In praise of Kin-dza-dza! – the best sci-fi film you’ve nev­er heard of

Orig­i­nal­ly released in 1986, Georgiy Daneliya’s Kin-dza-dza! is pos­si­bly the most under­rat­ed sci­ence fic­tion film of the past 50 years. A Sovi­et space odyssey across an alien land­scape, it is packed with com­ic nuance and absur­dist charm, yet it is rarely screened or even seen out­side Rus­sia. With 2016 mark­ing its 30^th anniver­sary, this dead­pan odd­i­ty deserves a reap­praisal for its wit, imag­i­na­tion and stun­ning design.

The sto­ry begins with Vladimir, a Moscow con­struc­tion work­er, pop­ping out for some mac­a­roni. He is stopped in the street by Gede­van, a young stu­dent who needs help with a seem­ing­ly insane man claim­ing to be on the wrong plan­et. The man needs Earth’s coor­di­nates so he can use his tele­por­ta­tion device to go home. Impa­tient­ly humour­ing him, Vladimir press­es a but­ton on the device. Instant­ly, he and Gede­van are trans­port­ed to the desert plan­et Pluke in the galaxy of Kin-dza-dza.

Before long, they meet Bi and Wef, two wan­der­ing per­form­ers whose speech is large­ly lim­it­ed to the word ​‘koo’ or its vul­gar equiv­a­lent ​‘kyu’. The Earth­lings hag­gle over the terms of their res­cue, though the per­form­ers are loath to give some­thing for noth­ing. Just as the per­form­ers are about to leave, they notice that Vladimir has a box of match­es – one of the most valu­able com­modi­ties on Pluke. The four estab­lish a shaky alliance and set in off in a ram­shackle air­craft to find a way back to Earth. Vladimir and Gede­van dis­cov­er that the entire plan­et oper­ates on a ruth­less econ­o­my of scav­enger barter, and noth­ing is off lim­its to the mar­ket. The deserts were once seas, but the water was greed­i­ly con­vert­ed into engine fuel. Of course, now the only way to col­lect drink­ing water is to extract it back from that fuel.

Kin-dza-dza!’s sal­vage punk aes­thet­ic – which might best be described as Mad Max meets Mon­ty Python by way of Tarkovsky – hints at this rich, trag­ic and very stu­pid his­to­ry. A col­lapsed Fer­ris wheel pro­vides a home for des­ti­tute desert dwellers. Graves are marked by bal­loons con­tain­ing the deceased’s final breath. The colour of your trousers sig­ni­fies social sta­tus, so they are pow­er­ful barter items.

The planet’s inhab­i­tants are prim­i­tive in their hard­heart­ed­ness, yet they also fierce­ly insist upon main­tain­ing arbi­trary social con­ven­tions. Peo­ple are sep­a­rat­ed into two castes: ​“Chatlian” and ​“Pat­sak”. The sub­or­di­nate Pat­saks must wear bells on their noses and squat before Chatlians. The only way to deter­mine if an indi­vid­ual is a Pat­sak or a Chatlian is to see if a pur­pose-built machine emits a green or orange light when point­ed at them. The Earth­ling vis­i­tors decry this as racism of the most inane kind, but Pluka­ni­ans fail to see the prob­lem. When Bi asks with gen­uine puz­zle­ment how peo­ple on Earth deter­mine who is sub­servient to whom, Vladimir dry­ly responds, ​‘Oh, just by eye.’ Hear­ing this, Wef dis­miss­es Earth­lings as sav­ages. Advanced tech­nol­o­gy does not a civilised cul­ture make.

What ele­vates Kin-dza-dza! beyond a sim­ple pro­ces­sion of snipes is the care­ful atten­tion paid to count­less details with­in its alien world. Even Giya Kancheli’s com­ic score sounds like it’s from anoth­er world – an ungain­ly, melan­cholic dirge that con­jures up the hope­less baf­fle­ment of absur­dism. All of this rich world build­ing puts the film into a lit­er­ary branch of satir­i­cal sci-fi occu­pied by the likes of Kurt Von­negut, Dou­glas Adams, and even Franz Kaf­ka. There is no con­vo­lut­ed plot, but instead a con­vo­lut­ed uni­verse, and its incred­u­lous vic­tims ready to point out the far­ci­cal­i­ty there­in. They find a plan­et that demands a mix of cal­lous entre­pre­neur­ial savvy and fear­ful def­er­ence to the sta­tus quo famil­iar to any Earth­ling liv­ing in the 21^st century.

Kin-dza-dza!’s side­ways look at the bar­bar­i­ties of every­day oppres­sion remains per­ti­nent 30 years on. It’s a must-see for any­one inter­est­ed in the cos­mic poten­tials of sci­ence fiction.