the first big budget film from soviet russia, it tells a rather simple story of an engineer who dreams of aelita, the queen of mars. unable to bear life without her, he builds a spaceship to take him to mars, and into the arms of his beloved. fortunately for him, queen aelita has coincidentally been using her new telescope to check him out on earth. upon arrival, he naturally gets caught up in a martian proletarian uprising, started by the queen herself. the revolution is a success and the M-USSR is born. though the film was intended as piece of propaganda, protazanov was attacked for creating a work of "western-style escapism, commercialism and ideological compromise." still, any film that depicts how love and a workers' revolution can save the day is all right. a must see for sci-fi marxists.
