Salle n°6 - Tchékhov

I think Ward No.6 is an absolutely perfect film. Great acting , script, directing, and so on. Sometimes you watch a film and only after you have finished the whole film, you realise how great it was. Sometimes you like some bits from a film, but this one - Ward No. 6 is great from the beginning to end! Just brilliant!

Karen Shakhnazarov's "Palata No. 6" ("Ward No. 6" in English) is an adaptation of an Anton Chekhov story. Having never read Chekhov's story, I can only comment on the movie. At first I was reminded of Christopher Guest's mockumentaries, as the characters describe their predicaments (filmed in a naturalistic style). But then the story begins, as one of the doctors begins to question his profession. To be certain, what this movie portrays is no laughing matter.

The movie might seem slow to some viewers. It's like that for a reason. It gives the patient time to explain his philosophy to the doctor. The movie poses the question of which people can be considered insane in a rotten-to-the-core society (much like how "A Clockwork Orange" does). Most of the movie takes place indoors, emphasizing the feeling of imprisonment.

I don't know that I would call it a masterpiece, but it's worth seeing. It not only addresses the issue of insanity, but also shows the horrible conditions in the mental institutions. I'd say that it was the right choice for Russia's submission to the Academy Awards that year.

I had such high hopes for Ward No. 6. The summary made it sound like a Shutter Island type thriller case, where you're not sure who's really insane, who's really criminal, who's really qualified to be asking the questions.

What I got was a series of clinical interviews that sort of reminded me of the beginning of District 9. The quality of the lighting and shot set up was very flat. Patients are talking to the camera about why they're institutionalized, and it's incredibly sad. Most were dropped off at an orphanage by their own parents and once they aged out, they were moved to the psychiatric facility. They've never had a chance to have a life, because their parents couldn't handle their responsibility. That is horrible! But, I actually would not have minded a more intense study of that situation. Instead, a doctor begins to lead a tour and eventually reveals that his predecessor is now, in fact, a patient. Dr. Ragin had a sort of comfortable life going. But rather than any kind of therapy sessions, he got into philosophical discourses with friends and one patient, in particular, and seemed to be spiraling into a depression about existential issues. The plot is slow. The conversations are like Crime and Punishment. Ward No. 6 is based on a short story by Anton Chekhov, so I shouldn't have been surprised, but honestly, I had a hard time staying focused. It made me sleepy. Ward No. 6 gets a 6 out of 10.

The film begins with a long prologue in which real life inmates of an asylum are interviewed. When asked about their dream they answer it is to leave the asylum and lead a normal life. Based on Anton Chekov's short story of the same name, Ward No. 6 narrates the tale of Doctor Ragin, who is more of a philosopher than a psychiatric doctor. Spending half his salary on books the reluctant doctor loves to read and have intelligent conversations. Feeling suffocated in the small town he is soon drawn to an intelligent patient in the mental ward suffering from paranoid delusions. He starts spending more and more time in the mental ward and neglects his other duties. The only intelligent conversation the doctor can have in the town is with an insane patient in the mental ward. Getting increasingly disengaged from reality, Doctor Ragin finds himself tricked into being made a patient and confined in the same mental ward, where he awaits death and freedom.

This simple story raises complex questions in our mind. What is insanity? Who defines it? The director narrates Chekov's story in a semi documentary fashion. It doesn't work too well and leaves us rather indifferent to Doctor Ragin's predicament. But I think this form of narration serves the purpose of setting Chekov's story in the contemporary context. The haunting New Year's eve dance sequence is comical yet so chilling! How easily does the State machinery makes its citizens fall in line. What if the State is a lunatic asylum? Thought provoking question for citizens who live under dictatorial regimes!

The film ends with a very intriguing sequence in which a woman who lived next door to Doctor Ragin is being interviewed. Her younger child cannot suppress her laughter and the camera lingers long over her face and that of her sister. Is it laughter of innocence or mischief? The viewer has to make his own judgement.

Film and Life. Ficcion and Documentary. Here's two pairs of concepts which could, if we'd like, be placed on opposite corners of the labeling maps. For that same reason, these are concepts which intersect, come close to being confused and considered the same. Each of these two pairs holds inside it the magic of a magnetic repulsion/attraction. Maybe that's why so much has been said and written and filmed as to what film borrows from life (and how life can be affected by films). Also how thin is the difference between wanting to document something and creating a story that is already in the creators eye.

Shakhnazarov seems to be a dislocated guy. Someone born within the values of the great soviet school, but who lost that context early in his career. Today he makes disembodied soviet films. And also he doesn't really represent any of the two major soviet contributions to cinema (leaded by Eisenstein and Tarkovsky, respectively). For this, i don't think i'll ever watch one of his films that does more than merely amuse me in how clever were the intentions behind it.

In this case, what he wanted to do was not novel, but it's not very well done either. He starts the film presenting us with a series of interviews to real ill people from a real mental institution. Than he delivers a fiction, with fiction characters modelled after the real ill people, and acted in the same physical place, the hospital. This is actually a very clever idea. The interviews place us in the world of the mental cases, so we need no more establishing of the world of the film. So, we get fully inside the film and that's something rarely done in such a clear effective way. The problem is that nothing else is worth your time. there is a very literature driven approach to the dialog writing, and that kills the film, which is also not carried well enough by the performances. Dialogs or acting are the things that can carry such a film. Non exists with quality here.

The closing scene is as clever as the initial one. Real patients meet fictitious ones, and they dance, with mixed pairs. Documented reality merges with fictionalized reality. The entry, and this last sequence almost redeem the lack of anything else in the film.

My opinion: 2/5

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