User reviews

This film was shown on the closing night of the Russian Film Symposium at Pittsburgh Filmmakers screening room, which was the ideal venue for such a film. This is the director's first major film and has been hailed as inaugurating a new period in Post-Soviet Russian filmmaking. As such, of course, its depths are scarcely perceptible without some knowledge of the Soviet past.

A writer presents his manuscript to a publishing house, which rejects it. One by one, however, members of the editorial board retrieve the manuscript from the waste basket, each reading a different one of the four short stories, which they endow with the physical details of their imaginations. Thus the film as a whole creates a novel in the mind of the viewer through visual details and unexpected juxtapositions. There is a good deal of humor, with a deeply ironic Russian edge.

The movie consists of multiple pieces connected by an external episode in a nontrivial way. The best what I have seen in this movie are the wonderful picture with nice color palette, beautiful design of scenes, original plot which makes a viewer to watch the movie despite it's big length, and, of course, ideas which are rerely met in the modern movies, but which are important for contemporary society. In whole, the movie operates with original techniques and methods of representation which I have not seen in other products so, primarily because of that, I am giving to the movie such a high mark. The worst what I have seen are some nuances of plot which I would not include in movie or would prefer to be different. The highest concentration of them locates in the last and penultimate stories - I am not agree with creators and would build these episodes upon slightly another ideas, however, what is connected with other moments of the stories is very nice - if you will enjoy the thoughts which the creators are trying to initiate in your head - you will be more than satisfied (as far as I can see). As a result, we've got a very good movie, the only weak sides of which lie in weak ideas, some of them are not so important and contemporary as others.

"Short Stories" is the most successful and famous film of Mikhail Segal - a new name in Russian cinema. 4 unusual and ironic stories that make up the film, as 4 exact sections about the modern life of Russia.

The film has deep thoughts that you can only know with age. I strongly advise watching the younger generation. Perhaps the moments from the technical point of view are not ideal, but here the story and the hidden meaning can change your life (change your priorities)