They picked sour “shchav,” hunted for mushrooms and searched for possibly edible roots to supplement the barley-water of the general soup kitchen.

Asked what they liked best about visiting their father, both named playing his Atari game. What if he didn't have an Atari, would you still go visit him? Dr. Davis asked.

The first practical constructed language was the south-west German Pastor Schleyer's Volapük from 1879; its complicated grammar and irregular vocabulary made learning difficult, however. The most successful has been Esperanto, devised by the Warsaw ophthalmologist Ludwig Zamenhof in 1887, that today can count some one million speakers.

The film was technically superb but narratively muddled.