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Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Hard to Be a God is playing on Mubi in the Us through January 2.Hard to Be a GodRussian director Aleksei German spent the final 15 years of his life working on Hard To Be A God (2013), a brutal medieval epic adapted from a 1964 novel of the same name by Arkady and Boris Strutgatsky, dying just before he could complete the job in February 2013. Happily, his son and widow were able to oversee the final sound mix. The result is one of the most immersive and harrowing cinematic experiences going, three hours of being put to the sword and mired in the mud, blood and viscera of a nightmare alternate reality.Although German's characters are dressed in the clanking armour, chainmail and robes of the European Middle Ages, Hard To Be A God is in fact set on a distant planet,...

Stars: Leonid Yarmolnik, Gali Abaydulov, Yuriy Ashikhmin, Remigijus Bilinskas, Aleksandr Chutko, Valeriy Boltyshev, Evgeniy Gerchakov, Yuriy Tsurilo | Written by Aleksei German, Svetlana Karmalita | Directed by Aleksei German

Cinema is often described as an experience; it can be emotionally draining and even an endurance. Hard to be a God (Trudno byt bogom) is one such film, and at three hours long it takes some watching; but for fans of cinema, it is worth every minute of it…

A group of scientists are sent to the planet Arkanar to aid it though the medieval phase of its history. Not permitted to interfere violently they are forbidden from killing. When one of the Scientists Rumata (Leonid Yarmolnik) tries to save the local intellectuals from being executed, he is finally pushed into action. Put into the position of a God, Rumata ponders what he can do, knowing the whole time that his actions are...