House of Fools
Jan. 14th, 2009 11:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI watched this marvelous Russian movie this weekend, House of Fools, which is the story (based on true events, although I'm not sure how closely) of a Russian psychiatric hospital near the Chechen border that got overrun by Chechens in the early to mid nineties. The filmography is beautiful - the coloring has an faded, washed-out look (except in the delusion sequences, which have a golden glow) which is lovely. And the characters, although they only have very cursory back-stories, are fascinating.
My favorite is Janna, the main character. She's a sweet, sensitive girl who believes that she's engaged to the pop star Bryan Adams and, whenever confronted by conflict, drifts off into delusions of harmony with the aid of her accordion. This makes the character sound like one of those romanticized crazy people, who may be insane but are heart-warmingly eccentric with it - but Janna, although she is sweet, does come across as completely out to lunch. She probably couldn't function outside of an insane asylum.
I think the other reason her sweetness doesn't grate is because it seems to be motivated in part by fear. When there's disharmony, Janna frantically flings herself in to try to stop it - "I'll clean it up!" she yells, when dishes get broken - and she comes across as terrified of conflict, not preternaturally helpful.
The other fascinating thing about the movie is that I honestly had no idea where it was going, or rather I could guess something about the end (clearly the asylum would revert from Chechen base to asylum by the end) but I had no idea how it was going to get there, which is rare.
My roommate (child of the ex-Soviet bloc that she is) first wanted to know if the movie is Russian propaganda, which, no. If it's propaganda for anyone it's pacifists, which doesn't bother me as "propaganda for pacifists" = "relatively truthful depictions of war."
It isn't a gory movie. There's some blood, but it's certainly not excessive. The movie shows the evils of war not through the amount of viscera, but by showing that war forces essentially decent people to shoot at each other and lob bombs at an insane asylum because it might contain enemy combatants.
As for other questionable content - this movie has one of the least sexualized representations of female nudity I've ever seen. I was a bit worried when I saw the "nudity" warning on the rating, because I could just imagine the director going "Crazy women! Of course they will be naked all the time, because that's what crazy women do (apparently crazy men don't, who knows why), and of course the camera must linger on linger on the nakedness like an over-sexed fifteen-year-old boy" but it's not like that at all. There are a couple shots with naked women, and they're just...women who are not wearing clothes, not NAKED WOMEN OMG.
My favorite is Janna, the main character. She's a sweet, sensitive girl who believes that she's engaged to the pop star Bryan Adams and, whenever confronted by conflict, drifts off into delusions of harmony with the aid of her accordion. This makes the character sound like one of those romanticized crazy people, who may be insane but are heart-warmingly eccentric with it - but Janna, although she is sweet, does come across as completely out to lunch. She probably couldn't function outside of an insane asylum.
I think the other reason her sweetness doesn't grate is because it seems to be motivated in part by fear. When there's disharmony, Janna frantically flings herself in to try to stop it - "I'll clean it up!" she yells, when dishes get broken - and she comes across as terrified of conflict, not preternaturally helpful.
The other fascinating thing about the movie is that I honestly had no idea where it was going, or rather I could guess something about the end (clearly the asylum would revert from Chechen base to asylum by the end) but I had no idea how it was going to get there, which is rare.
My roommate (child of the ex-Soviet bloc that she is) first wanted to know if the movie is Russian propaganda, which, no. If it's propaganda for anyone it's pacifists, which doesn't bother me as "propaganda for pacifists" = "relatively truthful depictions of war."
It isn't a gory movie. There's some blood, but it's certainly not excessive. The movie shows the evils of war not through the amount of viscera, but by showing that war forces essentially decent people to shoot at each other and lob bombs at an insane asylum because it might contain enemy combatants.
As for other questionable content - this movie has one of the least sexualized representations of female nudity I've ever seen. I was a bit worried when I saw the "nudity" warning on the rating, because I could just imagine the director going "Crazy women! Of course they will be naked all the time, because that's what crazy women do (apparently crazy men don't, who knows why), and of course the camera must linger on linger on the nakedness like an over-sexed fifteen-year-old boy" but it's not like that at all. There are a couple shots with naked women, and they're just...women who are not wearing clothes, not NAKED WOMEN OMG.
