Kin-dza-dza! is a 1986 Soviet film directed by Georgiy Daneliya, and written by him and Revaz Gabriadze. A dystopian science fiction black comedy, it stars Stanislav Lyubshin, Levan Gabriadze, Yury Yakoviev, and Yevgeny Leonov.

In 2016, the British movie magazine, Little White Lies, described Kin-dza-dza! as a cross between Mad Max, Monty Python, and Tarkovsky, saying the film is still relevant. The same year, Russia Beyond said that Russians still love the film. Three years earlier, an animated remake of the film was done by Daneliya, called Ku! Kin-dza-dza! The cartoon won Best Animated Feature Film in the 2013 Asia Pacific Screen Awards.

Here is a link to quotes from the film in English translation, and here‘s a link to the complete film with English subtitles.

I see this film as not only relevant for our times, but also prophetic in how the planet Pluke, in the Kin-dza-dza galaxy–to which the Russian and Georgian protagonists, respectively Vladimir Mashkov, or Uncle Vova (Lyubshin), and Gedevan Alexandrovitch Alexidze, or the Fiddler (Gabriadze), are teleported–is representative of the capitalist world, as contrasted with the Soviet world from which the two originate.

Now, as of the making and release of Kin-dza-dza!, which had been achieved by December of 1986, Mikhael Gorbachev had not yet implemented his policies of perestroika and glasnost as an attempt to put an end to the ongoing economic stagnation that had begun during the Brezhnev years; but he had spoken of the two reform concepts in his report to the 27th Congress of the Communist Party, which occurred from late February to early March that same year.

Gorbachev had given a speech the previous year about the slowing economy, and the perestroika reforms that would come by the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s included the return of “free market” economics and private property. When Yeltsin took over, not only were these reforms all the more aggressively and brutally implemented, plunging millions of Russians–hitherto used to a planned economy that had provided for their basic needs–into poverty, but attempts to resist the reforms were ruthlessly suppressed.

I bring up this history to show how the film can be seen to have predicted, in allegorical form, the economic and political disaster that the bringing back of capitalism would cause. Despite the economic problems that the Soviet Union was undoubtedly going through in the mid-1980s, most Russians wanted to keep the Soviet system intact; indeed, majorities of Russians since the dissolution of the USSR have consistently said that life was happier then than it’s been since the return of capitalism, and a referendum had been held in 1991, the results of which said that the majority of Russians had wanted to keep the Soviet system.

So, when Russians in the mid-1980s were hearing Gorbachev’s talk of economic, market reforms, the instincts of many of them must have been warning them of the danger of his reactionary talk. Recall Stalin’s words in this connection: “What would happen if capital succeeded in smashing the Republic of Soviets? There would set in an era of the blackest reaction in all the capitalist and colonial countries, the working class and the oppressed peoples would be seized by the throat, the positions of international communism would be lost.” 

Such is the political background in which we should understand what Kin-dza-dza! is trying to say to us. Uncle Vova’s thoughtless tapping of a button on the teleportation device of the barefoot, alien stranger is like Gorbachev and his followers foolishly allowing themselves to be influenced by the Western capitalists and bringing about the “new world order” that has led to all of our economic and political problems today. For it is that very pressing of the random button on the teleportation device that sends Uncle Vova and the Fiddler from the city centre on Kalinin Prospect in Moscow to the dystopian, desert wasteland of planet Pluke, with its glaring class inequalities.

The story begins with Uncle Vova returning home from work as a construction foreman. He chats with his wife, Lucya (played by Galina Daneliya-Yurkova), about mundane troubles at work. She asks him to go out and buy some bread and noodles, which she earlier forgot to buy, so he goes out to do that.

He arrives at the city square to buy he food, and there he meets the Fiddler, who tells him about the unshod alien traveler with the teleportation device. What should be noted is that, up until our two protagonists’ unwitting teleportation to Pluke, that the world we see around them, Moscow, is a perfectly normal society, without Pluke’s deprivation. Furthermore, the alien traveler, barefoot, scruffy, and as lost as a fish out of water, makes one think of a homeless man, which is fitting given that, as an outsider to the Soviet Union, he is representative of the capitalist world.

Now, the sight of our two protagonists stuck in a strange desert, actually a desert planet, reminds me of R2-D2 and C-3PO on Tatooine. The arrival of Uef (Leonov) and Bi (Yakoviev) in their flying vehicle suggests the Jawas, though these latter two have little, if anything, in common with the short, hooded droid thieves.

I’m not saying that the filmmakers intended these similarities with the early scenes of the first Star Wars movie, but the coincidental parallels between Pluke and Tatooine are meaningful in how they illustrate that the two desolate, desert planets are reflective of how capitalism sucks the life out of a place’s ecology. On Tatooine, Luke helps his uncle and aunt use moisture vaporators to produce water; on Pluke, fuel is called “luts,” and it’s made from water, so drinking water is a rare and valuable commodity.

The two droids unwittingly land on Tatooine to escape from the Galactic Empire, and they’re chased by imperial stormtroopers. Uncle Vova and the Fiddler have been thrust upon Pluke, and they’ll have to deal with the planet’s “ecilopps” (police, spelled backwards), whose bullying nature reminds one of the skeletally-armoured stormtroopers (after all, ACAB). Not yet knowing where he and his Georgian friend are, Uncle Vova comments that they must be in “a capitalist country” when they meet Uef and Bi for the first time, seeing the two Pluke inhabitants do their customary squatting and opening-out of their arms in an act of obeisance to say “ku” (“good”).

This act of obeisance is the first of many signs of a society structured around class lines, hence Uncle Vova’s assumption that it’s “a capitalist country” is not far off the mark. Money, known on Pluke as “chatls,” is hard to come by (note how chatl sounds virtually identical to chattel).

There are two kinds of people who live on Pluke–Chatlainians, and Patsaks; Uef is one of the former, and Bi is one of the latter. A hand-held device called a “visator” determines which of the two kinds of people you are: an orange dot of light on the visator indicates a Chatlainian, or a person of higher social status; green indicates a lower-status Patsak, of whom Uncle Vova and the Fiddler are also determined to be by the visator. Our two Earth visitors consider this discrimination to be outrageously racist; but had they all been on a Patsak-dominated planet, the Chatlainian/Patsak discrimination would have been reversed.

Uncle Vova and the Fiddler are hoping for a ride in Uef’s and Bi’s vehicle, and they offer some of their things (coats, a hat) in exchange for it, since they lack money, chatls in particular. But Uef and Bi begin to fly away in their vehicle without our two protagonists, until Uncle Vova uses a match to light a cigarette, making Uef and Bi want to return. We learn that matches, called “ketse” on Pluke, are among the most valued of commodities.

Since the society of Pluke is a dystopian one, it’s interesting to note that it, as being also a capitalist one, has a number of things in common with the society as depicted in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. The people of Pluke have a limited vocabulary, typically saying “ku” for whatever is good, or saying “kyu,” a mild swear-word for whatever is bad. These two words, as well as such words as have already been discussed above, make up the bulk of their vocabulary. Similarly, in Orwell’s dystopia, the development of Newspeak involved eliminating words in order to limit thought, including ideas potentially dangerous to the Party, such thoughts as being revolutionary. (On Pluke, though, this limited vocabulary seems unnecessary as such, for a plot device in the film gives the planet’s inhabitants telepathic abilities that, conveniently, allow them to converse in Russian and Georgian with our two protagonists!)

Furthermore, where the world of Orwell’s hell is led by Big Brother, a mysterious figure we never directly encounter in the story and who, for all we know, may not even exist, the leader of Pluke, named “Mr. P-Zh,” or “PG” (played by Nikolai Garo), is harmless and simple-minded, as it turns out. The film thus seems to be predicting such incompetent, ineffectual heads of state as Biden.

Now, such comparisons to Nineteen Eighty-Four are useful, since many in the capitalist West would dismiss Kin-dza-dza! as mere Soviet propaganda, while conveniently ignoring Orwell’s novel, as well as the deluge of such things as late twentieth-century Western movies, like Rocky IV, as blatant Cold War anti-communist propaganda. Western propaganda is “the truth,” apparently, not Eastern. How convenient.

That something as mundane and non-extraordinary as “ketse,” or match-like sticks, are among the most valuable commodities on Pluke is a satiric comment on the absurdity of our slavery to pieces of paper that, in essence, are IOUs. Furthermore, “luts,” fuel made from water, which makes drinking water so valuable, sounds like a comment on the petrodollar, as well as one on the ruthless destruction of the environment for the sake of profiting off of fossil fuels. In a fully communist society, there would be products as use values without exchange for money.

Uncle Vova and the Fiddler, however, have no choice but to exchange commodities–their ketse–with Uef and Bi if the former pair are to get the help of the latter pair to get back to Earth. Our protagonists try to exchange ketse for drinking water from some people who run off with the ketse, cheating them.

Uncle Vova and the Fiddler eventually get the idea to perform music in order to earn chatls. Though he’s referred to as “the Fiddler,” he doesn’t actually play the violin he carries around with hm. He was originally trying to find the violinist who’d forgotten to take his instrument when leaving. When the two perform their music, it’s actually Uncle Vova who ends up playing the violin…worse than a child violinist with no ear for music at all. In the Fiddler-as-non-fiddler, we see a satiric comment on Marx’s theory of the alienation of the worker from his labour.

The song that the two men sing, which sounds like some simple Russian folk song of some sort, includes such lines as, “Mama, Mama, what is to be done?” as well as “Winter is no fun,” “I don’t have a coat to keep warm,” and “How shall I live?” The song is all about a needy child asking his Mama for help, like a proletarian making a clamour about his needs.

The performing is typically done in small cages, or, on one occasion, on one’s knees, which should tell you something. The worker struggling to make enough to survive is, essentially, putting on an absurd performance, being an actor trying to please those who pay him, a wage slave caged in the world of capitalism, brought down to his knees. And the acting is all fake, and often it’s not performed very well, as we see of Uncle Vova and his scraping violin bow and his and the Fiddler’s bad singing. The alienation referred to above is enough to explain the poor, insincere ‘performances’ of the working class.

A physical indicator of lowly Patsak status is the wearing of a small nose-bell called a “tsak.” (Note in this connection that “Patsak” is backwards for “katsap,” a derogatory term for a Russian.) Bi would have Uncle Vova and the Fiddler each clip a tsak on his nose, which the two of course do with the utmost reluctance. The wearing of a tsak looks like the film’s commentary on the Nazis making the Jews wear the Yellow Badge, or German gay men wear the pink triangle.

Another indicator of class differences on Pluke is the wearing of differently colored pants: yellow, pink, etc. Uef covets them because, if he can wear those of the higher social classes, Patsaks and Chatlanians will have to do the “Ku!” squat of obeisance for him, the ecilopps can’t beat him up, etc. These colored pants are a social commentary on one’s preoccupation with social status as attained through high fashion.

At one point in the story, when Uef and Bi have enough ketse in their vehicle to buy what they need to get to Earth, they fly away and leave Uncle Vova and the Fiddler with nothing in return. Furious, our protagonists want to send the ecilopps after the two cheats; but they don’t have forty chatls to pay the ecilopps, so Uncle Vova lies that Uef and Bi failed to “ku” in obeisance to P-Zh’s image.

In these acts of dishonesty, we see how a world where money talks results in alienation. When Uef and Bi are apprehended, though, Uncle Vova quickly repents of his false accusation and hopes Uef and Bi won’t be imprisoned, which is particularly unpleasant, since instead of being put in a cell, they are locked up in a small metal box with barely enough room to hold the two of them inside. Given the dreadful state of prison life in the US, especially now, when corporations make practical slaves of the inmates, whose population outnumbers that of the Gulag (and even the CIA back then acknowledged that Gulag conditions weren’t anywhere near as bad as Western propaganda portrays them), we can see Pluke’s form of imprisonment as a comment on life in prison in a capitalist country.

Uncle Vova and the Fiddler are reunited with the barefoot alien they first met on Earth, the one with the teleportation device; he gives our two heroes a chance to return home immediately. Uncle Vova, however, feels guilty about causing Uef and Bi to be incarcerated, and he wants to pass up his chance to go back to Earth in order to help those two unfortunate ones.

Even though Uef and Bi double-crossed Uncle Vova and the Fiddler and made them wear those ridiculous bells on their noses, our two heroes want to help them, even to the point of giving up their chance to go home. While the capitalist world of Pluke teaches selfishness and alienation, leading to Uef’s and Bi’s double-crossing, the socialist world of the Soviet Union taught selflessness and solidarity. Though Kin-dza-dza! might be considered Soviet propaganda, it doesn’t teach its viewers to loathe and despise the citizens of capitalist societies (it may portray them as buffoonish and silly, but Uncle Vova and the Fiddler have their own foibles, too). In contrast, consider the malevolent scowls you see, for example, on the faces of Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren), his wife (Brigitte Nielsen), and his trainer and promoter (Michael Pataki) in Rocky IV.

Indeed, Uncle Vova and the Fiddler postponing their return to Earth–even returning to Pluke after a brief trip to other planets on the way home, and going back in time–to rescue Uef and Bi both from their incarceration, and later their fate on planet Alpha to be turned into plants is a kind of selflessness that would remind one of that of the bodhisattva, who postpones entering nirvana upon attaining Buddhahood and returns to samsara to help all other living beings, however unenlightened they may be, to attain nirvana together, a liberation for the entire Earth. Such is the selflessness of the true socialist, who would ultimately share liberation from capitalism with the whole world, not just hog it in his own country.

The planet Alpha is an interesting topic in itself. The people of Alpha have a method of dealing with Uef and Bi–whom they consider miscreants–that may seem cruel (turning them into cacti). Still, since Uef and Bi are governed by “vile desires,” rather like those of us caught up in samsara, then perhaps being transformed into plants, without human sense perceptions and the pain associated with them, is a kind of nirvana for them.

That buffoonish pair might be best left not to decide their own fate (as Uncle Vova would have it), since if left to do so, they’d choose foolishly; still, bodhisattva Vova would leave the nirvana of Alpha and postpone his return to the Pure Land, so to speak, of the USSR and help those two Pluke bumpkins.

After going back in time and back to Pluke, and helping those two, Uncle Vova and the Fiddler reunite with the barefoot man and his teleportation device, and our two heroes finally get sent back to Moscow. We see a repeat of the beginning of the movie, as if their time on Pluke never happened: Uncle Vova comes home from work again, and his wife sends him out to buy groceries.

Back in that city square, he meets with the Fiddler again, but the latter doesn’t tell the former about the barefoot alien this time, because he isn’t there. Our two protagonists don’t even recognize each other: it’s as if they’d never met, let alone got stranded in the Kin-dza-dza galaxy. As we soon learn, though, what happened is really just a repressed memory.

They see a tractor with a flashing orange light pass by. This triggers their by-now-instinctive attitude of submission to the Chatlainian colour, and the two men do their “ku” squat of obeisance.

Their return to the socialist world of the Soviet Union does not render them immune to the classism of the capitalist world as represented by Pluke. This is why reactionary instincts must be guarded against; old attitudes have a way of coming back if we aren’t careful. Just recall how those former Soviets became Russian oligarchs.

Still, one good thing has come from Uncle Vova’s and the Fiddler’s relapse: they now recognize each other, and exchange smiles like good old friends. Uncle Vova then looks up at the sky and hears the voices of Uef and Bi saying “ku” and singing the “Mama” song. They feel united, if only in spirit, with their Chatlainian and Patsak friends once again. Whatever good or ill may happen to us, being reunited with friends is above all else in importance.