Short Stories (2012) User Reviews

Creating a novel on film

[plamya-1 · 8/10 · 5 May 2013]

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.

Partly distorted overview of the modern life

[zeionara · 8/10 · 8 February 2019]

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.

Segal's Tales

[Zhorzhik-Morzhik · 10/10 · 8 March 2020]

"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.

This film changed my life

[kumantsovaa · 10/10 · 8 May 2018]

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)

Could have been much better

[gergelyh-15596 · 5/10 · 27 December 2015]

The author of the plot summary says "The manuscript stays at the office and mysteriously influences the lives of anyone who opens it and reads at least one page. There are four stories in the manuscript, and four readers whose lives are changed after reading them." Well, that would have been much more interesting but I did not see this in the actual movie -- I wonder if "Anonymous" has read the book this is based on? What we really see can be explained by the employees reading one short story each and imagining what they read with themselves in the main role. This is especially more believable in case of story no. 3, where the old office assistant lady re-emerges as a head librarian somewhere in the country far from Moscow, this change could hardly happen in the limited future still ahead of her .

The first story really balances between reality (a slightly and satirically distorted one) and supernatural, as the pretty ordinary, very snobbish wedding planner suddenly grows into demonic proportions - - but surprisingly still gets "normal" reactions from the others. This is good, rather Bulgakovian but regretfully never surpassed or even completed by the other three stories.

The second one is somewhat down-to-earth, about corruption in all levels of Russian life (including the highest one), well-made and often funny but breaks the atmosphere of the film as a whole. So does the third one about the librarian lady who receives a benevolent psychic power from the poems of Pushkin -- this is not more than a too-fantastic idea, "Twilight Zone" style (albeit professionally filmed). And the last one, a cliché story in which a middle-aged guy (Mr. Editor-in-chief himself) realizes that his too good to be true affair with a girl in her early twenties is not so great after all and learns to appreciate all the knowledge women of his age possess. This is not well-made at all, the girl being an unbelievable character (beautiful, young and upper-class but behaving very cheap, with low self-esteem and without really using her feminine powers). 100% male fantasy and the execution is more tired than hot.

So this film made me expect something great but left me unsatisfied in the end (and did I mention this ends with really awful Russian rap?) but I still expect better ones from the obviously very talented director.