Which section(s) are your favourite?

Fascinating reply, what a great movie this is. Glad to see you survived the exploding pig AND the Cold War! All the best to you my friend.

I'm glad someone admits that at least sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. ;)

The film was pretty fun to watch in a dystopia kinda way. Even in totalitarian regimes clever (or just funny) people can, and do, mock and circumvent both officials and their doctrines with gusto.

Besides, most stuff depicted in the film isn't really that far fetched either - even now.

"Retouching" photos is far from things of the past. And "retouching" images glaringly badly is even less so. Basically everything we see today is photoshopped. Sometimes you can tell it immediately, other times not at all. And we're getting worse at spotting the difference every year. Not because photoshoppers all over the world are getting better at their jobs, but because we simply care that much less every day.

How could we not when we have it even worse in real life? Every time you see absolutely stunning people walking in the streets, it's impossible to tell if they were born that way when as a rule everyone resorts to cheating - one way or the other. That natural beauty could just have a top-notch tailor, incredible make-up artist and/or just about the bloody perfect surgeon. Then all that's really left is that great personality of hers (or his)...

And what else is still common?

Well, we still put on a show all over the world to show some "hot shot/big man" how squeky-clean and orderly everything and everyone is - even or especially when it's not. Almost always they know, and we know, but we still put on the charade. People are weird this way.

And you can still give most people some absurd bogus story about this or that and they will do your bidding without really giving it a second thought. Sometimes a suit and a soft voice is all it takes and all the reason you will ever need.

Human race is after all better educated than at any point in history, and we still think preciously little about what is true and what is only make-believe. That, and we continually either fail to see or are just indifferent to the consequences of our actions.

In the film that family had to get that pig killed. In their flat. Then and there. In secrecy. Without having a lot of time or energy to think it through. Under those circumstances it was actually a pretty good plan (especially coming from a young boy). They should probably have just punched some holes in the pig and wait it out a bit longer for the gas to diffuse before attempting to burn its hair.

The culprit was that they just wanted to get that *beep* done ASAP and go to bed. Haste almost never pans out.

Take any average American week, and someone actually gets killed because he or she is just too damn eager to get things done rather now than the next moment. I'm not sure if there's a nation around that wants to get things done faster than they do in America. What can I say, Americans are very self-assertive and sometimes that makes them overtly self-reliant.

Of course there is a sea of stupidity amongst the general populace, too. Combine inherent stupidity with haste and it's never pretty. The world is littered with walking time bombs. It's not just an American thing. In my opinion it's just e-vo-lu-ti-on trying to make things right again. Let's give it a chance.

That part about people ending up getting stuck in a carousel with no means to stop it, pretty much sums up human stupidity. No one planned it. No one really wanted to do it that badly (if at all). But once we had started we realized that we can't bail out nor make it stop. All that is left then is to let it run its course, wait for the worst and hope for the best.

I suppose the film was entertaining and educating enough. If you didn't already know about some of the peculiarities that certainly helped proto-communist regimes collapse before they could even hope to get their *beep* together, this is just as good of a place to start as any.

I personally don't see how you could ever hope to sustain any system without some form of "ruling class" and I think this was Marx definitely at his dumbest. Or maybe the idea originated from Engels and Marx just went along out of friendship? Maybe he/they just wanted to test if people in fact think for themselves at all any more? Maybe he was drunk? Maybe the man didn't have clue how to fix things, but he certainly saw that capitalism and mass production could only work up to some level before turning against itself. This is the mere mechanics of it. What the system doing to human psyche is even more reprehensible.

I do think we could and should do things more purposefully that would be genuinely productive and effective without oppressing people too much. Until we let robots take over, we can't really cut it without some measure of forced oppression - unfortunately. Eight hours a day pretty much every day is still a jail even if you do get to pick out your own cell.

Of course I would have preferred seeing more boobies in the film rather than none at all, but hey, that's just me. That bottle stealing girl was just too damn fine and the camera absolutely loved her. And so did I. In this form I won't be watching this film again, but I might have wanted to see it again if only the director would have decided to turn it into a more conventional love story starring this adorable bottle collecting couple while possibly incorporating some of the other stories to it to make it seem more "substantial".

What, pray I ask, could be more substantial than love? That's right, nothing.

So, we got one addition to the multitude of films that are easy to watch and even easier to forget. If you've got something to say, then say it or shut up and give someone else a chance.

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I don't believe the exploding pig thing. How could there be enough of a perfect gas/air mixture in or on a pig to do that? Searching the web for the terms "exploding pig" and "Romania" only returns references to this movie.

I thought the funniest part was when they were simply trying to move the pig around in the apartment.