Saturday, February 09, 2008

Dom durakov or House of Fools (2002)

Russian film, in Russian, with English subtitles.

From the blurb on the netflix jacket cover:
"A true story about the patients of a Russian psychiatric asylum (In Caucasus, on the Chechnyan border) who become involved with the Chechen War after their doctors, nurses and attendants abandon them. Amidst the turmoil, a young woman, Janna, falls in love with a Chechen soldier. Canadian pop singer Bryan Adams (playing himself) appears to Janna as a hallucination singing his hit, "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?"

Now if that plot doesn't pique your interest I don't know what would. The abandonment really isn't an abandonment, and the love story isn't what you might think. Bryan Adams is magic. All will be revealed once you take a look at this endearing portrayal of human behavior in "unusual" circumstances.

From Roger Ebert's take: "A film that succeeds not by arguing that the world is crazier than the asylum, but by arriving at the melancholy possibility that both are equally insane."

I don't know how melancholy the movie is. Despite the grim circumstances the human spirit shines. Leave out the word melancholy from Ebert's assessment and call it good.

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