Reception
The Inhabited Island was met with mixed reviews. Most praised the film for being surprisingly faithful to the novel. Some praised the film's visual effects, while others criticized the work of director and editor. Mir Fantastiki review called the film a "chaotic mash of visual, dramatical and musical components, each of which separately has quite high quality". "The movie scatters into a mosaic of spectacular images, that don't comprise the consistent image of the world", agrees Total DVD
The film was a relative commercial failure. Despite grossing around $30 million from two parts summarily and ranking among the top-grossing films of Russia's modern cinema, it didn't repay its budget of $36 mln. The movie was released on DVD very shortly after it exited theatres, in the hope of covering the debt.
Boris Strugatsky, the only one of the book's co-authors who lived to see the film, said the film is a "directors' success", noting its faithfulness to the novel. He praised the work of Serebryakov (Strannik), Bondarchuk (Umnik) and Garmash (Zef), but expressed disappointment over the work of Kutsenko (Vepr'), Mikhalkova (Ordi Tader) and Merzlikin (Funk). He noted Stepanov as one of the biggest success of the film, saying that "Maxim Kammerer is exactly as we imagined him".
Read more about this topic: The Inhabited Island
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)