds have experienced such apocalyptic moods many times.
This is especially true of Russians, who tend to descend into a state of dreamy melancholy and who are at a loss in troubled times,
when other people use dirty methods to fight for their beliefs, and when they are helpless before the victorious march of evil.
When confronted by this, they begin to search for truth on the other side of reality.
There is no question that Lopushansky falls into this category of thinkers.
Through the pain of his own conscience, he laments that our efforts to cultivate our world – efforts that are patchy at best -
- have produced nothing but woeful consequences flickering in the distance.

… Such is the film director’s vision of the world, which he has meticulously created in each carefully calculated,
stylistically eloquent frame. Even if you don’t share the director’s views,
the world he has created on screen is convincing testimony to his artistic maturity.
He frightens the viewer with the story, but captivates him at the same with elegant images of color, shape and sound.
The world on screen is alive with sound: It sighs, moans, shudders and tenses, only to reappear in our meditations and dreams…

LINKS

• THE UGLY SWANS

Olga Surkova, 2006