Hard to Be a God is such a singular anomaly that it���s tempting to suspend any value judgment. I felt as much overwhelmed, oppressed, exhausted by it as bewitched, and I wonder how many viewers its genuinely hermetic brilliance will connect with. But to consider it a failed experiment, or a quixotic folly, would be meaningless because the film works on terms that are entirely its own: if it resembles anything at all, it���s the uncategorizable, uncanny extraterrestrial artifacts left behind on Earth by the alien visitors in the Strugatskys��� Roadside Picnic. Or I���d compare it to the later ���novels��� (if such they are) of C��line, unstemmable cascades of malediction and polemic that set their own terms of engagement with such belligerent force that it makes no sense at all to compare them to the novel in any of its known incarnations. As much as any film can just be, German���s film just is, and has to be marveled at���or rejected���on its own terms. Boil it down, though, and it can be seen to carry one simple message: it may be hard to be a god, but it���s hell to be human.

Jonathan Romney on German's Hard to be a God