Starring Yuliya Solntseva, Igor Ilyinsky and Nikolai Tsereteli
Produced by Mezhrabpom-Rus
Engineer Los is a good Soviet. He believes in the cause. And thanks to a mysterious message he is convinced emanated from Mars, he is building a spaceship.
Los and his wife Natasha are compelled to take on Ehrlich as a tenant by the government. Ehrlich longs for the good old days when he had plenty. Living in a society that rations food is cramping his style. So, he works the black market to procure luxuries like sugar.
Ehrlich gets the attention of Natasha through chocolates and other forbidden goods. One day, Los comes home and catches his wife being affectionate with Ehrlich. He loses it and shoots his wife.
Los moves outside Moscow and adopts the persona of Spiridinov, a colleague of Los who could be his twin save for a beard and shaggier hair. He works feverishly to complete his rocket ship.
Through it all, the mysterious Queen Aelita is watching Los from Mars through a telescope designed by a Martian scientist. She catches a glimpse of the scientist and immediately falls in love. The emperor of Mars Tuskub prohibits her from looking through the device, but she sneaks a peek whenever she can.
Los and Aelita are destined to meet of course. Will it be love at first sight for the alien and the human? Can Los help Aelita overthrow the totalitarian Martian ruler? And if she succeeds, will she be a better ruler?
Aelita, Queen of Mars is the first Soviet science fiction film. It's sci-fi, but it is also an historical account of early Soviet life, a melodrama and a propaganda film. So how was it?
Absurd. Silly. And half of it is a lot of fun.
The overall story is the weakest link. The first half of the movie focuses primarily on the day-to-day existence of the denizens of Moscow and it's pretty boring. The same themes are repeated over and over. Los looks ineffectual as his wife falls for the profiteer Ehrlich. The guy's not much of a hero to center the film around and any heroic notions you have about him evaporate when he pulls a gun and shoots his wife.
From that moment on though, the movie is goofy fun, particularly for a modern audience. Los disguises himself and finishes construction of the rocket. An idealistic soldier named Gusev gets married to a nurse, but is quickly bored and signs onto the mission to go to Mars. How does he do this? He walks into the warehouse where they are building the rocket and asks to go. Moments later he's professing to his wife how excited he is to go to Mars tomorrow. Goofy fun.
Meanwhile, an inept police non-detective (they never really explain what he is) named Kravtsov investigates the murder of Natasha. He does this by having a dog sniff a glove at Los' home in Moscow and then follows the animal directly to the rocketship and the disguised Los. More goofy fun.
The ship takes off with some impressive-for-their-time special effects. There are miniatures and other slight of hand that sell the experience. Obviously, today we know that three guys building a rocket in the country and taking a day trip to the next planet over is patently silly, but that only adds to the charm and fun of it.
The martian society is under-developed on screen, but is interesting in its own right. There is an upper ruling class and a lower worker class. The worker class wear dehumanizing boxes on their head. At one point, the emperor decrees that a third of the workers shall be frozen. We get a striking image of workers entering a revolving door-like machine that spits out their lifeless bodies on a conveyor belt. The bodies are stacked in piles underground. Crazy ideas and imagery, but the director doesn't dwell on them much.
We also see one of the first tropes of many a science fiction film: the assembly of the spaceship crew. Let's see, you have the scientist, the muscle and the comic relief. How many times have we seen that combo in movies over time?
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| Can you find the Soviet symbolism hidden in this frame? |
The mix of melodrama and sci-fi never quite congeal to provide a coherent tale or point. The plot ultimately lurches from point to seemingly-contradictory-point. The final images of the film call into question everything that came before. If it's propaganda, doesn't the epilogue eliminate the point of the battle and struggle on Mars?
In the end, it does not really matter as long as you go for the ride and don't think too hard. The final half of the Aelita, Queen of Mars is cinematic junk food wrapped in sci-fi candy shell. The propaganda? That's just a slightly bitter aftertaste.
*** out of *****
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