Kin-dza-dza! is a late-Soviet take on life in the so-called Falloutian/Mad Maxian post-apocalypse. In fact I completely agree with the description by some other publication that this is where "Mad Max meets Monty Python", only let's not forget that this is neither an American film starring Mel Gibson, nor is its humour particularly British, despite the similar surrealist satire. If anything, it's more of a product of the times when it was obvious that "communism had finally won" and Soviet leaders were preparing to enact the перестройка phase. So believe me when I say that Max Rockatansky couldn't convey this sort of 1986 sadness any better than it's depicted here.
To me, the defining characteristic of the film's world isn't the fact that its natives are able to read each other's minds -- this is more of a plot device aimed at explaining their immediate understanding of Russian; notice, by the way, how the same device isn't used later when our heroes reach the other, Eden-like, world. The most striking aspect, to my eye, is that the so-called Plukanians are a bunch of dirty, ragged barbarians and that they're not only complacent with this state of affairs, but in fact they'd have it no other way. For our average Chatlan, air is a commodity to be sold, water is better off as material for making луц than for washing and matchsticks are quite valuable for some incomprehensible reason. The meta-satirization is all the more obvious once they call our Soviet (Russiand and Georgian) heroes barbarians for not following their arbitrary rules established, no doubt, by their local ministry of silly mores.
Now, there's a great amount of comedy in our Soviet heroes' landing in the middle of nowhere, completely out of context at the beginning of the film; and their complete adherence to the so-called Plukanian mores by the end of it. Whether that was the usual conformism, i.e. reversal to the mean, or whether in fact our heroes really seeked to game the game just for the sake of getting back home, that is up to the viewer's interpretation. The writers, in a sort of Gilliamesque style, seem to imply the latter; I'd rather think it's the former and that our "great Soviet heroes'" fate really isn't up to them.
Leaving aside the commentary, which shan't escape the keen viewer's eye, on "degenerate" (my word) "capitalism" (their word) and on "Africa", this aspect alone made me like the movie immediately, because it says a whole lot more about the future than maybe even the writers originally intended. Mayhaps the reader does not understand what "carbon-neutral" really means, nor does he remember the agitprop from a couple of years ago which encouraged the young generation that washing is bad, mmkay. But taking a careful look at Kin-dza-dza! one understands immediately what this all means: namely, that hyper-advanced technology doth not a civilization make; that "equality", when stripped of its notional content, becomes just a word for wearing the right type of pants, i.e. another hierarchization; that it's just one step from the proverbial muzzle to the real one; and last but not least, that the emperor lies naked in the only bathtub on the planet, so that eventually the system kinda ends up running itself by virtue of a leftover inertia from times past.
I'm pretty sure that at the time the movie was indeed aimed by the regime as some commentary on the West, although to be fair, it could have just as well been a view on the USSR. I haven't watched too many Soviet-era movies, but I find the art style to be quite intriguing, sort of a weird low-budget steampunk -- to be fair, nowadays I've learned to appreciate low-budget papier-mâchés more than I do the CG porn. The music and the acting are both decent, albeit not on the level of a Brazil, and the movie's circular structure, with the Plukanian reference in the middle of Moscow at the end, is satisfying as it is entirely bland.
Overall not a bad way to waste two hours of one's life, in my humble opinion.