This is a funny movie, provided that you enter the cinema with enough common sense to discern the stereotype and the historical falsification from the truth.
I mean, I know very little of Russian/Soviet history, but as soon as the plot involved Breznev sending hebrew russians into Gulags in 1980, my internal "historical falsification alarm" started ringing very loudly. I mean, I was 12 in 1980 and never heard of Gulags going on by then, (and I live in a NATO country).
I understand that the writer/director knows this too and takes for granted that it is such a blatant falsification that the audience will take it as a farce, but I am afraid that actually the average TV-brainwashed 20-year-old viewer with no critical sense will exit the cinema thinking: "see, my prime minister was right... communists were still eating babies not longer than 30 years ago".
Also you need to suspend your sense of disbilief.. I know little of how to play classical music but I guess that even if you take the best players in the world and have them play one piece without even having had a single rehearse before, the results would be terrible. Beside this, this is a funny movie with good acting and directing, and a wonderful piece of music at the end, I am going to listen to more Tchaikovsky in the future!
I mean, I know very little of Russian/Soviet history, but as soon as the plot involved Breznev sending hebrew russians into Gulags in 1980, my internal "historical falsification alarm" started ringing very loudly. I mean, I was 12 in 1980 and never heard of Gulags going on by then, (and I live in a NATO country).
I understand that the writer/director knows this too and takes for granted that it is such a blatant falsification that the audience will take it as a farce, but I am afraid that actually the average TV-brainwashed 20-year-old viewer with no critical sense will exit the cinema thinking: "see, my prime minister was right... communists were still eating babies not longer than 30 years ago".
Also you need to suspend your sense of disbilief.. I know little of how to play classical music but I guess that even if you take the best players in the world and have them play one piece without even having had a single rehearse before, the results would be terrible. Beside this, this is a funny movie with good acting and directing, and a wonderful piece of music at the end, I am going to listen to more Tchaikovsky in the future!