The Soviet made KIN-DZA-DZA! (1986) is one of the world’s major science fiction films, regardless of whether the world knows about it or not. The magnum opus of the late Soviet-Georgian director Georgiy Daneliya (1930-2019), whose life and career were so impacted by KIN-DZA-DZA! he was moved to remake it in animated form, the film continues to cast a wholly distinct spell nearly forty years after its inception.
Daneliya directed nearly a dozen features prior to KIN-DZA-DZA!, including THIRTY THREE/Tridtsat tri (1965), which was banned for over a decade by the KGB for its alleged “anti-Soviet” leanings. About an unassuming factory worker (Evgeniy Leonov) who becomes a celebrity after his dentist discovers he has 33 teeth, THIRTY THREE offered a potent harbinger of what was to come in its superbly calibrated sense of surreal absurdity (and was, incidentally, one of the two controversial dental-themed Soviet comedies released in 1965, the other being Elem Klimov’s ADVENTURES OF A DENTIST/Pokhozhdeniya zubnogo vracha).
By the mid-1980s Daneliya had achieved a privileged status in the Soviet film industry, with the sharpness of THIRTY THREE giving way to the more cautious state-sanctioned likes of THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN/Sovsem propashchiy (1972) and AUTUMN MARATHON/Osenniy marafon (1979). His fairy tale themed hit TEARS WERE FALLING/Slyozy kapali (1983) demonstrated a preference for the odd and fantastic that reached its apotheosis three years later, in KIN-DZA-DZA!
Featured is the middle-aged businessman Vladimir Nikolayevich Mashkov (Stanislav Lyubshin), who upon leaving his apartment to buy bread meets up with the music student Gedevan Alexandrovich Alexidze (Levan Gabriadze) on the streets of Moscow. There they come into contact with an odd individual who claims to be an extraterrestrial, and who transports Mashkov and Alexidze to the planet Plyuk in the Kin-Dza-Dza galaxy (which Mashkov initially mistakes for “a capitalist country”). The protagonists attempt to find their way back to Earth, and in so doing meet all manner of eccentric Plyukians.
This civilization (whose ranks include a character played by THIRTY THREE’s Evgeniy Leonov) is advanced in many respects, with wondrous flying machines and the mastering of interstellar travel, but quite primitive in most others. Their world takes the form of a vast desert (it was filmed in the Karakum Desert in Turkmenistan) in which all non-essential elements have been turned into sand; foremost among the essential elements are matches, which the protagonists use for barter.
Language has likewise been filtered down. “Ku!,” which has multiple meanings, is the most prevalent of the few words used by these weirdies (a full glossary of their terminology can be found here), who further express themselves by bobbing up and down and wearing nose rings with tiny bells attached.
KIN-DZA-DZA!’s various components add up to a visionary triumph, pulled off with conviction and imaginative brilliance. It ultimately plays like, as one prominent critic has stated, “Mad Max meets Monty Python by way of Tarkovsky,” yet it’s undeniably disjointed and, at 135 minutes, protracted, with an ending that drags on far longer than necessary.
The filming was reportedly so beset with difficulties Daneliya has suggested the aliens he depicted didn’t want to be filmed. There were also threats of censorship due to the fact that the oft-used word “Ku” was believed to be a disparaging reference to Communist Party leader Konstantin Ustinovich (or K.U.) Chernenko (whose 1985 demise concluded the issue). Topping off the negatives, the film’s Russian theatrical bow was unsuccessful, and it went MIA in much of the rest of the world (including the US). Yet KIN-DZA-DZA! has accrued a following that in volume and enthusiasm far outstrips those of Daneliya’s previous efforts (and, for that matter, most 1980s-era Soviet films).
So iconic is the film that a 2010 Russian made documentary about Daneliya was titled THE MAN FROM PLANET KIN-DZA-DZA/Chelovek s planety Kin-Dza-Dza. Comprised of the expected talking head interviews and film clips, the whole thing is pretty trite (actress Inna Churikova claims “He has a keen sense of life”), although Daneliya’s story turns out to be a fairly interesting one, and the account about the making of KIN-DZA-DZA! quite absorbing.
THE MAN FROM PLANET KIN-DZA-DZA concludes with the revelation that Daneliya was working on an animated remake of KIN-DZA-DZA!, a monumental undertaking that was completed in 2013. KU! KIN-DZA-DZA! turned out to be a faithful redo, with a pair of mismatched men once again being plucked off the streets of Moscow, and finding themselves on a distant planet whose inhabitants (looking far more alien-like that those of the previous film) have a preference for the word “Ku!”
KU! KIN-DZA-DZA!, unfortunately, turned out to be the last film directed by Georgiy Daneliya, who in his final days was beset by health problems and reportedly became quite reclusive. We can, at least, rest assured that in 1986 Daneliya created a true masterpiece for the ages, a film whose brilliance has yet to wane, and whose oddities and enigmas are still being sorted out.