The Ugly Swans story
A United Nations envoy is sent to the recently evacuated town of Tashlinsk, where a small group of mysterious beings have taken the town's children to an isolated boarding school. It is based on the 1987 novel of the same name by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.
8 total · 3 major · 5 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| father and daughter | major | Banev traveled to the recently evacuated town of Tashlinsk to rescue his young daughter, Ira, who was being cultivated in an isolated boarding school by a mysterious group of nonhuman beings. |
| human vs. inexplicable adversity | major | Everyone was at a loss to explain why the town of Tashlinsk had all of a sudden come under perpetual rain and was bathed in a dreary infrared light. |
| speculative being | major | Some believed the Aquatters to be aliens, others that they were genetically mutated humans, but their precise nature was never spelled out. |
| chemical weapons | minor | The military launched a chemical attack on the town of Tashlinsk to kill the Aquatters. |
| conformism in society | minor | The doctors at the mental hospital were using a combination of drugs and television in an effort to make a catatonic Ira conform to societal norms. |
| creative writing | minor | Banev was a writer by trade. |
| husband and wife | minor | Banev picked up a room key from Luda and her husband at the airport. |
| what it is like in a psychiatric institution | minor | At the end of the film, a catatonic Ira was being held in a stereotypically gloomy mental hospital. |