The feral and the heavily metallic vie for dominance in this extraordinary assault on the senses, the year's most transfixingly baffling movie – which, among other things, purports to reveal the meaninglessness of the number 4.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2005
4 2004
The feral and the heavily metallic vie for dominance in this extraordinary assault on the senses, the year's most transfixingly baffling movie – which, among other things, purports to reveal the meaninglessness of the number 4. “A product of the Russian necrorealist movement – self-consciously inflammatory underground art, film and video that symbolises (or feasts on) the putrefying corpse of the Soviet state – the synopsis-proof 4 is a howling orgy of decrepitude and decay… The film traipses… from the rusting industrialised wastelands of Moscow and a spookily depopulated bar into some deep damp woods where a formidable band of toothless crones writhes in the throes of a Dionysiac mourning party. An incomparably unhinged act of disinterment, 4 is also a fiercely willed feat of rebirth, raw and bloody, screamingly alive.” — Jessica Winter, Cinema Scope
“Seriously weird… its bawdy comedy, bravura sound design and uncanny atmosphere will turn on audiences with a taste for deeply oddball fare.” — Leslie Felperin, Variety