A film-parable about the eternal movement of mankind from the Stone Age to self-destruction. ... "Metamorphosis", having a very simple and unambiguous plot, nevertheless gradually attracts us, the spectators, to a deceptive and unsteady path of conjectures, conjectures and interpretations, without which, however, no more or less worthy mention of a work of art . In fact, the retelling of the storyline lying on the surface can cause an unbiased listener to have a fit of yawning: all this has already happened, and few people now care. The merry days of the Caribbean crisis have long since been overlooked, only people who are interested in military history in the discourse of strategy and tactics for airborne operations are remembered about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Chernobyl is already vegetating somewhere beyond the cordon in silence and obscurity, catching up with nostalgia for glasnost and perestroika. It can be safely asserted that even the Third World War, if it takes place, will be forgotten or remembered by subsequent generations with a painfully warm feeling, with which one usually remembers the hooligan deeds of a crazy adolescence. Man, as you know, is not a flea - he gets used to everything ...        As if humanity, when it periodically seems that it has matured, did not wave back from the Jewish legends, human culture is saturated with them: just squeeze it and it will climb. This is not surprising. If three thousand years to polish a regular stone, it will be very expensive to look at. The question is whether it's worth continuing - it's pointless: I want to apply myself. And the dispute itself does not make sense, if it's not clear yet, why is it all that is around us, including us, and who needs it, if necessary at all.        Nevertheless, the author of the film bypasses these glaring questions. Not that they did not worry him, but he, as always, shows, but does not want to tell. What he shows us, also causes lies. The images of the film should be understood as a metaphor, as a gun, which, in full accordance with theatrical traditions, the director hangs on the wall, so that it fires at the end of the performance. It also shoots us, which plunges us into the next catacombs of associations, allowing, in the final analysis, to evaluate the film almost as a farce. Such a meaningful understanding of the film, probably, probably because the director, as it should be a good eighties, decided to do something on the principle of "everything for everyone". In itself, such an aspiration should not cause criticism, especially now, when a bored Hollywood with his Ford system is trying to oppose some "other" art, although an insurgent of the "B" category can only be compared with a serious film by an idiot or a conjurer. Actually (we will draw an analogy with literature) and Hamlet can be read as a merry comedy about a psycho. So "Hamlet" is the same work "for all". Ergo, it's not that bad. Everything depends, again, on the level of culture of the reader or viewer.        Of course, the influence of the mass culture has not bypassed this film. What is, for example, the invariable sex symbol of the post-Stirlitz era - a black German uniform! Consciously or not, Frolov, starting with one myth, gradually changes to another, and from there to the third, forcing the coming figure to turn consistently from the five-canthropus into a pseudo-superhero, capable of destroying this world at the touch of a button ... Nobody knows what will happen next. Probably, the director himself does not know this either. But it's worth pondering ...        Mao An.