Visitor of a Museum (1989) User Reviews

Konstantin Lopushansky's "red" film

[jrd_73 · 8/10 · 2 September 2012]

In Letters from a Dead Man director Konstantin Lopushanksy tinted much of the background yellow. In A Vistor to a Museum, the director applies a red tint to much of the film. The end result is often hypnotic. A traveler arrives at a hellish outpost in the Russian landscape. This wasteland is where the rest of the country sends its garbage. Mountains of trash are piled high. The surrounding ocean is dead, the result of chemical waste. Somewhere in the horizon mutants, called "degenerates," reside on a reservation. The local tavern lights fires at night (more red) to keep the degenerates away. The traveler has come to visit a flooded museum. For one week a year, the tide departs and one can walk the ocean floor. The visitor plans to travel the three days to the museum and the three days back during this period of no tide. The locals think he is crazy, but the visitor must make this journey. He is searching for a mound inside the museum that is rumored to be a portal to another world.

Andrei Tarkovsy fans may note the similarity to Stalker. Like in that film, the protagonist lives a depressing existence and only has his faith in a rumor, a legend, to keep him going. A Visitor to a Museum is good but not as good as Stalker (incidentally, one of my favorite films). Konstantin Lopushansky worked on the crew of Stalker and he is trying to direct this film as Tarkovsky might have. The difference is that Lopushansky is a gifted, intellectually minded stylist while Tarkovsky was a true poet of the cinema, one of the medium's great voices.

To his credit, Lopushanksy conjures up some amazing images. My personal favorite is the degenerates carrying the visitor to the water's edge. I also loved the landscape shots which, like Stalker, convey a world off-kilter. The last shot is also very memorable. The director is less successful with telling his story. That last shot, visually stunning though it is, leaves the viewer unsure of what to take away from the film. The entire final half-hour (the journey across the ocean floor) is ambiguous. Something life changing happens to the visitor toward the end of the film, but I was not exactly sure what it was. What did the ending mean? Got me!

Despite its ambiguity, A Visitor to a Museum grabbed me. I felt like this was one of the most rewarding science fiction films I had seen in some time, a film that created a distinct and unique world. My mind is still replaying some of this images from the film two weeks after viewing. I shake my head thinking of all the films that are forgotten as soon as their end credits roll.

Let us out

[juan_palmero2010 · 6/10 · 17 May 2020]

Made in 1989, a few years after Dead Man's Letter, this film contains some similarities: a post-apocalyptic world where civilisation has collapsed, in this case because of ecological catastrophe. The ecological catastrophe is the result of man's careless treatment and overexploitation of nature. All that remains is a barren landscape (not a tree to be seen), pollution and lots of rubbish.

Like the earlier film, it is shot with a very limited colour gamma, mostly dark reds and blacks. I found it easier to see the point of Dead Man's Letters. The Museum Visitor has several very powerful scenes, but it is harder to se it as a coherent whole.

The film's hero is a "tourist" who travels to see a museum that can only be reached when the seas part. He is one of the few human left who still keep the old attitude and way of thinking. More numerous are some kind of mutants or idiots (most indeed played by people with real disabilities) who live in reservations in some kind of permanent religious exaltation. Normal, intelligent humans are sceptical atheists, and keep the idiots away, inter alia by lighting fires on their windowsills. However, even the normal world has been turned upside down, and thus for example the new fashion dictates that men wear high heels and tights. An old man at an inn asks the tourist to close his eyes and open the scriptures at random and point at a paragraph. But nobody is able any longer to understand the meaning of the scriptures. The world is too far gone, too close to the end to be able to appeal to any gods.

While trying to reach the museum, the "tourist" undergoes a profound deep transformation and ends up on his own via crucis.

I would hesitate before recommending this very tough, depressing film, except to those who have enjoyed other films by the same director.

When the world ends, seek God-but he might not be looking for you.

[marshalskrieg · 7/10 · 5 June 2022]

Stunning yet overwhelmingly bleak cinematography sets the mood for this post apocalyptic tale. We see a ruined world, from which a seeker emerges- he wants to explore a museum that is normally underwater. In the end we find that we are dealing with a strange yet weirdly appropriate theology, yet our would be prophet or liberator is probably just a madman, mad with a god-induced delirium? Or is it really just that the world has lost its collective mind and the protagonist is merely trying to cope ? It is hard to understand exactly what the director is trying to say in this one,. You get the Tarkovsky vibe throughout but I think this film is more 'dark' than what Mr. T usually made. ( Director Lopushansky studied under the great Mr. T ) The final 25 minutes are some of the most emotionally stirring scenes in film history; however, there does need to be some editing done here and there to trim down the movie a bit, to make it more compact and accessible.

Tarkovsky's disciple

[allenrogerj · 20 August 2011]

Konstantin Lopushansky worked with Tarkovsky, and it shows, in plot, setting and characterisation. Unfortunately- in this film at least- he deals with similar themes, but is no where hear as good as Tarkovsky. Sometime in the near future a catastrophe-not just ecological- the plot rests on low tide lasting seven days- means that 40% of children are born with genetic deformities. They are called "degenerates" and are played by genuinely disabled people. They are put in "reservations". There is also a mysterious museum, possibly containing lost knowledge, accessible only at low tide, which the central character wants to visit. First the good points: there are some beautiful shots, though Lopushansky seems to enjoy them for too long, and the power of the newly-risen sea is well-conveyed. However, the film's defects outweigh its virtues. Firat of all, we are told too much- in Stalker, we know hardly anything of the world outside the Zone, here we know so much that we need to know more because of it- we learn about fashion: high heels are worn by men, for example- but we don't even know how the population feeds itself and the "degenerates". We know the museum is significant, but we don't know why- indeed, in the end, the museum is a Maguffin, a simple plot device. Most of all, though, the characters just aren't convincing and their personalities change according to the plot's requirements. In the end, the central character is just another Holy Fool, driven mad by mysterious forces and we just don't care.

Touch of underrated cinema

[vausham · 10/10 · 28 July 2012]

This is one of the most intellect provoking movie I have ever seen. The central theme is a post-apocalyptic world in which 40% of population is degenerate. There is a ancient city drowned in sea, around which a small town is built. The protagonist is a tourist who came to see that city in a time of low tide which lasts for 7 days. However, the path to that city is cumbersome and many people actually drown during the visit. Movie progresses forward in many directions in which the protagonist has interests and inquiry in. The outcome and the final end to the story is not important, the journey and the thinking is.

The thing that I like about the movie is the eerie atmosphere it has created in the movie. The movie literally crawls inside your skin, till you can feel it totally. After that it changes to a kind of realization of worthlessness of life. Which in my point of view is the major idea that was developed using the various interactions, conversations and haunting memories created.

Throughout the movie I was overwhelming with thoughts and feelings. Which is very rare cinematic experience. Its a rare ride that moves along in a experimental, specific to minute details world. The ride leaves you thirsty for salvation.

Watch it if you appreciate the environment created by long scenes and non-verbal communicative atmosphere. As always, not for normal movie goer..

Strange but interesting

[Jeremy_Urquhart · 7/10 · 7 March 2023]

Based on the few things I'd read about A Visitor to a Museum, I expected something quite different from what I ended up getting. It's generally described as a bleak post-apocalyptic movie set after a catastrophic environmental disaster on a global scale, and that much is true.

The premise is also said to be about a man who sets out on a mission to visit an old museum that's now underwater, and only accessible for short periods of time when the tide is super low. That plus the title made me think a lot of this film would be the main character visiting an old, decrepit museum that's who knows how old, but that isn't a big part of the movie.

I guess what the film's going for is still fairly engaging, but definitely not as intriguing. It mostly revolves around the main character being torn between the two factions that this dystopian society has been divided into, and that can be an interesting conflict for sure.

The film has plenty to say about then state of the world, how people treat each other, religious beliefs, and what could happen after a world-ending disaster. It's got an oppressively bleak atmosphere and there's usually something interesting to look at or think about, but it is quite slow-moving in parts.

I'm a little disappointed it's not what I expected, but also having that expectation is on me in the end. I think this is still pretty good for what it is, even if it's more about post-apocalyptic societal division than a strange Russian museum tour. At least there's always Russian Ark for the latter.

Excellent film

[mv275 · 10/10 · 15 May 2004]

I've seen it once on a festival, at the time it came out, and I was impressed. Would love to see it again, but it doesen't seem to be published in the western Europe.

I don't remember much of it nowdays, but the main idea was that there is a forgotten underwater museum somewhere in the sea!

So the main characters go in search for it. There are a lot of horrific scenes with a great number of real mentally retarded people, and it takes some bravery to watch it, but, at the end the film can be compared to the ones of Tarkovsky.

death of the material world

[oksanasinner · 8/10 · 21 November 2019]

The visuals are amazing, the themes in it are interesting and relevant in many ways. However, this one was a bit too preachy and overstretched for my taste. This film isn't subtle by any means and sometimes even crosses over to the horror genre.

Amazing shots, but in need of a trim

[peefyn · 4/10 · 25 July 2015]

This movie has some amazing shots. The ending scene of the movie is breathtaking, I can't see how he planned for that - but I know he must have. The same goes for the rest of the movie, what a production! Big crowds of people in one scene, big heaps of junk in the next. The room with the stormy waters outside in one scene, and barren landscape outside later on. I can only imagine the amount of work put into making this movie look like it does.

So that's one thing. I'm having difficulties thinking of other things I liked with the movie. Some of the sequences drag on for way too long without really adding anything to the movie (as far as I can tell). I must admit that I'm not entirely sure what Lopushanskiy is trying to do or say in this movie. I guess it can be seen in light of communism and parts of the communists regimes. The elites being anti religion, and the people treated badly. But the religious aspect of it also brings my mind to Judaism. God's chosen people treated like animals. Maybe I'm being too specific, and he is trying to say something about man in general. But is it a message of hope? Or hopelessness? The movie was not able to hold my interest in the plot, and so I also lose interest in whatever message it is trying to convey.

That said, it's worth watching for the visuals alone, and I'm sure other's will find more in the plot than I did. Maybe it helps knowing more about the context in which the movie was made?

Post-apoc strangeness

[BandSAboutMovies · 5/10 · 6 April 2021]

After an ecological disaster, our planet has been divided and decimated into survivors and mutant degenerates. There also exists the rumor of a museum that has all of the information of the past that can only be found when the tides are at their lowest.

Directed by Konstantin Lopushanskiy, this is one of the few examples of Russian post-apocalyptic film that I can think of. It's also one of the bleakest ones I've ever seen, a movie that establishes a soul-crushing mood from the first frame and only getting rougher from there.

So about that museum. There's only one day a year when the tides are low enough to walk along the ocean floor to visit the place where information still exists and humanity still has part of its soul. Perhaps there's something more inside that place. There could be a portal that leads to another - and better - world away from this burned-out hell.

This isn't one of those fun end of the world movies, but that doesn't mean that you should skip it.