Vel'd
Entry updated 16 February 2017. Tagged: Film.
Film (1987; vt The Veldt). Uzbekfilm. Directed by Nazim Tulyakhodzhaev. Written by Tulyakhodzhaev, based on stories by Ray Bradbury. Cast includes Igor Beliayev, Georgy Gegechkori and Nelly Pshonnaya. 90 minutes. Colour.
The second attempt by a talented Uzbek director to transfer the mood of Bradbury's Gothic prose onto the screen proved not so successful as the first, the short animated movie There Will Come Soft Rains (1982), had done. This full-length feature is a poetic adaptation of several Bradbury stories, such as "The Garbage Collector" (October 1953 The Nation), "Hail and Farewell" (29 March 1953 Today) and "The Dragon" (August 1955 Esquire), along with some episodes from Dandelion Wine (1957), all combined into a single, if rather dissolving, plot, for which the title story, "The Veldt" (23 September 1950 Saturday Evening Post as "The World the Children Made"; in The Illustrated Man, coll 1951), serves as a bar or pivot. The baroque atmosphere evoked by the unique Bradbury mixture of horror, pathos and sentimentality is well maintained, and visually some episodes are excellent. But the director's lack of feeling for narrative or plot means that he does not create a main focus for the film; it is as if he has forgotten what he wished to say. However, it still stands as a good example of the new Soviet horror film. [VG]
see also: Russia.
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