A Room and a Half

2009

2h 10m

Biography

Drama

Foreign

List

94%

Tomatometer

16 Reviews

72%

Audience Score

100+ Ratings

Semi-factual autobiography of Russian Joseph Brodsky who left the USSR in 1972. The film imagines him returning to St. Petersburg and contrasting it with the memories of wartime Leningrad.

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Derek Malcolm

London Evening Standard

[An] extraordinary kaleidoscope of a film...

Rated: 4/5

May 13, 2010

Full Review

Peter Bradshaw

Guardian

Part of the film's message is that we are all exiles -- banished, Housman-like, from the country of our past.

Rated: 4/5

May 7, 2010

Full Review

Jason Wood

Little White Lies

Room and a Half offers an inventive and intimate portrait both of a great artist and of the post-Second World War cultural world of the Soviet Union.

Rated: 4/4

May 6, 2010

Full Review

Simon Jablonski

Film4

A Room And A Half is a cinematic masterpiece that brings fresh ideas from a wise old head to the big screen.

Rated: 5/5

May 13, 2010

Full Review

David Parkinson

Radio Times

This is a beautifully produced, historically astute and hugely affecting movie.

Rated: 4/5

May 6, 2010

Full Review

Chris Cabin

Filmcritic.com

without Khrzhanovskiy's artful vitality, Brodsky's life, at the very least, would have looked a dreadful bore and A Room and a Half wouldn't be half as wise or entertaining as it is.

Rated: 3.5/5

Jan 28, 2010

Full Review

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Audience Member

A difficult one. We watched it because of the glowing review in the Guardian - but it took three sessions for us to get through the two hours of movie. It's mainly about Brodsky's relationship with his parents, and about being a Russian Jew in Stalinist Leningrad. The Sixties scenes were the most exciting - the War gets very little airtime here. Sadly the poetry is declaimed sonorously in Russian, and I couldn't get any appreciation of it via the English subtitles. The cartoony bits were fun and there are some nice comic touches. I think a Russian audience would get far more out of it than we did.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

02/14/23

Full Review

Audience Member

In terms of style this is an impressive piece of visual art, but it is not backed up by a subject matter that desperately requires some energy.

Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars

02/06/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Beautiful film, particularly moving and poignant.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

02/18/23

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Audience Member

A poetic and artistic movie...a kind of biography sketched with excerpts from the poets life...but concentrating on certain memories which is the essence of life for most of us,mainly our childhood and the 'Nest' as the poet likes to call it..loved the conversations with the parents lending a surreal feel and the cartoon depictions which formed an essence of his memories..humorous yet touching...I think a must watch for all..be patient and watch it through

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

02/27/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Maybe I needed to be familiar with Brodsky to get it.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

02/06/23

Full Review

Audience Member

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Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

02/22/23

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Andrey Khrzhanovskiy

Director

Alisa Freyndlikh

Mother

Sergey Yurskiy

Father

Grigoriy Dityatkovskiy

Joseph Brodsky

Artyom Smola

Actor

Zhenya Oganjanyan

Actor

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Endless Poetry

94%

81%

Endless Poetry

TRAILER

for Endless Poetry

James Dean

93%

76%

James Dean

Chaplin

61%

81%

Chaplin

Hamsun

100%

92%

Hamsun

Heleno

46%

55%

Heleno

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Synopsis

Semi-factual autobiography of Russian Joseph Brodsky who left the USSR in 1972. The film imagines him returning to St. Petersburg and contrasting it with the memories of wartime Leningrad.

Director: Andrey Khrzhanovskiy
Producer: Andrey Khrzhanovskiy, Artem Vasilyev
Screenwriter: Andrey Khrzhanovskiy, Yuriy Arabov
Genre: Biography, Drama, Foreign
Original Language: Russian
Runtime: 2h 10m