Unfortunately I have to acknowledge that this movie is horrible. I believe that everyone who ever read the Book will agree that whoever tries to make a movie based on this Book must be of equal talent as writer himself. In this case Bortko who not only directed but also wrote the script is not up to the task. He simply took all (almost all) dialogs from the Book and incorporated them into the script except as everyone already mentioned by adding new character played by Gaft, which is not even natural to the Book. I do sincerely believe that screenwriter and/or director have all rights to adapt book to the screen and there is no way that book can be made into adaptation as simple illustration and regarded as Art. And this is the case in this adaptation, it is mere illustration and is made for people who don't have time to read or simply don't want to read. For those folks this mini series is a heaven. It gave them to hear almost word for word all dialogs from the Book but leaves real philosophical ideas Book raises behind. It is made in bad Hollywood traditions as we can find a lot of really good adaptations made there, more over Russia has reach tradition in movie adaptations especially big philosophical novels such as 'Hamlet' and 'King Lear' by Kozintsev or 'Brothers Karamazov' by Pyryev. There not even single artist up to the task to play characters from the Book, except Abdulov. I also would like to add couple of more things. First is that original music is so resembles music by Carl Orff 'Carmina Burana' it is striking to the heart. It is better if Bortko used it instead of music by Kornelyuk. Second, everyone already mentioned that special effects are lowest points of the movie but how come there are so many talented programmers in Russia and none of them could be invited to make computerized special effects? And the last but now least, incursions made by director by using old black and white newsreels are not providing any good to show up Moscow of the 1930th.