Hard To Be A God - Sunday 24th January 4:30pm

Our film on Sunday, Hard to be a God – at 4.30pm, almost defies description. You can tell how difficult it is when the reviewers clutch at comparators to try and give a flavour of what you are going to see.  Breughel, Bosch, Kafka and Monty Python and the Holy Grail all featured, although the latter comparison had nothing to do with humour.

All agreed that this is a true cinematic experience – a world perpetually locked in the Middle Ages:  "a world beset with tyranny and factional wars between groups called 'Blacks' and 'Greys'. In the midst of this, what looks like an imperious baronial chieftain called Don Rumata, played by Leonid Yarmolnik, walks with relative impunity: this sovereignty is based on his claim to be descended from a god." – Peter Bradshaw

Roger Ebert seems to agree:

"not only an unforgettable individual masterpiece but probably one of the capital-G Great Films. You’ll need a strong stomach and another kind of endurance to sit through it, as it’s nearly three hours long and is more than a little oblique in its approach to narrative ...... but once it is over you know you’ve really had an experience. An experience very different from watching an average or even a very good conventional film."