| Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors | |
|---|---|
Soviet billboard theatrical poster of the film Nushrok, Abazh and Anidag trio (top) Olya and Yalo (bottom) |
|
| Directed by | Aleksandr Rou |
| Written by | Lev Arkadyev Vitali Gubarev |
| Starring | Olga Yukina Tatyana Yukina Andrei Fajt Arkadi Tsinman Lidiya Vertinskaya |
| Music by | Arkady Filippenko |
| Distributed by | Gorky Film Studio |
| Release date(s) | 1963 |
| Running time | 80 min |
| Country | Soviet Union |
| Language | Russian |
Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors (Russian: Королевство Кривых Зеркал, translit. Korolevstvo krivykh zerkal) is a 1964 Soviet fairy tale film directed by Aleksandr Rou based on a story with the same name by Vitali Gubarev.
In the end of 2007 the Russia TV filmed a musical remake - with the same name, featuring stars of Russian scene Nikolay Baskov and Alla Pugacheva. The original film contains introduction music and a fairytale style of the early 1960s. Although apropos for its time, it appears very odd and strange at this point in time, but, in a way, improves the experience.
Both the surreal story by Vladimir Gubarev, together with the 1964 film, written in a Through The Looking Glass style. Alice-type Soviet girl, named Olya (O. Yukina) meets her counterpart Yalo (T. Yukina), while looking into the mirror. Yalo is an absolute antipode to Olya, for example where Olya is precise and neat, Yalo is absent-minded, careless, etc. The explicit plot relates to Olya learning to see herself differently, but this occurs through an experience in the Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors which serves as a mechanism for commenting on the ability of a society to manufacture a false reality (propaganda against capitalism?).
The two girls find themselves on an adventure to save Gurd (backward reading for Drug, a friend), imprisoned for refusing to make crooked mirrors. He is jailed by the kingdom's evil forces, the trio Anidag (Gadina, meaning monster/reptile), Nushrok (Korshun, meaning kite) and Abazh (Zhaba, meaning toad).
They meet Aunt Askal ("Laska" literally translates as the act of caring, or weasel - a word play in Russian), The King's Chef, who helped them on their journey by hiding them and dressing them up as two pages of the King Yagupop the 77th (Popugay, meaning parrot). On meeting the king, the girls realise the extent of his stupidity, and discover who is really in charge (referring to capitalism?). The King's idiocy may suggest that such a system should be easy to dupe, at least from the inside, as the girls do.
Despite, Olya's bumbling mistakes, Gurd is saved, and evil is defeated. Olya returns to her grandmother and the kingdom's mirrors are not crooked any more, implying that it is now a free society.
The film can be interpreted in numerous ways depending upon the viewers own history and the timing of viewing, which clearly illustrates that we all live in our own Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors.