Gorilla Bathes at Noon

For Makavejev, it's as if nothing has changed in 20-odd years. This collage-comedy may be set in the no-man's-land at the heart of the unified Berlin, but the images, the ideas and the bathetic juxtapositions could all be out-takes from Innocence Unprotected or W.R. - Mysteries of the Organism. The protagonist is a Russian soldier left behind in Berlin when his platoon goes home, haunted by scenes from the 1949 Stalinist epic The Fall of Berlin and nonplussed by the demolition of a gigantic statue of Lenin. So: socialism dies, socialist illusions crumble, and we're back to the same old socialist punch-ups and social contradictions. Not riveting.